Listen to ABC’s All in the Mind: Dissecting the Brain Podcast

 

The innerworkings of the brain are as fascinating as ever, particularly as we enter a blooming era of neurotechnology, and keeping neuro-experts on their toes.

 

Recorded at World Science Festival Brisbane, ABC podcast, All in the Mind: Dissecting the Brain, hosted by Sana Qadar, guests Brisbane based neurosurgeon Dr Alex Koefman, Dr Kiley Seymour, Associate Professor of Neuroscience, University of Technology Sydney and Dr Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston author and Neuroscientist at Monash University discussed the latest on brains surgery and neuro-tech.

 

Experienced brain surgeon, Dr Alex Koefman is still awe-struck at times by the magic of the brain, recounting a brain mapping surgery – where an anaesthetist woke the patient mid-way through a surgery, with their brain is exposed, so the surgeon could find the best entry point without affecting critical regions such as speech, colour vision etc.

 

“I looked under the drape to say hi to the patient and I waved at the patient and the patient just waved back at me,” Dr Koefman said.

 

“I saw this patient having a conscious experience, hearing me, seeing colour, the brain doing its thing. And I was just awestruck about how there was no explanation how that white stuff (the brain) was creating the experience right in front of me.

 

“It’s just a white pulsing brain creating the most incredible mystery in the universe.”

 

More mysteries and innovations are being unveiled in the field of neurotechnology. Associate Professor of Neuroscience, Dr Kiley Seymour likens the brain to a ‘super computer’ given its efficiency, energy, and capacity for learning. She explains how the latest neurotech innovations will make critical advancements for people with physical disability.

 

“There’s work in clinical trials, (that) we’re able to convert thoughts into interactions with computers, for instance,” she says.

 

“If there’s an implant in the motor cortex for someone who’s paralysed, the information, the signals that usually would be sent to the spinal cord to innovate muscles to move limbs, are now being interpreted to allow for movement of robotic limbs and things like that.”

 

While neurotech innovations are exciting and will change lives, Dr Seymour says that safety over ‘hype’ is a critical factor, where companies like Neuralink promote similar technology without being in clinical trials as yet.

 

Like many tech advancements, skilled humans aren’t as required as they once were. Dr Koefman is bittersweet about innovations in blood vessel neurotech that do not require surgeons to operate anymore, making neurosurgery a bit boring.

 

“It’s the most beautiful thing you can do in neurosurgery is operate on the blood vessels – it’s the real rock and roll of neurosurgery,” he said.

 

“It’s the thing that we all wanted to do, and we were all doing it until about early 2000s. Now we hardly ever do it so it’s really been quite upsetting for me personally,” Dr Koefman joked.

 

Moving further into the future of neurotechnology Dr Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston’s new book The Future Loves You: How and Why We Should Abolish Death discusses brain preservation.

 

Can we preserve the memories, experiences, personality, functional abilities of a person who is for example, terminally ill, and then restore it in the future at a time that is more compatible with health?

 

“First is preserving someone, the second is then restoring them to consciousness. I think the preservation we can essentially do today,” says Dr Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston.

 

“We have good enough technology that for someone who is terminally ill, if we could take them and we could preserve their brain and body, we could do that in a way where there’s a very good chance that their memory’s personality is still there intact in their brain.

 

“The question then is how do you restore them to consciousness at some point in the future? Because that is not something we can do at the moment.”

 

Another question that divides the panel is should we be able to do this? That might be a discussion for another podcast.

 

To listen to ABC’s All in the Mind: Dissecting the Brain, click here.

When QBiotics Group co-founders Dr. Victoria Gordon and Dr. Paul Reddell began their medical research company 25 years ago, using nature to find treatments for cancer and wound healing, they can be forgiven for not realising they were also creating art.

 

Unseen Worlds, presented by QBiotics Group at World Science Festival Brisbane 2025 was a stunning, large-scale installation featuring microscopic images usually reserved for viewing by researchers in labs.

 

Through artist-in-residence, donna davis and sound designer, Luke Lickfold, the images by QBiotics Group and Queensland’s leading institutions were brought to life on screen for thousands to experience in Queensland Museum’s Whale Mall.

 

The microscopic images of pollen, eucalyptus, butterfly wings, mouse cells, and fish blood vessel specimens , revealed an incredible kaleidoscope of colours, shapes and textures.

 

QBiotics’ submissions were images of Fontainea picrosperma, a seed found on the Atherton Tablelands, and a central component in the group’s anticancer treatment, ‘tigilanol tiglate’.

 

The drug is currently approved for the treatment of canine mast cell tumours (MCTs) in Australia, the USA, the EU and the UK, having treated 20,000+ dogs,(1-4) and also in human Phase II trials for head and neck cancer, and soft tissue sarcoma.(5,6)

 

During World Science Festival Brisbane, visitors were able to appreciate the unassuming seed in a whole new way with electric green pollen tubes and grains, bright yellow images of stigma of Fontainea picrosperma, and black and white images of textured spheres of pollen grains.

 

QBiotics’co-founder and microbiologist, Dr. Gordon explains the natural environment offers a vast and largely untapped source of medical innovation, by understanding how plants interact within their ecosystems.

 

“By researching the way plants defend themselves in their environment, we’ve been able to identify molecules with specific disease-targeting abilities.”

 

It’s this research, and their microscopic images that supported World Science Festival Brisbane to exhibit and celebrate QBiotics’ groundbreaking research and 25 year anniversary with audiences through a unique and artistic lens.

 

To learn more about how QBiotics uses nature to develop new treatments for cancer and wound healing, watch the video featuring co-founder, Dr. Gordon.

 

View Unseen Worlds Digital Gallery here.

 

 

Unseen Worlds featured images by QBiotics Group, donna davis – artist-in-residence, Queensland Herbarium and Biodiversity Science Unit; Geoff Thompson and Lily Kumpe, Queensland Museum; The University of Queensland’s research centres – The Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB) and The ARC Centre of Excellence in Quantum Biotechnology (QUBIC); with soundscape design by Luke Lickfold.

QBiotics Group Gallery

Unseen Worlds

References

  1. Cullen JK, Yap P-Y, Ferguson B, Bruce ZC, Koyama M, Handoko H, et al. Tigilanol tiglate is an oncolytic small molecule that induces immunogenic cell death and enhances the response of both target and non-injected tumors to immune checkpoint blockade. Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer. 2024;12(4):e006602.
  2. Grant EL, Wallace HM, Trueman SJ, Reddell PW, Ogbourne SM. Floral and reproductive biology of the medicinally significant rainforest tree, Fontainea picrosperma (Euphorbiaceae). Industrial Crops and Products. 2017;108:416-22.
  3. De Ridder TR, Campbell JE, Burke-Schwarz C, Clegg D, Elliot EL, Geller S, et al. Randomized controlled clinical study evaluating the efficacy and safety of intratumoral treatment of canine mast cell tumors with tigilanol tiglate (EBC-46). J Vet Intern Med. 2021;35(1):415-29.
  4. Musser ML, Jones PD, Goodson TL, Roof E, Johannes CM. Response to tigilanol tiglate in dogs with mast cell tumors. Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine. 2024;38(6):3162-9.
  5. ClinicalTrials.gov. A Clinical Study to Investigate the Efficacy of Tigilanol Tiglate Directly in Head and Neck Cancer 2025 [Available from: https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT05608876?intr=tigilanol%20tiglate&rank=2].
  6. ClinicalTrials.gov. A Clinical Study to Investigate the Efficacy of Intratumoral Tigilanol Tiglate in Soft Tissue Sarcoma, 2025 [Available from: https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT05755113?intr=tigilanol%20tiglate&rank=3].

Gilmour Space Technologies is about to put Australia on the space innovation map, with an historic and imminent rocket launch from Bowen in Far North Queensland.

The launch of the Eris Rocket will mark the first time in Australian history that an Australian developed, manufactured, assembled and tested rocket launches into orbit from Australian soil.

Speaking at World Science Festival Brisbane, two of Gilmour Spaces’ senior members, Ashley Hasforth, Chief Commercial Officer and Kody Cook, Deputy Chief Engineer (Systems Engineering) discussed the upcoming moment with ABC’s Kate O’Toole and an audience at the State Library Queensland.

Headquartered on the Gold Coast, with a spaceport in Bowen, Gilmour Space Technologies has bold plans for the future, with Test Flight 1 of the Eris rocket just the beginning of a rocket launching enterprise from Australia.

Describing themselves as an ‘end-to-end space provider’, once Gilmour Space achieves successful orbits, the privately owned business will design, build and launch rockets and satellites into orbit – one of only three companies in the world that has this capability.

“One of the big advantages that we have, if you can launch rockets, you basically can control what can go into space. So we have a lot of control of what we can send up there,” Hasforth said.

Before they get to the commercialisation of launching satellites into space for commercial and government clients, the team must perfect the launch.

Taking investors and the public on the journey is part of the mission, with Hasforth emphasising that success for the first test flight doesn’t necessarily mean getting all the way into orbit.

“To tell people that 10 seconds (in the air) or getting off the (launch) pad is a success, is hard to believe, but from that time we can get so much data that’ll put us in such a good place for future launches, you can’t put a dollar value on that,” Hasforth said.

Deputy Head of Engineering, Kody Cook added, “When you consider everything that happens before TO (take-off), to have done all of that math, gone over all of the regulatory hurdles, to have done all of the design, all of the testing, all the analysis, by the time the clock hits zero, you are 99.9% of the way to having that capability ready to orbit.”

Resting in its vertical launch position for almost 12 months, the Eris is ready to take its first flight – and why from Bowen may you ask? Cook says it’s all about efficiency, and being near the equator.

“If you think about spinning a basketball and looking at a single point on that basketball, if you’re near that centre line, you’re travelling pretty quickly and that actually gives you a kick if you’re going into a pro-grade orbit,” Cook said.

“There’s a lot of math involved but it turns out that being close to the equator is good but you don’t have to be right on it.”

Discover more about Gilmour Space Technologies game-changing rocket launch and the challenges overcome to get to this exciting point in Australia’s space innovation history. Watch the World Science Festival Brisbane, In Conversation event in the video player above.

Ahead of the full program launch for the WSFB 2025, Minister for Education and the Arts, the Honourable John-Paul Langbroek paid a visit to Queensland Museum for a sneak peek at this year’s festival program, providing a powerful reminder of the role that science plays in shaping our future and fostering curiosity among the next generation of thinkers and innovators.

A Celebration of Science and Discovery

Minister Langbroek’s visit to Queensland Museum also included a brief tour of the collection and a look at the incredible educational and research work done at the institution, some of which will be on show during WSFB 2025.

 

The Minister met Collection Manager Marissa McNamara and the team who will be part of the event Everything You Need To Know About: Crusty Crustaceans – World Science Festival Queensland, similar to the free series Labs Unlocked – World Science Festival Queensland.

Visitors will have an  exclusive behind-the-scenes look at cutting-edge scientific research happening in Queensland’s top laboratories, engaging with experts and exploring groundbreaking discoveries.

 

Minister Langbroek also visited SparkLab to explore some of the accessible, interactive science on offer.  This is something visitors and students can experience each day.

Looking Ahead to the Future of Science

Science is more than just a field of study. It is a way we explore the world, question the unknown and shape a better future for everyone.

 

As the WSFB enters its 10th year, the full program will once again showcase how the event is a beacon for scientific discovery and innovation, and this year’s festival promises to be even bigger and brighter.

 

The World Science Festival Brisbane runs from 21 – 30 March 2025

Explore the full program here: Events Archive – World Science Festival Queensland