To say that it has been a whirlwind year here at the Brain Dynamics Centre would be an understatment to say. It feels like only a week ago that the 2010 summer holidays were here but alas, 365 days have passed and they were 365 of the most productive in BDC history! It wouldn't have been possible without our rock solid team and all the participants and volunteers who dedicated their time to this most important and worthwhile cause- improving mental health and wellbeing in the world.

Below is a list of some of our major achievments this year, and we look forward to 2012 being even better!

(Oh, in case you were confused by the picture to the right, it is BDC's Paul Wood-Bradley playing Putt Putt at the BDC BBQ, Antarctica, Westmead.)

iSPOT-A and adolescent mental health

• 100% retention rate in iSPOT-A, and highest recruitment rate globally.
• Award of Fellowship in Adolescent Wellbeing to Dr Tracey Tsang. 
• A/Prof Michael Kohns’ presentation of first ACTION study outcomes in Berlin at the International Society for Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychology
• Kasia Kozlowska’s acceptance of first paper on integrative neuroscience and emotional function in conversion disorder, by the top ranking Psychosomatic Medicine journal.       

Family study

• Target of 100 reached for baseline testing of first degree relatives of people with depression.  
• First paper on risk of depression and negative emotion biases published in Depression and Anxiety journal, and Anna Watters presented the study at ASPR in Dunedin in December.
• New funding awarded by ARC to continue the study in a longitudinal follow up phase, starting 2012

iSPOT-D and depression studies

• Milestone of 200 participant completions for iSPOT-D was reached in May.
• Phil Boyce presented first iSPOT-D outcomes at Australasian Society for Bipolar and Depressive Disorders in October, and Lea presented outcomes at American College of NeuroPsychopharmacology (ACNP) in December, on behalf of iSPOT-D team.
• First papers on the 50% mark globally (n=1008) in prep for submission early 2012.

LIMCA and brain imaging

• New NHMRC LIMCA study has commenced, studying a longitudinal follow up of people from the database to see how brain’s mature multiple years later.  
• First imaging outcomes from iSPOT-D published in Human Brain Mapping, reporting on diffusion tensor imaging.
• Stuart Grieve and Mayuresh set up BDC’s Imaging unit, supported by the  “cricket team” network of computers for streamlined data flow and processing, and housed now in the “imaging wing’ of acacia.  It is fostering a strong collaboration with the imaging team at Stanford.

 
Schizophrenia and early psychosis

• Completed the Western Sydney and BRAINnet cohort, at a record n=125, the early onset psychosis cohort at a record n=42, and the first test-retest for gamma synchrony.
• The collaborations that support this (with Anthony Harris, Annie Brennan, Sandra Graovac, Sophie Barkl, Jean Starling, Cassie Hainsworth, Cherrie Galletly)  have led to the new NHMRC “GEM study”  kicking off in 2012.   
• Annie Brennan presented the outcomes at grand rounds and at ASPR in Dunedin.   Annie was also awarded a Peter Meyer foundation grant for her research.  

 
Twins and emotional wellbeing

• 1500 twins have completed phase 1 on target, of these 390 have EEGs and 229 have MRIs;  major milestone achieved under the superb coordination by Justine Gatt and the superb team; Karen Oakley, Hope Michaelson, Sarsha Yap and imaging collaboration with Mayuresh Korgaonkar, Stuart Grieve and kaushik Ram.  
• First paper on the study, including with heritability of imaging data, in press with Twins Research and Human Genetics.

PTSD, anxiety, stress studies

• CCRE in Anxiety and Neuroscience, with Richard Bryant and co-investigators Lea, Anthony hit its testing stride, and at BDC its running the first study to test multiple anxiety disorders pre-post exposure therapy on our mutliple brain measures. 
• Denise Chu presented the first national data on the structure of early life stressors at the Australasian Society for Bipolar and Depressive Disorders in October.
• Richard Bryant’s trauma research listed in the NHMRC’s top 10 list.

Brain Modeling 

• Significant new contributions to the fundamentals of brain activity, including
• Journal of Neuroscience   (establishing biophysical mechanisms of multistability in cortical rhythms from the resting state EEG)
• Clinical Neurophysiology (first demonstration in 1498 subjects from the database of an automated way to predict splitting of the alpha peak, related to mechanisms of axon length and cortico-thalamic loops)

Centre contributions

• Lea commenced her “visiting professor” position at Stanford university.

• Anthony was appointed the co-head of the University of Sydney’s Neuroscience and Mental Health theme

• Paul completed automation of MRI data processing with the “cricket team”,  and with Stuart Grieve, Mayuresh and Chris Rennie’s umpiring

• Ania Macierzynski made a wonderful new addition to the team, Debbie ensured the team sailed along in her new research admin officer role with BDC U Sydney and James kicked off a great series of meetings alongside smooth lab management.  We were all in excellent hands with this superbly running operational team. It made possible these amazing centre outcomes
• A total of 586 EEG’s and 356 MRIs ! completed this year
• The launch of Westmead to the World campaign and the “One of Us’ inaugural film festival exploring mental health  
• And, our inaugural Putt Putt Tournament to cap it off

Have a great holiday everyone and we will see you in 2012!