Scintillating science and the brain explained with neuroscience pioneer Professor Lyn Beazley

Former WA Chief Scientist Prof Lyn Beazley is a world pioneer of neuroscience - the study of the human brain. 

You’ll hear:

• Lyn’s early years and road to neuroscience (2:30)
• Biodiversity (8:00)
• WA Chief Scientist (10:00)
• Radio astronomy (16:20)
• WA is a smart state (20:00)
• Coming to Australia and early career (23:00)
• Neuroscience – recovery from brain damage (26:00)
• The human eye – glaucoma (30:00)
• The wiring of the brain (33:00)
• The hippocampus, memory and dementia(36:00)
• Circadian rhythms and sleep (39:40)
• Awards (42:00)

 Duration: 48 minutes.

 Some of Lyn’s honours: (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyn_Beazley)

• In 2009, a new species of sponge discovered in the Perth Canyon off Rottnest Island was named Manihinea lynbeazleyae after Beazley. 
• 2009  Officer of the Order of Australia for services to medical science
• 2009 Fellow of Australian Academy of Technology & Engineering
• 2011 Western Australian Women's Hall of Fame
• 2012 Governor's Award for Giving
• 2013 Inducted into WA Science Hall of Fame
• 2015 WA Australian of the Year
• 2015 RiAus Honorary Bragg Membership
• 2014 Paul Harris Fellow of Rotary International
• 2018 Honorary Doctor of Science ANU
• 2019 Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science

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Transcript

Sonia Nolan: 0:05

Welcome to my warm table, an Australian podcast of smart conversations with heart. I'm Sonia Nolan, and in this episode, I encourage you to settle in for the most stimulating and simply explained science less than you might ever have had. Around my warm table today is one of the world's leading researchers and pioneers of neuroscience, which is the study of the brain. Professor Lyn Beazley was Western Australia's chief scientist from 2006 to 2013. And well apart from her research legacy in helping us understand so much more about the brain, Lyn has been instrumental in so much of our everyday life in in WA and Australia, from our school lab technicians and science teachers being supported through an information hotline to establishing one of the world's most innovative brain injury rehabilitation centres here in Perth, to even linking wa with NASA and our own space programme. Our Warm Table talk had me enthralled, and we talked so much that this had to be a two part series. Today in Part One, I am delighted to introduce you to the ever humble and warm genius of Professor Lyn Beazley. We joined the dots of her illustrious career from studying zoology and linking this to her serendipitous trailblazing path into neuroscience. She gives us an insight into her specialty research area of the eye, and how this word led her to advocating for the establishment of one of the world's biggest eyes in the sky. The Square Kilometre Array radio telescope right here in WA, we cover off on dementia, glaucoma, circadian rhythms, her link to Charles Darwin, and just some of the many things she has accomplished as our state's chief scientist, and the enormous legacy she has left for us. I truly hope you will join us at my warm table for this extraordinary science lesson from one of our state, in fact, one of our world's leading scientists and a pioneer of our understanding of the human brain. Welcome, Lyn. It's so lovely to have you here.

Lyn Beazley: 2:13

Oh, just honoured and thrilled to be here.

Sonia Nolan: 2:15

Thank you. Lyn, I want to talk today about your journey through life as a scientist and What first got you involved in science and take us back there? Because I think there's a really exciting story about where it all began.

Lyn Beazley: 2:29

Okay, well, you can probably tell by my voice are not Australian. No. Just outside London, I'm an only child born to parents who were my mum was 42. And I was born. So I think I was a bit of a surprise. I went to the local state school, I was the first person in my family to even think about going to university that had been a real bridge too far for them. But my parents were very supportive. I managed to scrape through a dreaded exam, which has now gone in Britain, I'm pleased to say which was called the 11 Plus. And that decided whether you went to a grammar school, you went to a technical college, or you went to what was called a secondary modern school. And your future was really laid out, according to which one now

Sonia Nolan: 3:18

How old were you when you had to do that?

Lyn Beazley: 3:20

11

Sonia Nolan: 3:21

Hence why 11 plus Gosh that's a really young age to make those big life decisions.

Lyn Beazley: 3:26

It's something I think they've changed. I'm glad to say they've changed. But then at school, I was doing okay. And then we had an excursion. And it was to Charles Darwin's house. It's called Down House. And now I think it's a permanent Museum, and everything's probably behind glass. But in those days, it wasn't you could go into the front row of his house where he did all his studies after he came back from the voyage of the Beagle and cluding. Of course, coming to Australia, he was in Albany, on his way back home.

Sonia Nolan: 4:00

Charles Darwin, the the father of evolution, Charles Darwin, so we're talking this is significant in science. And you were at his house, Well, absolutely. And his book, The Origin of Species is probably one of the most influential books ever written. Yes. So there on his desk is a microscope. And I say to the gentleman showing us around, could I look through Charles Darwin's microscope without any expectation? He'd say, Yes, he said, Go on. And so I looked, and I think I was looking at carnivorous plants. I suspect they were West Australian, because we're the centre for these plants, but I didn't realise it then. But I just looked at all the things he'd done all the things he'd studied, and I wanted to be a biologist that was it that decided me right there and then having a look through Charles Darwin's microscope,

Lyn Beazley: 4:52

up till then, you know, I'd on holiday I lined up, collected lots of dead crabs and lined them up and tried to sort out You know, the ones that looked similar and different, and I think a lot of scientists do collecting things as kids. And so I guess I was primed to want to be a scientist.

Sonia Nolan: 5:11

So what kind of science did you study?

Lyn Beazley: 5:13

Well, I went up to university to study botany. But we had a joint first year course between agricultural scientists, foresters, geologists, so ologists and botanist. So we were exposed to all sorts of aspects, which was absolutely terrific. Then, when we entered second year, we had, I had already committed to study botany. But the people teaching psychology weren't extraordinary. We had a Nobel Prize winner, we had lots of exciting people there. Whereas the botany department maybe was a little bit more staid, I still love plants. But I switched across and did zoology as my degree and I've never regretted it.

Sonia Nolan: 5:55

So that was your undergraduate degree was zoology. But then somewhere, there's been a divergence in that path, because now you're a neuroscientist?

Lyn Beazley: 6:03

Well, neuroscience didn't even exist as a word when I became one. One of the lucky things in my career that I got onto something, just as it was really coming to the fore. One evening, I went to a lecture. And that was really at another pivotal point in my life, because it was a medical doctor, but who was doing basic research, he was based up in Edinburgh, capital of Scotland, and he was working on recovering from brain damage, which at that point was thought to be almost impossible, right?

Sonia Nolan: 6:36

Yes.

Lyn Beazley: 6:37

But he said there were animals such as fish and frogs, who could actually recover very well. And what was the difference between them, and humans and other furry type animals that can't recover after, say, a stroke or a spinal cord injury? And I thought, well, I know a bit about fish and frogs and things like that. And this sounds really interesting. And so I became a neuroscientist. And at that point, I was in the physiology department. And so there were many of us who were converging in this area, but we were working in places like anatomy, pharmacology, veterinary medicine, medicine, spread over pharmacology, all these different disciplines. And then the discipline of neuroscience evolved in its own right. And I found myself at the beginning of it.

Sonia Nolan: 7:27

So your zoology degree, that undergraduate degree actually held you in really good stead because of a lot

Lyn Beazley: 7:34

Oh I've never regretted it

Sonia Nolan: 7:35

Yeah, a lot of the, I guess, experimentation or the understandings of the brain were actually conducted on animals.

Lyn Beazley: 7:42

And yeah, that's right.

Sonia Nolan: 7:43

Other species. Yeah. And so you having that deep understanding allowed you to to sort of leapfrog into into neuroscience. That's amazing. Lyn.

Lyn Beazley: 7:52

Well, now you do it just a degree in its own right.

Sonia Nolan: 8:00

That's another one of your real passions is biodiversity.

Lyn Beazley: 8:02

Yeah, absolutely.

Sonia Nolan: 8:04

So what do you do in that space today?

Lyn Beazley: 8:06

Well, going back one, you know, when I did a degree in zoology, we learned a bit about how you could well, for example, how could you tell a marsupial mole from a conventional mole in Britain? Now, this wasn't practical information that I thought I would use extensively in my life. But I thought it was so fascinating that parallel evolution had produced two creatures that look almost identical, once a marsupial. The others are eutherian, a placental mammal that the world apart in locations. One is is living basically in a desert, the other is living in in what used to be forested areas. So how fascinating is that? But when I came to Australia, I had no idea that Western Australia in fact, from Shark Bay right down through Perth and round Esperance is one of the 35 or 36 Now, internationally recognised biodiversity hotspots in the world. It's the only one in Australia, in Britain, if you there are, I think there are 1463 flowering plants, and you had one book, and you could identify any plant there. So I happily went along to the bookshop and said, I'd like the floor for Western Australia, please. And they said, well, it's in volumes, one, two, and three. And we're still working on volume four, I thought, wow. Where

Sonia Nolan: 9:30

there's an opportunity!

Lyn Beazley: 9:32

Isn't this an extraordinary place? And I think there's no better place around the world to be a biologist than in Western Australia. Yeah, absolutely believe that. Yeah, it's

Sonia Nolan: 9:41

it's quite incredible what we've got here. It really is. It's also fascinating. So is that you said early you're retired now I've ever met a busier retired, Let's say I'm unemployed Well, I'm talking with the unemployed Professor Lyn Beazley! Lyn, you've done so much I want to take us back to when you were the chief scientist of Western Australia.

Lyn Beazley: 10:10

For which I didn't apply, by the way,

Sonia Nolan: 10:12

I want to hear about how you were anointed into that position.

Lyn Beazley: 10:16

Okay, so I see the job advertised. And I can remember standing by the fridge in the kitchen saying to Richard, oh, my god, I'd love a shot at that. And he said, well go for it. And I looked down the list, they had about 10 bullet points on what you had to do. And I reckoned I could do about 9.4 of them. So I didn't apply

Sonia Nolan: 10:34

is that all?!

Lyn Beazley: 10:35

What a dope? You know, why didn't I apply? But I have to say that, particularly women, we like to tick every box about three times before we put our hand up for something,

Sonia Nolan: 10:46

do you know, really, typical thing we hear women over and over again. unless we've got every single box ticked, you're a classic example well, and your you know, your credentials are incredible, and you even felt that you weren't ready to be applying for something.

Lyn Beazley: 11:06

And the fascinating thing was, the thing that I thought was going to be hardest was probably the easiest. Okay, so you just never know. And but luckily, the government approached me and asked if I was interested, and yep, that was it, I was completely sold on the idea. Because, for me, it's really important that our decision makers have the best possible information really clearly presented to them, and in a way that can have some practical import.

Sonia Nolan: 11:37

So what is what does the chief scientists do then for the government? So it's a government appointed role?

Lyn Beazley: 11:42

Yes. But you're independent,

Sonia Nolan: 11:44

you're independent. Of course, that's important.

Lyn Beazley: 11:46

That's really important. So you give independent advice. But you have to be aware that that advice has to be not only well thought through and justified, but it's got to have some practical aspects that will really allow them to do it. You know, you've got to say, Well, if we move, if we do this, followed by that, then we can move in that direction. One of the great advantages I had was that the science community was so hugely supportive, that I might get phoned up, say, on a Thursday, and someone would say, something's coming for cabinet on the Monday, we need to know about, and if I didn't know about it, and most of the time it didn't, because you knew neurosciences and everything in the world. There's all these other things I would know the experts to talk to. But then there were much more long term policies about addressing energy use, for example, or where do you put a port? Are the is this going to be somewhere that is going to be compatible with not only the weather patterns and the currents now, but in the future? Is it going to be somewhere where people would want to live? You know, all these issues come in on board? So it's, it's a really fascinating job.

Sonia Nolan: 12:58

It just highlights it signs underpins everything up. Absolutely everything. So you're talking about ports, and you're talking about decisions about energy and goodness, obviously, in the last couple of years, any sort of health decisions regarding covid. So the chief scientist is sort of that go to person that the government centre brings up and says, Hey, we've got this coming up in Parliament, we need really good information to make our decision. Can you go independently, and source the information that we need without any bias or any any political slant? Can you then present it to us so we can make really good decisions?

Lyn Beazley: 13:35

Absolutely And there are, there are lots of wonderful scientists working for government already in agriculture, environment, fisheries, or oil and gas, you name it, resources sector. But the great thing about being a chief scientist is that true degree of independence you have, but also the flexibility. So one of the things that I was very keen to do was to support women in science because unless, you know, we're slightly more than half of the population. If we're not represented adequately, we're not getting the right tech, the best talent pool, I reached out to kids a lot, because when I started the idea of STEM, which we all know now science, technology, engineering and maths, we weren't getting enough kids studying it, for example. Although the we are the resources state at one point, only 50 students from school were graduating in geoscience every year and WA. And that was crazy. And a great guide, Dr. Jim Ross set up a programme to address that. But so there was lots of support that I wanted to give to teachers and lab technicians in schools to support them to support more kids who want to do science to do it.

Sonia Nolan: 14:49

Didn't you set up the lab technician? Hotline?

Lyn Beazley: 14:52

Yes, yes, which is called Assist, which is wonderful. And we persuaded the federal government to fund that and I'm done. delighted to say that after a little interim, we're back. And that's a hotline if a lab tech or a teacher is setting up a new programme, how do I teach it efficiently excitingly, and on budget, if you talk to anyone who is at school and liked science, they'll remember the practical things they did. They'll remember the excursions they remember, sometimes blowing things up, or it didn't even have to work always. But you were in there trying things and doing it.

Sonia Nolan: 15:30

That experimentation was always fun. I remember one where we had to stick a cotton bud up our nose, go and have a look to see what was on the microscope. You know, really gross things but fun things. Love Gross. Gross is always good with science, isn't it. And that supporting of the lab technicians, I still remember our lab technician at high school, Tracy, she was always there with all the equipment. And you know, they really underpin that science class don't they?.

Lyn Beazley: 15:57

And with very, I'm very keen to make sure they get the appreciation and support they deserve.

Sonia Nolan: 16:07

So let's talk about some of the other things you did as chief scientist. So radio astronomy, now that's something that Western Australia is becoming more Centre for that we are and we've now got this amazing, the Square Kilometre Array, the telescope here, and you were one of the key people in making sure that we actually had a real chance at that tell us about that journey.

Lyn Beazley: 16:30

Okay, so going back to square one, and going back to eyes, our eyes are a reasonable size. And we see a very small part of the light spectrum. But we can't see. And we certainly don't see X rays, because they'd be very dangerous for us. But there are only two particular groups of wavelength of light that can actually penetrate from space down to us to get through the atmosphere. And they're the colours that we see red to blue and violet, and ultraviolet that we can't see. But basically that and the other group that penetrates through other radio waves, everything else gets bounced back into space. So if you want to build a telescope, to look at the universe, unless you put it in a satellite, and increasingly, we're doing that, but if you want it based on the land, you either have to have a light microscope, or you have a radio telescope, because the wavelength of light is so long for the radio waves, then you need a very big eye, so to speak, to pick it up. So the biggest radio telescope in the world is actually in China. And they carved out a hillside and made that a bowl shape as a telescope. Now, that's jolly good, because it's huge, but you can't actually turn a hill round to follow a star as it goes across the sky. So are a galaxy. So the next solution is to say, we can't make the telescopes bigger and bigger. But what we can do is to make lots of smaller ones and join them up. And the eye does the same millions of cells in our retina, and they're all cross connected. But the message that goes out is just on on one pipeline, so to speak. So the issue was where to put a huge array of radio telescopes, that if you added up the surface area of all of them would come to one square kilometre, hence the Square Kilometre Array. And yes, you have to put it somewhere away from people. Because we make radio interference. Every time we use our mobile phone, our laptop computer turn on the microwave, turn on the TV. We're inundated with radio waves. So it narrowed down pretty quickly to be either in Western Australia, in the Murchison, northeast of Geraldton, or in the Karoo desert in South Africa. And so I was part of the negotiating team to make a decision, there were 10 countries at that point who were all chipping in funds to make this happen. And the logical conclusion, in the end, was to put to build two sites, because the world's very connected these days. And the main thing we do here in Western Australia is we're very good at searching the sky for new things. And once we've homed in on something, then we send that location across to South Africa, and they look in more detail at it. So it's a great combination and a very logical way to run things. Real International, and it's the largest science project that's ever been conceived on the planet. And we've got a big part of it here. In Western Australia, How lucky are we?!

Sonia Nolan: 20:02

and how wonderful that you're you were part of that. Yes. Absolutely. And Lynne, that has also been meant for Western Australia is that we're now building our capability and understanding radio astronomy. So that's something that is a space industry here in WA.

Lyn Beazley: 20:20

Yeah, yeah, Curtin University, they're putting out a series of miniature. It's interesting that people now are looking at satellites that are going to be smaller. They're the ones are, roughly the size was a big box of chocolates called Bina named after the Aboriginal word for a shooting star. And we're putting those up into space. We're planning to be on the moon when people go back there. So this is a huge opportunity for Western Australia. And we're really well placed to do it. Because we lead the world in remotely controlled mining. Yes, we do. So once we that's a real first for us. Well, what's the difference between sitting in Perth and controlling a mine site in the Pilbara versus controlling something happening on the moon? So we have a lot of advantages already.

Sonia Nolan: 21:12

Yeah. And I think it just highlights what you've just outlined for us leaders, just how much goes on in Western Australia. We really are a smart state.

Lyn Beazley: 21:21

We're very smart.

Sonia Nolan: 21:22

Really smart. And I don't know that we

Lyn Beazley: 21:25

we don't celebrate it

Sonia Nolan: 21:26

we don't. We don't talk about it very often about how smart we are because there is so much incredible insights and and science going on really literally here on our doorstep.

Lyn Beazley: 21:37

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, for example, Barry Marshall and Robin Warren won the Nobel Prize for

Sonia Nolan: 21:45

Helicobacter pylori

Lyn Beazley: 21:47

Well done. Well, you know, this bug that lives in your stomach when everybody said nothing could live there, because it's the same pH is a battery acid. There they were everybody thought they were there because you had an ulcer. Then Barry said, no, they make the ulcers, as you know, drank a concoction and

Sonia Nolan: 22:08

they made themselves sick.

Lyn Beazley: 22:10

Absolutely, and cured. And interesting, about 100. GPS caught on in WA very quickly. So they had a very good way of appraising this as a new treatment. But nevertheless, it there's a lot of resistance in the world out there. And it took quite a while and Barry had a lot of courage to see that through. And ultimately, of course, win the Nobel Prize, which was hugely well deserved. And interestingly enough, when Barry has read Nobels diaries, Nobel probably did also that could have been cured by Barry.

Sonia Nolan: 22:54

So what brought you to Australia Lyn.

Lyn Beazley: 22:57

So I've, I've have a first grief, and that's from Oxford, and then then a PhD from Edinburgh. So I've learned to be a sort of a rookie scientist. And by then I've met my husband. Well, boyfriend for a few years, then husband, Richard, and he's a medical. So we then had to decide what to do with our lives. And so I, when I'd completed my PhD, usually you go off, and you work in a laboratory with a leader, and you sort of work up the scale that way. And you nearly always move away from where you've done your degrees. Now, I didn't initially because Richard was still training, he was a junior doctor in Edinburgh at that point. So I took a job, just as a research assistant to keep my hand in and pay the bills and and decide where I wanted to go. And very luckily, the person employing me it was a psychology department, because there weren't any neuroscience departments at that stage was very sympathetic. And I said, if I do my, the job that you want me to do during the week, can I come back in the evenings and weekends and do some experiments in my own right, because Richard was busy working, he was here and he came home seven nights a month. And you know, that was what junior doctors did in those days. So it gave me time. But it then let me at a very early stage in my career, get my own research grant from the government based on this weekend and evening work. And so I took a very sort of unusual path through. So then, when we were looking around the world by then we have one daughter, we have three beautiful daughters now to born here. We thought, well, we always thought we were people are going to see a bit of the world and if we don't do it now, you know, we're going to end up with long term jobs and mortgages and kids in school. And so we were both offered jobs in Western Australia, we came for two years. That was back in 1976. It's the longest two years of my life

Sonia Nolan: 25:09

a very long two years. So that was 1976. And you came to Western Australia, and where were you employed? Were you at University of Western Australia UWA.

Lyn Beazley: 25:19

And they had a wonderful scheme there, which was called university research fellowships, which were for people from overseas to come

Sonia Nolan: 25:26

bring the best minds and different minds into actually cross pollinate with ideas and thoughts, of course, yes. So what was your research when you came to UWA?

Lyn Beazley: 25:36

Well, because I'd already set up the weekend research. And then full time research back in Britain, I moved my equipment across and set up my own laboratory and started working with neuroscience. Now, this is neuroscience, this is looking at recovery from brain damage. Now that there's several stages to that. So when the brain is injured, you have to keep cells alive. They're, they're in a state of shock. And if you can nurse them through the first 24 hours, they're likely to survive in the long term, but they're very vulnerable to start with. And if you can get them through that stage, then if they have broken their connections to other cells, you need them to regrow those wires, so to speak, and wire up again. And you need to get them to wire up with the right fit. Because if it doesn't, you're going to be in a mess. So for example, we worked particularly on the visual system, the connection between the eye and the brain. And so we would we always kept one eye completely intact, the animal could see fine, but then we'd look at how well the the nerve from the other eye could grow back. And in fish and frogs, they do that spontaneously, and they find the right part of the brain. And you can see again, within a month, do that in a mammal, including us, the nerves don't even regenerate. So you've got several problems you've got keeping the cells alive, getting the nerves to regrow, getting the nerves to regrow to the right place. So that, for example, if the nerve from your eye regrew to the hearing part of the brain every time you looked at something, you'd hear music, well, no, thank you, that doesn't work. So that doesn't work, you've got to find the right partner. And seeing as there are more cells in the brain than days since the earth began, that's a pretty big ask. And then you have to make it form those connections, and keep them going. So we worked on different aspects of that whole chain at different points along my career. And what made a big difference was because when I started, molecular biology was almost unheard of. I mean, I can remember, as a kid, the first radio broadcast that I can remember was standing under a radio that was on little shelf in the kitchen. And somebody said, they discovered the structure of DNA. Once we discovered the structure of DNA, then we began to have the whole era of molecular biology. So we could not only look at using microscopes are listening in with very fine electrodes that you are listening into the brain, you could add this extra dimension of looking and seeing which molecules are being switched on and off and when and how you could potentially influence that. So that was neurotrauma. And that extended through my career. Towards the end of my career, zoologist stimuli came out again. So about two thirds of my group we're working on your trauma, but the other third, we're working on colour vision, and the reason they were working on colour vision should I keep going I'm really fascinated. Yes. Okay. So I read in a textbook that Australian mammals can only see blues and greens. Just like most mammals, you know your dog, your cat, your camel, your horse, you name it, can see only that limited spectrum of colours. We can see red and so can all the primates the apes, the the orangutangs chimpanzees, you name it, we can all see red but most of your furry friends can't ah, and it was assumed that the marsupial's was similarly disadvantaged. And I thought that doesn't sound right. They live in a highly colourful world. I'm looking at species such as honey possums, that will find a bright red banks here to go and feed from when they'll ignore green banks here next door. Can't believe it. And so we did a really good large number of studies and showed that yeah, marsupial's Australian ones, not so much the American ones, but the Australian ones can see all colours that you and I can read right through. And they can also see ultraviolet that we can't. Oh, so interesting. Whenever I walk through the bush, I think I'm seeing a subset of the colours that the animals who live here can see. And imagine that they'll probably see guidelines on the flowers for where to go to get to the pollen, they're probably displaying to one another with colours that I can't see.

Sonia Nolan: 30:40

Tell me more about the human eye. And the work that you've done with vision, and understanding vision and trauma. And how that can be. I don't know, can it can it be restored?

Lyn Beazley: 30:53

Okay. There are various causes of blindness. One of the most common is glaucoma, my mum actually had it. And that's a buildup of pressure in the eye. The effect that has is to do the equivalent of you putting your foot onto a hose, and stopping the water going through, it applies pressure, which means the messages from the light sensitive sheet, the retina that lines, the back of your eye can't get through to the brain. And gradually, those cells die and the connection to the brain dies. So that's so if you can work out ways to stop that pressure building up, then you can treat glaucoma, we didn't work on that. But it's very important than anybody, you know, get your eyes tested regularly. If you have especially a family history of glaucoma, what I worked on was, and this causes about four fifths of all blindness, some break in the nerve that joins the eye to the brain. So the cells in the eye pick up signals from the world, they transform them into electrical activity, and they send it down the nerve to the brain. So what we did was work on how to get persuade those cells to stay alive. Frustratingly, amongst many other labs, we could get about 10% of them to survive, but not more than that, we'd get a small percentage that would start to regrow their nerves, but they never grew far enough. It's the next generation is going to have to solve this one.

Sonia Nolan: 32:28

And that's one of your really big, hairy, audacious goals, isn't it that that is what you would love to see happen? Yeah,

Lyn Beazley: 32:36

what we did a lot of work on was that question of how you find the right place in the brain? Because how can you imagine when I was a PhD student, we had a lot of discussion about this, we've got a million cells in our retina, and they're gonna send a million fibres to the brain. And they all have to find the right address, how the heck do they do that? Well, you could imagine everyone had its own particular address, and you would find the exact one. But that's very hard to imagine, because you couldn't even have a big enough DNA molecule for all the cells in the brain to have their own individual coding, a bit like a barcode when you go to the supermarket. So the brain and other bits of the body when they're formed, I get very clever about this, what they do is they have a gradient of a molecule from lots of it at the top of the eye to not very much at the bottom. And then the part of the brain that they're going to grow into has a similar gradient that goes from high to low. And you find your position along that. Because you're, you're sort of looking to see that you keep your right relationship to everybody else. So if you could imagine people going into a theatre, but they don't have an individual ticket. But some of them know they have to be near the front and some or they have to be towards the back. And how fronted they are and how back they are, means they all sort themselves out in the right order. Does that sound right? Does that make sense?

Sonia Nolan: 34:20

I'm sort of picturing it a little bit like a jigsaw.

Lyn Beazley: 34:23

Yes, that's exactly right. Imagine a jigsaw where the bottom was all white, and the top was all black, and then row by row the gradient and you find your right spot on that gradient. Yeah. Then imagine there's a second gradient from left to right on your jigsaw that went say from red to blue. So you would find out how bright you were on the black to white in axis and how red or blue you were, and that gives your exact spot and that what the brain does. So we did a lot of work on what those molecules were. And then are they switched on again in regeneration, because if you've got a nerve to regrow, but when it gets there, it's can't find its address, that is actually probably more detrimental not growing at all. And so what we found was the brain actually does turn on these gradients all over again, in anticipation of the nerve regrowing, but then we can't get it to grow foreign. So we've got some bits of the puzzle. But we've got still a long way to go. But fascinating, the there are some parts of the brain that do make new cells during life. And at first, we didn't think there are any, but now we know that there are actually three, there might be more, we're still discovering, one of the main ones is a region called the hippocampus. Now the hippocampus takes onboard short term memory, and then shoots out those memories to the right bits of the brain to be stored long term. Interesting, the day that hippocampus makes new cells throughout life, and it probably makes more cells if one, you're using your brain to think a lot and to feel physically active. And I think the reason that this has persisted through evolution, my personal interpretation is that it's very involved in spatial memory. And so if you're going out and exploring the world, you need to find your way back to your nest or your burrow or wherever. And so it's really important that part of the brain is working at top notch. And probably that's why it keeps turning over cells in the hippocampus to keep it absolutely up to scratch. So there have been studies, for example, of taxi drivers in London, you know, they have to learn something called the knowledge where they have to know where every street is, absolutely beats me how they do it.

Sonia Nolan: 37:09

And you can see them during their practice, can't you when you're going around London, you can actually see them on the scooters going around and making sure they know

Lyn Beazley: 37:15

yes and it can take years. And people have looked and seen that the hippocampus gets bigger in those guys. There are two groups of birds that were looked at by a guy who actually was in the same year as me and zoology. And one of them stores, seeds for the winter in lots of locations, and the other one doesn't. And the one that stores the seeds has got a much bigger hippocampus, because he or she's got to remember where they hid all that stuff.

Sonia Nolan: 37:45

So that sort of practice of memory is going to be really important for us as we get older is that is keep

Lyn Beazley: 37:51

physically and mentally active,

Sonia Nolan: 37:53

really important,

Lyn Beazley: 37:54

hugely important.

Sonia Nolan: 37:55

And has that then been, you know, sort of some sort of research been done for things like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and dementia, those sorts.

Lyn Beazley: 38:04

Fascinatingly, I chair, the Royal Perth Hospital Research Foundation, we have just funded a three year project, which I'm very excited about. And that is to look at people at the very early stages of dementia, and giving them hearing aids to ensure that they stay in the conversation. They stay stimulated. And we will see whether that slows or even stops the progress of dementia. I mean, my mom lived to 100. And she lived with us for 13 years. Once she got a hearing aid, she was back in the world with us when I could see that she was spacing out. And I knew it wasn't right. And it wasn't kind to her, took a little persuading for her to decide she needed the hearing aid which involve the family whispering to each other for a week. And then mum saying to me, then I couldn't catch things this week. Do you think I need a hearing? So I think you

Sonia Nolan: 38:59

Did you trick her?! do mom?

Lyn Beazley: 39:01

We tricked her! Then I could say to the kids right go back to normal volume.

Sonia Nolan: 39:07

Well it worked and it was for her good.

Lyn Beazley: 39:09

yes and she was bright as a button on her 100th birthday.

Sonia Nolan: 39:17

Lyn thinking about the future of the brain and how much we still need to know about the brain. What are some of the things that you would really love to have explored and you know, sort of solutions developed for the brain in the next five years? What would be your hope?

Lyn Beazley: 39:35

Well, obviously, getting nerves to regenerate and go to the right place would be the obvious one. But there are lots of other aspects of the brain which I think absolutely fascinating. And one of those is around day night rhythms of the brain,

Sonia Nolan: 39:51

is that the circadian rhythms?

Lyn Beazley: 39:52

circadian rhythms. So for example, some cancer treatments work at some time of the day but not others. And So yeah, fascinating. But it also ties into our lifestyle here where much more 24/7 lifestyle in particular fly in, fly out all day, day shifts, night shifts, and how the body adapts to that. Because through evolution, we've been working on a day night cycle, and suddenly, it's not as obvious anymore. So ways of adapting not only what we do and ask of ourselves, but how we set up regimes to accommodate this more modern lifestyle with these deep brain rhythms that have been set up over billions of years now. So that would be something I'd love to see explored more.

Sonia Nolan: 40:52

together or is that a little bit different?

Lyn Beazley: 40:59

It does. And one of the things neuroscience is telling us is that the brain sort of reorganises while you're asleep. So sleep isn't a state of nothing happening. The brain is hugely active while you're asleep. You know, it's like a computer that sorting things out, where do you file things? Where do you put things? How do you how do they work? I mean, we're beginning to understand memory. But there's still a lot we don't understand about that. You know, I'll be doing a crossword and I can't think of an answer. And then I come back later. And my brains obviously been thinking about it. I didn't know. And I think but that's obvious. Why didn't I see it before? So there's so much we still have to learn about the brain?

Sonia Nolan: 41:49

Does the brain ever just stop and rest?

Lyn Beazley: 41:52

No,

Sonia Nolan: 41:52

it's always busy.

Lyn Beazley: 41:54

Absolutely. And during sleep, you have the fast REM sleep where you have random eye movements, that's when you dream. But then you've got times when your body is rigid. What the brain is up to, then we're not so sure.

Sonia Nolan: 42:12

Lyn this has been the most fascinating discussion, I could literally talk to you for years and years, because you're just a font of information and have been so involved in so many different things. I just want to very quickly before we end up, just read out some of the awards that you have won

Lyn Beazley: 42:27

Oh gosh I've just been around a long time.

Sonia Nolan: 42:29

You've done and you've been around and you've been doing things so you've been an incredible contributor

Lyn Beazley: 42:36

Isn't hard work, the rent replay for for a place on Earth? Don't you want at the end of the day to feel that you've done something worthwhile? If you can, that's a gift.

Unknown: 42:46

It is a gift that you've given

Lyn Beazley: 42:47

and you making these podcasts is that

Sonia Nolan: 42:49

our I don't think it's quite in the same league as what you've done. So let me just let me dash about you for a moment. Lyn. So in 2009, you were awarded the Officer of the Order of Australia. So yeah, you've you've got an enormous amount of initials after your name. In 2009, as well, you were the fellow of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering. In 2011 you made it into the Western Australian Women's Hall of Fame. In 2012. You won the Governor's Award for giving. And giving you I mean you give so much of your time of your expertise ...

Lyn Beazley: 43:21

which I did with that

Sonia Nolan: 43:22

tell me what you did with that

Lyn Beazley: 43:24

this was fascinating, wonderful Malcolm McCusker. $100,000, to devote to a charity of your choice. Imagine that,

Sonia Nolan: 43:32

what a wonderful gift.

Lyn Beazley: 43:34

Extraordinary, I wanted to leave a legacy. So I split it into and half went to my beloved West Australian Museum where I've been a trustee and now an ambassador. And they have set up a brilliant programme. Lots of other people had to put support for it. And they did to train indeed young indigenous people in museums and ship. So they could either set up museums locally, or they could go work around the world. And that's still going strong. So isn't that exciting?

Sonia Nolan: 44:06

Very exciting.

Lyn Beazley: 44:07

The other half because of my neuro trauma training. I know the best place to recover from brain damage by gosh, you don't want it but if it happens to you, Oats Street in Western Australia, run by Brightwater I believe is the best facility in the world. Extraordinary facility for taking people and you certainly I think one of your daughters studying OT is

Sonia Nolan: 44:29

My son's doing OT. My daughter's doing speech. So both of them very interested.

Lyn Beazley: 44:33

Both of them. I have talents that would work very well. They're taking people after strokes or other brain injury and getting them back to a life it will be different but a real a meaningful life. And so we set up a PhD scholarship scheme. We approached the University of Western Australia and Curtin uni they both came on board the Rotary Club of Southern Districts, bless them. And then we had a Lotterywest funds. So now bright water has a really terrific research team of 12 people it wouldn't have existed if we hadn't had the governor's giving award to start with to kick it off. Where they're doing absolutely world leading research and recovery from brain injury. So, wasn't I lucky to be able to do that that generous gift from Malcolm McCusker it continues on the other thing that University of Western Australia now does in the psychology department, where I spent many years happily now teaches neurotrauma as an undergraduate part of the course and they didn't do that before.

Sonia Nolan: 45:38

so many legacies that love so many legacy

Lyn Beazley: 45:42

I'm so proud of them.

Sonia Nolan: 45:45

And look, I think Western Australia is proud of you too. So there are lots of other accolades here that I'm not going to read through now. I will put them on our podcast show notes so that others can just see how incredible you are.

Lyn Beazley: 45:57

I've been lucky. And I've had wonderful people to work with right through.

Sonia Nolan: 46:01

So true. And Lynn, you certainly found you're smart, and you were then able to make everybody else feel smart around you and to create

Lyn Beazley: 46:09

smarter than me I assure you!

Sonia Nolan: 46:11

to create a Western Australia that really is a smart state. So thank you so much for your time today, Lyn. I've thoroughly enjoyed chatting with you. and learning about the Brian

Lyn Beazley: 46:22

thank you for doing this and I'm sure lots of people will enjoy listening.

Sonia Nolan: 46:30

You've been listening to My Warm Table with Sonia Nolan. In Italian, a tavola. calda is a warm and welcoming table where you can share big ideas, friendship, laughter and life. So much happens around the kitchen table and I wanted to amplify it here in this podcast. My aim is to feed your mind and soul through smart conversations with heart. No topic is off limits, but good table manners rule. I hope you'll join us each week because we set the table for my extraordinary guests who will let you feast on their deep knowledge, life experiences and wise insights. Let's keep the conversation flowing. Please subscribe to the my warm table podcast and share it with your friends and networks. Perhaps if they are new to podcasting, take a moment to show them how to download and subscribe so they don't miss an episode either. I'd also love you to join our community on Facebook. You'll find the group at My Warm Table Podcast. Your support is very much appreciated.