Summary:
As you watch the video, consider the following questions:
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Briony Mowbray: Vaughan I guess I'm going to start with the really obvious question, what sorts of things do you actually study?
Prof. Vaughan Macefield: Well, I'm a neurophysiologist.
So, that's a scientist that studies the nervous system.
Specifically I'm interested in the human nervous system both in healthy individuals and those with disease.
What I do is I put fine needle electrodes into their nerves and tap into signals coming from the brain down
to the blood vessels or the muscles and going back up to the brain from the skin the joints and muscles.
So, I'm interested in how the brain controls the hand, how the brain controls blood pressure how the brain controls movement.
Briony: Sounds really complex.
What sort of thing first motivated you to enter this field of research I guess?
Vaughan: Well I must say as a kid I remember distinctly wanting to be either a robber or a scientist.
So obviously I chose the right profession.
So the reason I wanted to do neurophysiology is the nervous system is very important of course for those
reasons I mentioned it controls blood pressure it controls how we interact with the world and a lot of things can go wrong.
And the reason I study humans is because we've got so many fantastic models of human disease which are clinically relevant.
So here at the new School of medicine at University of Western Sydney we have brand new building going with
state of the art labs and I'm going to be conducting my research there.
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Summary:
Listen to Vaughan about the sort of technology used in neuroscience research and think about:
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Briony Mowbray: I see we're surrounded by some pretty crazy looking technology, can you tell me what sort of
technology you're using in your research.
I've heard about something called microneurography or something like that.
Can you tell us a bit about that?
Prof. Vaughan Macefield: Yes, so this is a lab where you would do single-cell recordings from say mice or rats.
The work I do is in human subjects as I mentioned, so microneurography is a technique that was developed
in Sweden in the late sixties and basically it's using a very, very fine needle inserted through the skin in awake subjects.
It's not painful but basically the nerve is like a packet of spaghetti and you're going through with a needle.
It's not cutting anything but you can impale single strands of spaghetti, single nerve fibres and record the electrical signals.
Because nerve fibres transmit information in the form of electrical signals so you can amplify that just like
amplifying any electrical signal, display it on computer monitors, oscilloscopes, record it onto computer and analyse the data.
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Summary:
As you watch the video, think about:
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Briony Mowbray: Now our students at school often think that science is very absolute, that it's all sort of
been found out, there's nothing new to pursue.
Is that the case when it comes to the brain and nervous system?
Can you give us some examples of things that we don't quite know about yet?
Prof. Vaughan Macefield: There's a lot that we do know, there's a hell of a lot that we don't know.
And, one of the techniques that I've been using recently, in addition to microneurography is MRI, brain imaging.
And that is fantastic.
Apart from the fact that you get beautiful coloured pictures, this is a means of looking into the brain and
seeing which parts of the brain are active during different tasks.
So we're looking at how the brain controls blood pressure, just by looking detecting the signals from the
brain stem and the cerebral cortex and the cerebellum.
So there's a lot that we do not know, and this is new technology, relatively new, and it's just a matter of
designing the best questions and using the best approaches to answer these questions.
Summary:
Listen to Vaughan talk about opportunities for students to learn more about brain science and consider these questions:
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Briony Mowbray: Now I know our young scientists at school are really keen to get involved in this sort of
thing, what sort of, I've heard that you've got a competition or something like that running that our young scientists can get involved in.
Can you tell us a bit about that?
Prof. Vaughan Macefield: The Australian Brain Bee challenge, very exciting.
It was run for the first time this last year in NSW.
It's an international competition and it was rolled out in Queensland the year before last and in Victoria, Western Australia, NSW last year.
So year 10 high school students they sit an exam a multiple choice exam and the finalist from the state
come to well last year they came to Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute in Randwick and we had
teams from schools all throughout NSW, from Lismore, Bega, Baulkham Hills all competing in team events and individual events.
And the winner, a girl from Victoria will be flown to America in March next year during Brain awareness week
to compete in international competition.
We're very excited about this because it encourages high school students to learn about the brain and to
really consider careers in medical research particularly neuroscience, the best science one would have to argue.
Briony: Absolutely, thanks for that. It sounds very exciting. Thanks very much Vaughan for your time.
Vaughan: Thank you.
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