About the Event

The brain controls everything we do, our thoughts, movements, and behaviours. When our brains are affected by different neurological conditions, it can affect the way our brain controls our bodies. There are now a range of imaging technologies that allow researchers to track brain cell activity in real-time during behaviour.

During this event Dr Juliette Cheyne will discuss how her research group are establishing these technologies and using them to understand how brain cell activity is affected in neurological disorders. Their research focusses on how brain circuits control behaviour and what happens when this goes awry in disorders including autism spectrum disorder, Alzheimer’s Disease, and Spinal Cord Injury. The group uses head-mounted specialised microscopes, including miniaturised microscopes (miniscopes) to perform live recordings (‘in vivo’) to enable brain activity to be recorded during movement.

The event will discuss these different technologies and explain how they work, detailing the types of behavioural testing they are doing and share some of the latest results. Dr Cheyne will also explain some of their future research goals and how these technologies might be able to help improve brain health.

Dr Cheyne is a Research Fellow, Circuit Mechanisms of Disease Research Group at the Centre for Brain Research, University of Auckland. She was the recipient of a Neurological Foundation Repatriation Fellowship in 2016, and a Neurological Foundation Project Grant and Small Project Grant in 2018.

Doors open at 6pm, light refreshments will be served after the presentation.

This event will be LIVE streamed via Youtube here.