SCIENCE AT THE SHINE DOME canberra 6 - 8 may 2009
New Fellows Seminar
Thursday, 7 May 2009
Professor George Paxinos FAA
Professor, Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute, Sydney
George Paxinos received his BA in psychology from the University of California at Berkeley and his PhD from McGill University. He has published 37 books on the brain, with his first book being the most cited Australian publication. He was president of the Australian Neuroscience Society and of the World Congress of Neuroscience.
Brain, behaviour and evolution
Standard atlases using identical nomenclature enable scientists to navigate between the brain of humans and experimental animals to test hypotheses inspired by human considerations and relate data from experimental animals to humans. The human brain features many more homologies with the brain of monkey, rat and bird than previously thought. Areas which are shown to be homologous are likely to have similar function. Using magnetic resonance images in mice and non-human primates we are attempting to provide 3D volumes of canonical brains against which transgenic varieties with clinical significance can be compared. If the brain were smaller than what it is, it would not have been able to support language and the development of science and technology which today threatens existence; if the brain were larger than what it is, it might have been able to understand the problem and possibly solve it. The brain is just not the right size.
