Brain

Understanding the experience of pain for novel brain-based treatments

Associate Professor Tasha Stanton leads the Persistent Pain Research Group at SAHMRI. She is also co-Director of IIMPACT in Health at the University of South Australia, Adelaide. She is a clinical pain neuroscientist, with original training as a physiotherapist, and her research focusses on pain – why do we have it and why doesn’t it go away?

Visceral pain and the gut-brain axis

Professor Stuart Brierley is Director of the Visceral Pain Research Group, Director of the Hopwood Centre for Neurobiology, and Theme co-Leader of Lifelong Health at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI). 

Prof Brierley is an international expert on the ‘gut-brain axis’ and chronic visceral pain mechanisms. Current investigations are on a individual cell type called the enterochromaffin cell, and it helps signal pain and anxiety from the gastrointestinal tract to the brain.

Genetic disease research imitating function and architecture of organs

Professor Wolvetang was among the first to bring the first human embryonic stem cells to Queensland, with his Wolvetang Group at the AIBN now renowned for its work with organoids: growing them, studying them, and using them to try and understand diseases and human development.

Using cutting edge technology, Professor Wolvetang designs and grows organoids both for their own work and for labs across the country, coaxing pluripotent stem cells or tissue samples into 3D structures that mimic the function and architecture of real brains, livers, kidneys, spinal cords, and intestines.

At the frontier of human cellular neuroscience research

Associate Professor Cedric Bardy is the Director of The Laboratory for Human Neurophysiology, Genetics & Stem Cells, located at SAHMRI. South Australia.

His current research uses preclinical, patient-derived cell models to test innovative therapeutic strategies, with a current focus on Parkinson’s disease, brain cancer and childhood dementia (Sanfilippo syndrome).


His work has established a platform to facilitate the discovery and validation of treatments for brain disorders. Their research is at the frontier of human cellular neuroscience research and translational applications that benefit global public health.

Professor Alex Fornito

PROFESSOR ALEX FORNITO
HEAD OF THE BRAIN MAPPING AND MODELLING RESEARCH PROGRAM
TURNER INSTITUTE FOR BRAIN AND MENTAL HEALTH, MONASH UNIVERSITY
VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA

Dr James Pang

DR JAMES PANG, RESEARCH FELLOW
TURNER INSTITUTE FOR BRAIN AND MENTAL HEALTH, MONASH UNIVERSITY
VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA

Lía Aguilar Madariaga

RESEARCH IN BRAIN COMPUTER INTERFACE
@ SYNCHRON
MELBOURNE, VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA

Dr Venkata Tarigoppula

RESEARCH IN BRAIN COMPUTER INTERFACE
@ SYNCHRON
MELBOURNE, VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA

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