Page 20 - NZBRI_Annual Report 2017_FA

18 New Zealand Brain Research Institute

of previous hints that the risk of Parkinson’s actually begins to
markedly decline in the oldest-old (those more than 85 years of age).

This has important implications for our understanding of the disease:
it is related to old age, but not necessarily the ageing process itself.
Toni and Daniel are continuing this research, into a number of

questions of national and international interest.
During 2017, we had a healthy success rate for attracting
competitive research grant funding. NZBRI researchers submitted

23 research grant applications. Of those, ten were successful and
five were unsuccessful, while one was withdrawn due to success of
a similar application to another funding body. The outcomes of seven

others were still awaited. In total, $1.23 million of external funding
was attracted to support our research projects.

The Brain Research New Zealand/Rangahau Roro Aotearoa
national centre of research excellence was the most significant
external funder of our research in 2017. Through its national

competitive funding process, it invested in a number of our projects
to assess brain health (using sophisticated measures of MRI, EEG,

and brain proteins in blood samples). They also funded our follow-
up nation-wide epidemiology study, to investigate the effects of
rural living and of ethnicity and financial deprivation on rates of

Parkinson’s disease.
This external funding was in addition to the Institute’s
application of its own resources into research. Most particularly,

we acknowledge the value of the Orr Family Estate donation, which
has been sustaining our substantial Parkinson’s longitudinal research
for the past four years. That generous investment has enabled us to

maintain our team of skilled neuropsychological assessors, who have
an ongoing and close relationship with our large cohort of Parkinson’s

research volunteers and their families. Over the past four years, as
part of a project examining the decline of cognitive functioning in
at-risk patients, we have needed to step up our usual two-yearly