BUILDING HEALTHY BRAINS

Supporting Optimal Brain Development In Children And Youth

The Tropical Brain and Mind Foundation aims to establish a Centre for Brain Health in the Tropics focusing on research that will improve brain health across the lifespan.

The Foundation is seeking government support to build this Centre which will focus on the development of healthy brains in children and adolescents.

For more than 10 years, the Foundation has worked to improve brain health in the Townsville North Queensland region.

YOUTH CRIME AND THE BRAIN:

Youth crime is more than just police matter. Youth crime is intimately linked to the development of brain matter. We can only stop youth crime if we understand this complex process during childhood and adolescence and if we develop efficient, neuroscience-informed approaches to help healthy brain development. The human brain undergoes tremendous developmental changes between the age of 10 and 14. Such changes are influenced by transgenerational, epigenetic, vulnerability, social and chemical adversity as well as the psychosocial toxicity of stress and trauma in early life.

The developing brain is highly malleable (plastic). That is why it can be shaped for the worse by the disadvantageous constellation of these factors. But the same malleability gives us the chance to intervene and to push the brain back on a healthy developmental track leading to age-appropriate behavioural and emotional control and healthy decision-making, ultimately resulting in turning away from criminal behaviours.

THE BRAIN PLACE:

The Brain Place - Centre of Brain Health in the Tropics offers an integrated program of screening, early intervention and the design of education and training for children and their parents/ carers and family support organisations.

What We Need

$10.2 million from State or Federal Government to support stage 1 of this significant research project for brain health in youth and children. This is a five year proposal which will require staged funding.

A teenager’s brain has a well-developed accelerator but only a partly developed brake. The Brain Place will focus on the developmental process in vulnerable children and youth and will develop tools to slow down the accelerator and improve the brake.

BENEFITS OF THE RESEARCH PROJECT:

The research will support children who are vulnerable. Children are our future and deserve our highest levels of nurturing support to grow into happy, healthy and contributing adults

The research can be replicated across jurisdictions.

Alleviating the criminal behaviours apparent in particular groups of children and young people.

Strengthening the parenting skills of those responsible for these young people.

Reducing community fear and anxiety that leads to increased racism and extreme reactions to criminality in the community.

Reducing the cost burden to victims of crime and to governments.

Contributing to the social and economic fabric of communities with a focus on what is required to establish a functioning well-being economy starting with our children and families.

The project will work with organisations such as Life Without Barriers, local schools, health professionals and government agencies.

EXPERT MINDS INVOLVED:

The research projects includes leading minds: Professor Zoltan Sarnyai, expert in neurobiology of brain development and stress biology, Associate Professor Carlo Longhitano, Head of Psychiatry at James Cook University and Dr Liza van Eijk, brain imaging expert with special interest in adolescent brain network development.