KEY POINTS:
When Professor Richard Faull saw a human brain for the first time, it was love at first sight.
He remembers the moment clearly - he was a third-year medical student on his way to a sparkling international career in neuroscience.
"I thought that was absolutely incredible," says Professor Faull. "I loved it but I discovered we just didn't know very much about the brain."
From those early moments of fascination and curiosity spun 30 years of discoveries and international research on neurodegenerative diseases, work which this week was recognised with Professor Faull being awarded the nation's top science award, the Rutherford Medal.
It is a far cry from his childhood days in the tiny north Taranaki farming community of Tikorangi. He was one of five boys, his parents running the general store in a town that comprised just the store, a church and a school.
"We really had no money, and neither parent completed secondary schooling, but they gave us the values which set us up for life."
He had intended studying engineering when he started university, but became interested in biology.
"I thought, 'Well, I'll just apply for medicine', because then you don't have to decide for six years."
He was one of only two Auckland University students who won entry into the medical degree at Otago.
That, he said, "started the journey".
He did his PhD looking at the brain's organisation, and later won a Harkness Fellowship to study in the United States.
There he worked on animal brains, examining the main regions in the front of the brain that are important for movement and emotion control - parts affected in diseases such as Parkinson's and Huntington's.
Then a professor of genetics at Auckland University approached him to study Huntington's.
"They knew it was genetic. They knew that if the gene was in the family, then the chance of every child getting the gene was 50 per cent. And they would end up ultimately dying from the disease, so getting the diagnosis right was critical."
That marked the beginning of the brain bank, and the research gradually spread to cover Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, epilepsy and motor neurone disease.
Professor Faull says he shares the award with the families of those he has worked with over the years.
"Of course we have the scientists, all the people who are doing the work in the lab, but at the other end we also have the patients and the families who are part of our donor programme. It's the families who give the most precious and valuable gift in the world to our research, the brain.
"They expect nothing back but they give everything,"
It is their donations that enabled Professor Faull to start a brain bank at Auckland University's medical school, a resource that is aiding international research on neurodegenerative diseases.
"We're here because of them ... We actually do the research because they enable us to do it."
Today, the area of research that started 29 years ago at Auckland University with just one man - Dr Faull - is now a major programme with more than 40 researchers.
Early this year, Professor Faull announced findings of new ways to regenerate brain cells, making it a possibility to repair damaged areas of the brain affected in diseases such as Parkinson's.
The team has just received permission to try to grow new brain cells from post-mortem human brains, to better understand how and why these cells develop.
