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Celebrating 100 Years of Health Sciences
processing. Ultimately, the hope is that, by understanding
such molecular processes in more detail, new targets for
treatment can be developed.
Professor Ernesta Meintjes is the DST/NRF SARChI Chair
in Brain Imaging, and has played a particularly important
role in conducting clinical research relevant to the BBI
mission. Her work has included studies of children with
fetal alcohol syndrome, as well as children with neuroHIV/
AIDS, and involves collaborations with clinician-scientists
abroad and locally. Much of her research is funded by the
National Institutes of Health. As children are not easily
able to lie still during imaging, she and her collaborators
at the Massachusetts General Hospital have developed
new MRI sequences, which facilitate motion correction
during the analysis of scans.
Dr Katherine Sorsdahl, the project manager of the BBI,
represents the public health aspect of brain-behaviour
studies. Together with her mentor, Honorary Associate
Professor Bronwyn Myers, she has been involved in
intervention studies for people suffering from substance-
use disorders. Given the resource constraints that local
Professor Dan Stein, Director of
the BBI, says that he is pleased that
women scientists are making such
a large contribution to the BBI,
and notes that, when it comes to
BBI postdoctoral research fellows
and doctoral students, women are
again taking the lead.
mental-health services face, she has focused on using lay
counsellors to provide the interventions, an idea known as
“task-shifting”. Her preliminary findings indicate that such
interventions can make a large difference. Dr Sorsdahl is
enthusiastic about continuing to study treatments that are
simple and inexpensive enough to be rolled out to the
public on a large scale.
Professor Dan Stein, Director of the BBI, says that he
is pleased that women scientists are making such a
large contribution to the BBI, and notes that, when
it comes to BBI postdoctoral research fellows and
doctoral students, women are again taking the lead.
Their research projects range from those focusing on
molecular science (Shareefa Dalvie, Nastassja Koen and
Jacqueline Womersley) to neuroimaging (Samantha
Brooks, Jacqueline Hoare, Anne Uhlmann, Sarah
Cotton, and Daniella Vuletic) and clinical and public
mental-health aspects (Sonja Pasche, Nicole McAnda,
Taryn Amos, Maxine Spedding, and Claire van der
Westhuizen).
A number of young scientists have focused on
translational science in particular, moving between “the
bench and the bed”: Dr Fleur Howells, for example,
has undertaken a series of animal and human studies in
order to address the role of particular neurotransmitter
systems in mental disorders.
“Our aim,” Professor Stein says, “is to go from bench
to bed and beyond, in order to begin to address key
questions in the brain-behaviour sciences, and to find
new approaches to the diagnosis and treatment of mental
disorder.” The BBI is keen to attract more staff and students
to work in this area.