Body in Discord: Lost Signals, Broken Rhythms

When people think about the brain, neurons usually steal the spotlight, however behind every neuron is a large support team. This talk will dive into the wonderful, underappreciated world of the brain's white matter and how the cells that make up the white matter support neurons.

We will explore myelin, the brain's natural insulation that turns slow messages into lightning-fast signals and find out why these pathways are important for learning, memory and movement, how this changes with age and what happens when this goes wrong.

We all recognise local inflammation – skin becomes red and tender at the sight of injury, with pain and sensitivity increasing. But when our brains are inflamed – it’s harder to know. Instead, we diagnose this through psychological symptoms, like fatigue, low mood and ‘foggy’ brain. These symptoms are called ‘sickness-behaviours’ and are protective in the short term and are present in many animals from lizards to humans. Chronically inflamed brains can lead to profound long-term health consequences: depression and other mood disorders, all types of dementia, vascular disorders. How can we study them to help us find ways to improve the health outcomes?

Have you ever wondered why you wake up at the same time most days? Why are you naturally an early bird or a night owl? Or why you start feeling hungry at roughly the same hours? That’s because our body functions like a clock, that controls when we eat, sleep and wake up. This internal clock also plays a role in disease. In cancer, it can dictate when cancer cells leave a tumour, travel through the blood, and spread to other parts of the body, a process called metastasis. If we discover when this happens, we can help fight cancer spread by giving treatments to patients at the right time of the day.