Psychology in the town where ?roads dangle off hillsides?

In this issue?s academic profile, visit the University of Otago, home of the world?s southern-most psychology department.

By Bridget Murray
Monitor staff

In misty Dunedin, New Zealand, the windswept hills drop into the icy South Pacific. The sheep outnumber the people. And it?s a three-hour airplane ride to the nearest international airport on New Zealand?s more populous North Island. From there, it?s another 12 to 24 hours to the United States or Europe.

Here in Dunedin?home to the University of Otago and the world?s southernmost psychology department?the remote location makes traveling to conferences a challenge and importing lab animals and equipment a headache.

But if you talk to psychologists in this coastal town of 110,000 in New Zealand?s southeastern region, you?ll find they don?t consider their out-of-the-way location a disadvantage.

After all, this is the town that built "roads that dangle off hillsides," says Cynthia Darlington, PhD, a psychology faculty member at the University of Otago. (Dunedin?s Baldwin Street is the world?s steepest paved road and the site of a yearly footrace up to the summit and down again.)

In this antipodal spot on the globe, isolation gives rise to innovation, say Otago?s psychology faculty.

"Our disadvantages are compensated for by being a bit more distant from the bandwagon, which perhaps keeps one from getting carried away too easily with the trend of the month in the Northern Hemisphere," says Cliff Abraham, PhD, one of Darling-ton?s Otago colleagues. "Thus, I think it may be easier to maintain an intellectual independence and frontier attitude. We?re more willing to chase some possibly wild ideas."

That frontier attitude?a certain pioneering spirit?seems part of the cultural code among Otago?s psychology faculty. They call themselves kiwi researchers, after the wakeful indigenous bird that is New Zealand?s emblem of uniqueness and ingenuity.

Taking that ingenuity into the lab, Otago?s psychologists have developed a high-tech department with a strong research reputation in memory, neuroscience and child development and a clinical program that attracts students countrywide. Also resulting from its seclusion is a close-knit community of researchers, with a shared sense of pride in the region?s pristine countryside and panoramic charm.

A modern mind set

The Otago psychology department attributes much of its self-sufficiency to its technical support staff. The staff work full-time to keep faculty and students connected to e-mail, web sites and research databases. These 24-hour links make the department?s remote location increasingly irrelevant, says Jeffrey Miller, PhD, head of the department.

"You want to be able to keep in touch with others in your field, but as long as communications are good?and they are superb now?you can do this kind of work anywhere in the world," he says. "So you might as well live somewhere that is nice after working hours."

The department?s technical staff also finds it saves time to build its own lab equipment for the department?s neural research. "Because shipping times are long, if [the technical staff] can come up with a piece of equipment, they will," says Darlington. "Sometimes they even invent something."

A few years back, Darlington needed to gauge the effects of valium on guinea pigs? ability to flip themselves onto their feet when they?re placed on their backs?what?s known as the ?righting reflex.? She asked the head technician what she should use, and he promptly built a device that measures how quickly the reflex kicks in?"a wonderful thing called the tolerometer," she says. "Now researchers all over the world are using tolerometers."

In stark contrast to Dunedin?s high-tech orientation is its traditional Scottish ancestry, evident in its Gaelic name, haggis feasts at New Year?s and bagpipe bands. Also distinctly Scottish are the island?s craggy cliffs and windblown mountains and Dunedin?s Victorian architecture. (It is often called the Edinburgh of the South.)

Old Victorian buildings house many of the 26 staff members in Otago?s psychology department. The rest of the department?s staff and students inhabit several roomy modern buildings?space needed to accommodate its almost 1,400 graduate and undergraduate students.

Psychology attracts 800 of Otago?s first-year students alone. It is one of the university?s most popular subjects. The department enrolls 70 students at the graduate level, some in master?s degree programs, others in its doctoral programs in research and clinical psychology. The clinical program admits 10 students a year and emphasizes cognitive-behavioral therapy. Unlike students in the United States, most Otago students stay at their undergraduate institution for their graduate studies, says clinical student Dougal Sutherland.

There are only six psychology programs in New Zealand, which limits the choice, says Sutherland, who selected Otago?s program because it places students in three different internships. He hopes to be placed in general adult, neuropsychological and geriatric assessment and treatment.

Community spirit

Another departmental asset that attracts graduate students is its strength in neuroscience?a strength bolstered, says Darlington, by another side benefit of isolation: community spirit. As an example, in a project headed by Abraham, called "Memory: Mechanism, Process and Application," psychology researchers collaborate with researchers in a variety of other Otago departments, including computer science, biochemistry, anatomy, physiology and pharmacology. And the spirit of partnership extends to town dwellers as well, Darlington says.

"If we need 30 adults to put through some research, we get them from the town no problem," she says. "The town supports the university, and the university supports the town."

Darlington?s own research focuses on neural mechanisms that can spur recovery from brain and inner-ear damage. Other research interests in the department center largely on relationships between learning and attention. Abraham, for example, studies the effects of stress hormones on learning in rats. Miller measures the speed with which people process information and make decisions. And Janice Murray, PhD, another Otago researcher, studies the way people learn to recognize shapes and objects in their daily lives.

Meanwhile, along with attention-deficit disorder and language development, memory is also of interest on the child development front. For instance, Otago psychologist Harlene Hayne, PhD, recently found that children remember past events more clearly if they draw while recounting them.

Psychology in paradise

Along with Otago?s strong sense of community comes a low rate of crime and violence and a common pride in the region?s natural beauty, says Darlington. On the west side of the island, hills give way to steep mountains that plunge into Chalky Inlet and Doubtful Sound. Farther south, over lush grassland freckled with sheep, is Rob Roy Glacier and Stewart Island, the best place for a rare kiwi sighting.

The region?s physical attributes are a selling point for many faculty who take jobs at Otago, says Abraham. He accepted a postdoctoral appointment at Dunedin after finishing his doctoral studies at the University of Florida. And the exotic terrain has kept him there. "People here take advantage of the bush and go backpacking," he says. "Skiing is a common pastime."

Skiing is also a fringe benefit of the psychology department?s annual Australasian Winter Conference on Brain Research, held in late August in South Island?s mountainous Queenstown region.

But despite the region?s abundant natural beauty, "we do have our problems," says Darlington. Faculty salaries, for example, are 60 percent and 70 percent of U.S. salaries, and manufactured items tend to cost more.

The country lacks large American-style, government-supported research laboratories. And with the limited number of universities in New Zealand, students have fewer options for research positions, Otago faculty say. Many students head overseas after graduation.

"We call it the big ?OE,? for Overseas Experience," Darlington says.

Still, many students who leave the area return several years later, lured back by the island?s scenery and temperate climate, says Darlington. (Dunedin?s climate is similar to Seattle?s in its tendency toward dampness and fogginess, says Darlington.) After living in New Zealand, it?s hard to stay away, she says.

"It?s a clean environment, incredibly beautiful and incredibly supportive," she says. "We?ve got lovely old Victorian houses perched on the hillsides around the harbor. And just outside town, we?ve got the only mainland [population of] albatross in the world and colonies of Yellow Eyed and Little Blue penguins. We live in paradise."