Professor Hanneke Hulst and New Zealand's role in researching brain problems

A combination of world class researchers and philanthropic support is the key to more New Zealand-led breakthroughs in preventing and treating brain problems, according to the director of the Auckland’s Centre for Brain Research, Professor Hanneke Hulst.  

Hanneke succeeded the CBR’s founder Professor Sir Richard Faull, who stepped down from the role late last year. Hailing from the Netherlands, her role is to shepherd the work of the more than 400 people at the university —many of them neurologists, neuroscientists and surgeons— who collaborate across their various disciplines to form the CBR.  

Sir Richard’s legacy includes attracting world class brains to Auckland and persuading donors to part with millions of dollars to support the CBR’s work. 

Hanneke, who is a neuroscientist with a specialist focus on the cognitive impact of Multiple Sclerosis, was headhunted to come to Auckland for the prestigious role and facilitated the CBR’s participation in Newstalk ZB’s podcast Brainstorming with Clare de Lore. 

Nine months in, Hanneke says the CBR has the brightest people who are also highly motivated to make life better for people with brain disorders. 

“We have people from the Faculty of Science, the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, of the Auckland Bio-Engineering Institute. They are coming from all these different disciplines which is very enriching and also very promising for the future of brain research that you have all this different expertise coming together.”  

A key issue identified by Hanneke is looking at brain health from an early age through to healthy ageing.  

“How do we help people overcome all these life challenges and have that brain stay as healthy as it can and prevent things from happening? That is a big key to functioning well in a society. The Centre has a lot of people working on different aspects … on suicide (for example) ... how do we keep people flourishing even though the world is giving quite some challenges here and there? There’s a big role for that, not only in New Zealand – it’s a global thing.”  

Inevitably, people will continue to suffer from a range of brain problems, so the CBR’s focus is also on how to cope after a diagnosis.  

“How can we change the trajectory of the brain disorder? You have the diagnosis but how do we make sure that you’re not suffering, that we stop the symptoms. Ideally we don’t want the diseases to exist – before that we have a lot of breakthroughs to expect in better diagnoses, earlier intervention and hopefully we can have people live their lives for as long as possible, as normal as possible.”  

Generating support for the CBR’s work and attracting donations has been vital for its success to date and Hanneke agrees it will continue to be.  

“I think having that support and telling that story, showing what we’re doing also in this podcast, we hope we can spark that interest … and if somebody else can help us to get the funds, we can make it a collaboration and do it together. I think we can do it for sure.”  

Professor Hanneke Hulst speaks about her motivation for her work and strategies for dealing with cognitive issues arising from Multiple Sclerosis in the final episode of Brainstorming with Clare de Lore.