Summary:
Watch the video and think about these questions:
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Rebecca: When I start typing on my computer, how does the brain tell my hands what to do?
Prof. Vaughan Macefield: Well as you know the hand is a very complicated structure.
There are so many muscles in there and each the part of the brain the motor cortex send commands down
through the spinal cord down out through the nerves to each of those muscles and the coordination
occurs in the brain but the brain also receives feedback from touch sensors in the fingertips and from stretch receptors in the muscles.
So it knows how to do all this through years and years of practice.
The baby learns just by pointing and as the baby grows up it learns to do very fast things with its hands.
If we look at this image of the brain here this is done in a big powerful brain scanner we can see areas of
the brain lighting up when the subject moves a finger.
So the commands are coming down form the brain to the muscles of the hand and that sensory feedback
is coming back up to the motor cortex to the sensory motor cortex.
So that the brain knows that it has performed the task it knows how well it's performed the task but it involves quite a few areas of the brain.
So the back of the brain, the cerebellum is very important for this fine control.
There are areas of the brain in the front of the motor cortex which are involved in the planning of the task.
So just before you make the movement about a second before that happens we can see electrical changes in the brain that precede the actual movement.
There's quite a lot that goes on that we don't fully understand how but we know that many areas of the brain are involved in this.
Summary:
Listen to Vaughan describe his work and consider:
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Rebecca: How does the work you are doing impact on the lives of everyday people?
Prof. Vaughan Macefield: Well, some of the work I deal with, for instance, control of the hand, we all know how
important the hand is, so if you have a stroke you can lose the function of the hand because it's highly dependent on fine control from the brain.
A lot of the work I deal with doesn't affect the everyday person in the street but affects certain patient groups,
people who have had their spinal cords damaged through spinal cord injury.
I'm interested in how the nervous system adapts to those changes.
People who have high blood pressure, how the nervous system is involved in that.
Summary:
Listen to Vaughan talk about his work and consider:
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Rebecca: Can you describe for us a normal kind of day in the life of Vaughan Macefield?
Prof. Vaughan Macefield: Well this morning I got up at 5:30, ran around Centennial Park made the kids
breakfast dropped them down the train station drove out here.
Normally I would sit at my computer and start analysing some data, checking my emails for instance, that takes quite a bit of time.
But unless I'm doing an experiment, experiments are fun you know in the laboratory and you're trying to get
the best sort of data, that's the fun bit.
The rest of the time you're analysing that data and that can be a bit tedious so I generally have music
playing while I'm doing my stuff on the computer.
So a normal day involves analysing data mostly, writing papers.
Once you've got all the data analysed you have to generate the figures for the papers, you have to write about it and that's very tedious.
So I'm contacting my colleagues who are also involved in the studies and we're sharing ideas.
Summary:
Listen to Vaughan discuss brains and his other interests and consider:
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Rebecca: Do you find you're always thinking of brains or do you have time to pursue other interests?
Prof. Vaughan Macefield: I certainly don't always think about the brain.
Even when I'm at work I don't always think about the brain.
But the brain is very fascinating.
Often I'll think about the brain at home while I'm making dinner, not that I eat brains being a vegetarian
and all, but no I certainly do have time for other things.
As I've said I like running and I like listening to music, I like going to see modern dance etc.
So I've just bought tickets to see Muse with, for my boys so very excited about that.
So I'm into music, I'm into going to museums, going to see bands, listening to music all that sort of stuff.
So as a scientist you don't just have to sit there with your test tubes or your oscilloscopes or your computers.
There's more to life than science, but science is an important part of life because it's creative.
It gives you a lot of satisfaction.
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