Trinity team secures SFI Infrastructure Programme funding for brain health research

Posted on: 17 January 2024

Like bodies, brains need to keep fit, with early life changes affecting brain “strength” in later life. The Trinity consortium studies healthy people, those at risk, and those with neurological disorders across the lifespan, from infancy to older age.

By measuring the brain at many levels, from brain imaging to genetics and behaviour, researchers collect valuable but very complex data. However, by applying recently developed computer-based methods, they can gain important insights into how the brain works in health and disease.

These new methods require a very powerful computer and, now that it has been funded, the researchers and collaborators can work in partnership with patients and practitioners to translate novel insights into actions.

Robert Whelan, Professor in Psychology at Trinity, the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, and the Global Brain Health Institute, said: “This infrastructure will allow researchers across Ireland to apply enormous computational power to better characterise the brain’s incredible complexity. This improved understanding will give us unique new insights into how brain health unfolds across the lifespan: from infancy, through childhood, adolescence, adulthood and into older age. Ultimately, our goal is to improve brain health for people of all ages.”

Simon Harris, Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, said: “I am delighted to announce €21 million in funding from my department to support transformative research with both national and international impact. Ireland is committed to investing in high quality, pioneering research. The funding announced today does just that. 

"This support builds and sustains the required infrastructural capacity we need that enables our research community to thrive across the fields of materials science, earth and environmental sciences, energy, engineering, physics, and neuroscience and behaviour."

In welcoming the announcement, Prof. Philip Nolan, Director General, Science Foundation Ireland, said: “The Research Infrastructure Programme funds state-of-the-art research infrastructure to drive excellent and highly collaborative research and innovation. The programme promotes transformative collaborations, in which increased inter-institutional and national sharing of research infrastructure across academia and enterprise makes for better research and accelerated innovation..."

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