University of Aarhus 2005
New way of mixing teams
At the Centre for Functionally Integrative Neuroscience (CFIN), musicians, doctors, theologians, anthropologists, philosophers, physicists, computer scientists and many other professionals work in cross-disciplinary collaboration to learn more about how the brain functions.
By Jakob Kehlet
On an average day at CFIN, a musician may be busy scanning the brain of a jazz bass player to see how he manages to follow the rhythm in a Sting recording, while a theologian, a doctor and an anthropologist in the room next door are discussing how religious feelings are registered in the brain of a believer.
Cross-disciplinary collaboration is the idea behind the research projects initiated at CFIN, in which forty individuals with completely different backgrounds participate on a day-to-day basis.
“You can compare the centre with a large pot in which we boil down knowledge from researchers with different backgrounds. It allows us different approaches to what we are all looking for: more knowledge of how the brain works,” says the Director of CFIN, Professor Leif Østergaard.
CFIN performs three functions: firstly, the centre researches how the normal brain functions, and secondly, what goes wrong when the brain becomes sick. The third function involves converting knowledge to treatment. CFIN works closely with clinicians at the Neurological and Neurosurgical Departments at Aarhus Hospital, the Psychiatric Hospital and different pharmaceutical companies.
The aim is to develop new treatments and new drugs.
In Professor Østergaard’s opinion, the short time it takes to progress from basic research to application is one of the major strengths of CFIN.
“We had a case where a computer scientist was busy with some intricate calculations of the nerve pathways in the brain. He wanted to develop an advanced imaging program to show the exact location of the nerve pathways. At some stage, a neurosurgeon approached him with a problem. A young patient needed a brain operation, and if the surgeon happened to touch one of the nerve pathways in the brain, the patient could become disabled. It was therefore decided to test the method developed by the computer scientist. He was allowed to be present at the operation, which was a great experience for him – especially because the operation was successful,” explains Professor Østergaard.
How does the brain improvise?
Another project came about when a musician vented the idea of examining how improvisations are created in a musician’s brain.
A project was launched, and one of the discoveries the researchers made was that the brain perceives music as a language and reacts in a certain way when a professional musician constantly practises new variations of the music.
The results could be used in the field of Music Studies, but the knowledge was also useful to understand how to teach individuals with brain damage to recover their use of speech and hearing.
Lately, CFIN and iNANO have been given research grants to investigate how to use nanotechnology in a cross-disciplinary context. Nano researchers, molecular biologists and chemists from the university and pharmaceutical companies have come together to find new ways to cure not only brain diseases, but also cancer and blood clots in the heart.
“We have already made some progress by penetrating cells. We knew from the start that this would be a difficult manoeuvre,” says Professor Østergaard.
Cross-disciplinary collaboration among students
The ideas about cross-disciplinary collaboration are not restricted to top-level researchers only. In fact, they require a “growth layer” of young people, committed students with new subject combinations and approaches. At the moment, the University of Aarhus is considering making this approach part of the students’ daily life.
“We are currently doing a lot of thinking about how we can create models that enable students from one faculty to share knowledge with students from other faculties and learn from them. In my opinion, this is definitely the way to go. The considerable progress in science that we are going to see in the years to come will be due to individuals with different backgrounds working together and sharing their knowledge,” says Professor Østergaard.
Since the late 1990s, Professor Albert Gjedde from CFIN, Assistant Professor Andreas Roepstorff from CFIN and the Department of Anthropology and Ethnography, and Professor Østergaard have all gained considerable experience in mixing researcher teams from extremely different areas.
“We have developed an unusual approach to research. You could say that we have been open to looking at what different qualifications can contribute, and this is particularly important in brain research. It is no use looking at the brain exclusively from a medical point of view. Something happens in the brain when people interact, and brain research therefore has to take the cultural context into account. In this field, anthropologists have special knowledge to contribute,” says Professor Østergaard.
He admits, however, that cross-disciplinary collaboration is not always that easy to establish.
“It takes a lot of time and patience for people with different backgrounds to understand each other. Different professional groups use different methods, and for cross-disciplinary collaboration to work, you have to be able to accept that other groups measure in different ways and use different terminology. Therefore, the first step is to listen to each other attentively and for a long time,” says Professor Østergaard.
“One of the major strengths of CFIN is the short time it takes to progress from basic research to application,” says Leif Østergaard, the centre’s director.