QUEENSLAND'S GERMAN CONNECTIONS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Humboldtian scholars could unlock brain disorders

The World Health Organisation estimates that schizophrenia affects 24 million people worldwide and that more than 50% of people with schizophrenia are not receiving appropriate care. German-born Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) researcher Dr Judith Reinhard and her team are one step closer to unlocking brain disorders such as schizophrenia and autism by peering into the brains of bees. The University of Queensland’s QBI is one of the largest neuroscience institutes in the world and is dedicated to understanding the mechanisms underlying brain function. After obtaining her PhD from the University of Bayreuth, Germany, Dr Reinhard decided to take her research into sensory processing and brain function of social insects overseas. To this end, she was awarded a Fellowship by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to work on honeybee vision, olfaction (sense of smell) and cognition (mental processes that include attention, memory, solving problems, and making decisions) at the Australian National University in Canberra, from which she was recruited to the QBI. At QBI, Dr Judith Reinhard’s laboratory conducts research that links brain function to behaviour by investigating how sensory information from the environment is processed in the brain and translated into behavioural activity. A particular focus is the sense of smell and its effect on memory and cognitive performance. Reinhard laboratory researchers combine honeybee with human research and behavioural studies with physiological and molecular approaches. Today, Dr Reinhard and her team are a step closer to unlocking the mysteries of disorders like schizophrenia and autism – through peering into the brains of bees. According to Dr Reinhard, honeybees are a great model system for understanding the functioning of both healthy brains and brain disorders, because many of the underlying molecular processes are similar in insects and humans. Dr Reinhard and her colleague Dr Charles Claudianos have been observing how bees process scents and learn to associate particular odours with sugar rewards. They have then used cutting-edge molecular techniques to explore the changes that occur within the bees’ brains after odour memories are formed, discovering that, when sensory information is processed, particular changes occur in the expression of the molecules that facilitate communication between neurons.

Dr Judith Reinhard and her team are a step closer to unlocking the mysteries of disorders like schizophrenia and autism – through peering into the brains of bees.

Although she is now well established in Queensland, Dr Reinhard has never lost her links to Germany, regularly hosting visiting research students, and she has established a joint PhD program with collaborator Professor Giovanni Galizia from the University of Konstanz, Germany. Their students travel back and forth between Brisbane and Konstanz, making use of the opposite ‘honeybee seasons’ in northern and southern hemispheres. Dr Reinhard says that the generous support by the Humboldt Foundation has given her the unique opportunity to take her research overseas to one of the best laboratories in the field. It has assisted her not only in conducting her research in a new and stimulating environment in Australia, it has also allowed her to establish herself as an independent researcher leading her own group. According to Dr Reinhard, the Humboldt Foundation provides both young and established researchers with a life-long academic network, the ‘Humboldt family’, which is supported and maintained via regular Humboldt meetings, and by continued bi-lateral exchange between Humboldt scholars in Australia and Germany. The Foundation promotes academic cooperation between excellent scientists and scholars from abroad and from Germany. Research fellowships and research awards allow scholars to come to Germany to work on a research project with a host and collaborative partner. Scientists or scholars from Germany can carry out a research project abroad as a guest of one of over 25,000 Humboldt Foundation alumni worldwide – the Humboldtians. As an intermediary for German foreign cultural and educational policy, the foundation promotes international cultural dialogue and academic exchange.

The researchers are interested in what happens when molecular communication goes awry – as is suspected to be the case with mental disorders such as schizophrenia and autism. If this ‘molecular mis-communication’ can be understood, then Dr Reinhard believes that cures for these conditions may be found.

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