DOCUMENT

Professor John Reynolds is a Principal Investigator at the Brain Health Research Centre at the University of Otago. His vast research agenda covers Parkinson’s disease and stroke, targeted drug delivery, dysfunction of the basal ganglia, tinnitus, learning and memory mechanisms, and how the brain perceives rewards, to name a few. All of his research interests overlap, each one helping to fill a gap in our understanding of the most complex organ in the human body, the brain. He talks to Danelle Clayton about the latest breakthroughs in finding treatments for Parkinson’s Disease, and how a V J Chapman Fellowship from the Neurological Foundation led him to where he is today. One of Dr John Reynolds’ first roles as a practising doctor was treating people with Parkinson’s disease, and it remains his passion to this day. The reason being that despite his years of medical training, he discovered there was little medically available at the time that could that could bring lifelong relief from Parkinson’s symptoms. John completed his MBChB at Otago University as a mature student in the 1990s. His rotation of choice was in a rehabilitation centre at Whangarei hospital, an uncommon choice among the younger graduates at the time. “I really loved the environment there. It’s where you see people with Parkinson’s and strokes who require the whole gamut of care - nursing, physiotherapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy, social work. It’s also where I realised there’s not much we could do for them as doctors, because we can’t get drugs that might be effective into the brain easily. All we could do is juggle things and support the therapists. It’s confronting when you enter the medical profession and realise you can’t actually have that much impact on neurological disorders.” Driven by a mix of frustration and compassion, John applied and was granted the V J Chapman Fellowship from the Neurological Foundation to allow him to undertake fulltime research towards a PhD. This led to him becoming a neurological researcher, and his journey began to find better ways to treat brain disorders. Today John has returned to Otago University, where he is a Professor in the Department of Anatomy and the inter-disciplinary Brain Health Research Centre. He has made two decades worth of contributions to understanding and treating brain disorders, many of 4 Headlines The man with a passion for treating Parkinson’s