Imagine waking up one day to realise that you can't perform an essential skill like swallowing or talking. For many stroke survivors, facing this reality can be incredibly challenging. But there's hope!

Watch Distinguished Professor Maggie-Lee Huckabee, Dr Phoebe Macrae and PhD candidate Madeline Mills as they share valuable insights on stroke rehabilitation in Aotearoa. During the session, they will discuss the amazing work they do at the Rose Centre for Stroke Recovery and Research that is shaping the future of stroke rehabilitation.

Motherhood changes everything — not just your life, but your brain. For one in five mums, postpartum anxiety can make this time especially challenging. Have you ever wondered how the mind adapts to the extraordinary demands of being a mum? Watch this insightful and engaging event with Dr Jamie McQuillan and Dr Rosie Brown as they explore the brain’s incredible journey through motherhood, including how hormones like prolactin help build resilience and improve mental health.

Immunotherapy – harnessing our body’s own immune system to battle disease – has shown exciting results against various cancers. Even cancer that has spread to the brain from elsewhere in the body can sometimes be targeted effectively. Yet one type of brain cancer, glioblastoma, has proven to be a highly tricky adversary so far.

Watch Associate Professor Melanie McConnell, Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington, and PhD candidate Mr Devlin Forsythe, who describe their team’s work to reach new frontiers in treatment.

On Saturday 30 November 2024, our migraine community came together both in person and online to hear from three migraine experts, in what was a first for New Zealand. Together with the Migraine NZ, we hosted Migraine Unravelled: The latest in migraine medication and pain management solutions, an incredibly informative, free event that covered a wide range of topics and provided practical solutions for people in New Zealand to better manage their migraine disease. Professor Hay is a researcher at Otago University, Dunedin, leading a laboratory focusing on G protein coupled receptors, which are the target of drugs designed to treat migraine. Debbie’s presentation focused on the new wave of migraine medications, specifically the CGRP medications. Debbie explained the difference between the CGRP medications that target the CGRP molecule versus the medications that target the CGRP receptors on cells. She provided a simple-to-understand video for those visual learners in the room (like myself) that really helped in the understanding of what these medications are doing at a cellular level.

On Saturday 30 November 2024, our migraine community came together both in person and online to hear from three migraine experts, in what was a first for New Zealand. Together with the Migraine NZ, we hosted Migraine Unravelled: The latest in migraine medication and pain management solutions, an incredibly informative, free event that covered a wide range of topics and provided practical solutions for people in New Zealand to better manage their migraine disease. Professor Goadsby is an Australian neuroscientist and physician based at King’s College London. He’s the Director of the National Institute for Health Research – Wellcome Trust King’s Clinical Research and it was his research on the mechanisms of migraine that led to the revolution of the new migraine treatments that target calcitonin gene-related peptides (CGRPs). Professor Goadsby’s presentation focused on what research tells us about migraine, how it’s classified by the medical profession, what happens in the brain during different phases of a migraine attack, what is a trigger and what is a prodromal symptom, and ending on a note of hope and encouragement that more research is being done on migraine and this disease is finally being taken seriously as a neurological condition.