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Professor Cliff Abraham 16 Headlines Cliff Abraham is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Otago and the founding Director of Otago’s Brain Health Research Centre. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand and was awarded a prestigious James Cook Fellowship by the Royal Society of New Zealand. In 2009 he was awarded the University of Otago’s Distinguished Research Medal. He is the co-director of the National Centre of Research Excellence: Brain Research New Zealand- Rangahau Roro Aotearoa. This Centre is devoted to research on the aging brain, to ensure life-long brain health for all New Zealanders. Although a Professor at the University of Otago and proud NZ citizen, I was actually born and raised in a small town in the state of Maryland in the USA. It amuses many to learn that this expat is now living in his largest city ever… Dunedin. The journey to Otago began with undertaking a Bachelor of Science in Psychology at the University of Virginia. With the help of a particularly inspirational lecturer, I became fascinated by the brain. Here I had my first laboratory experience, using thin wire electrodes to record nerve cell activity in the brains of rodents performing behavioural tasks. This “window” into the brain that amazingly allowed me to see what that part of the brain was “thinking”, in this case in a structure important for memory called the hippocampus, is what inspired me to become a neuroscientist. From Virginia I moved to the University of Florida to undertake my PhD in the Neuroscience Department. Drawing on my undergraduate interests in the psychology of learning and memory, I embarked on studies to understand the brain mechanisms that underlie the storage of memories. My career path took an unexpected turn when I found myself in New Zealand, working as a postdoctoral fellow with the newly arrived Professor Graham Goddard at the University of Otago. Here I continued my studies of the mechanisms of synaptic plasticity, before undertaking a further post- doctoral year at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden to learn new techniques for studying the brain. I then returned to Otago as a Lecturer and have worked there ever since. My research interests over the years have always centred on synaptic plasticity, especially in the hippocampus. Working with colleagues at Otago and elsewhere, we have learned much about the interesting role of gene expression in helping stabilise these synaptic memories over such long times. In the course of this work, we made the serendipitous discovery that synaptic plasticity is highly dependent on the past level of activity in the cells and networks involved. We termed this type of plasticity “metaplasticity” harnessing its mechanisms to facilitate learning and to prevent over-activity from becoming toxic in Alzheimer’s disease, which has become an important area of research. I and my trainees have been very lucky to have received a number of grants from the Neurological Foundation to support my research on Alzheimer’s disease mechanisms and potential therapies. We now have big hopes for a protein-based therapy that will help the brain to resist the toxic molecules in Alzheimer’s and are working on gene therapy approaches to promote over-production of this protein. The data so far is quite encouraging! Looking ahead, if there is one certain feature of the future, it is the need for more research and thus more funding to turn hope into reality. This is where the Neurological Foundation is such a valuable agency. If its next 50 years are as successful as its first 50, I believe our society will be unrecognisable as brain diseases actually become treatable, as opposed to the symptomatic and palliative care that we have to offer today. Professor Cliff Abraham will be speaking in Queenstown in March to celebrate Brain Awareness Month! If you’d like to join us, please RSVP for a ticket today. Date: 15 March 2021 Time: 10.00 am Location: Queenstown Events Centre, Joe O’Connell Drive, Frankton, Queenstown Register for a ticket using one of the options below. Phone: 0508 BRAINS (0508 272 467) Email: RSVP@neurological.org.nz Online: events.humanitix.com/BAM- Queenstown Our Brain Awareness Month speakers