Category Archives: Neurobiology

Blood brain barrier and psychosis

Prof Cyndi Shannon Weickert and her team of researchers are asking a question about schizophrenia that has not been answered before – Is the blood brain barrier compromised in psychosis? Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are diseases that affect an estimated 680,000 people in Australia and cost the economy $4.7 billion a year, yet their pathogenic mechanisms are little understood. One […]

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Star-shaped cells: a clue to differences in schizophrenia pathology?

Dr Vibeke Sørensen Catts is a schizophrenia researcher. Her interests lie in exploring the biological factors that help brain cells grow and die, and how these pathways might be altered in schizophrenia. Here she describes her discovery that certain types of brain cells are inflamed in some people with schizophrenia. This recent finding opens new understanding of what goes wrong in […]

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Visible neuroscience

Imaging techniques enable neuroscientists to learn about the structure and function of cells in the nervous system. Here, Dr Zoltán Rusznák shares some captivating images of the brain and how they were made. Neurons are the building block cells of the brain and spinal cord, communicating with each other through synapses to regulate nervous system function. Relating the shape, size, […]

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‘A grown up is a child with layers on’

Evolution is the gradual development of something into a more complex or better form. I witness this everyday as a paediatric neurologist: A newborn is vulnerable and fully dependent on its parents and during childhood movements become smooth and an infant learns to stand, walk and then run. Compared to development in other species, human children take a long time […]

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