Max Bennett (scientist)

Career

In 1968 Bennett took up a position as lecturer in physiology at University of Sydney. In 1980 Malcolm Fraser proposed that the Australian Government make funding available for the establishment of new Research Centres of Excellence at Australian universities. As part of the ARC Centre of Excellence initiative, Bennett was appointed Director of a new Neurobiology Research Centre at Sydney (1982-1990). Bennett was appointed as a Professor of Physiology from 1983-2000 and was then awarded a Personal Chair at the University of Sydney. In 2003, he was appointed Professor of Neuroscience. He was noted "for research recognized internationally as of exceptional distinction". As of 2020, he became a Professor Emeritus of Neuroscience.

Bennett also chaired a national committee to assess the state of science in Australia. On 16th April 1985, Bennett led a national meeting of concern on science and technology, held in Canberra in response to cuts in Federal funding for science and criticisms of the then Minister for Science (Mr Barry Jones AC). It was organized by the National Committee for the Promotion of Science and Technology, which Bennett chaired, and sponsored by the Academy of Science. The meeting elected an Interim Committee which formed the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies (FASTS), later renamed Science & Technology Australia.

In 1994, Bennett helped to found the International Society for Autonomic Neuroscience (ISAN). The ISAN Interim Executive Committee was formed on 2nd July 1994, at a meeting at the University of Melbourne, Australia, with Max Bennett as Executive Vice-President. ISAN was formally constituted in March 1995, with Geoff Burnstock elected as the Foundation President.

In 2003, Bennett was instrumental in founding the Brain and Mind Research Institute (BMRI) at the University of Sydney along with John D. Pollard and Ian Hickie. BMRI was a multidisciplinary research institute in neuroscience, neurology and psychiatry, with outpatients and the support of 18 research professors working in 15,000 square meters of new research space and clinical services. Bennett later served as Scientific Director while Ian Hickie became Executive Director. The center was renamed the Brain and Mind Centre (BMC) in 2015.

Bennett worked with John Mendoza and others over a period of years to organize the Queensland Mind and Neuroscience Institute Foundation, later renamed the Sunshine Coast Mind and Neuroscience - Thompson Institute. It was officially launched on May 2, 2018, with Bennett as the founding Chair of the Board. Bennett also served on the Board of Townsville's Tropical Brain and Mind Research Foundation (TBMRF).

Neuroscience

In 1963, following his graduation in electrical engineering and the beginning of his postgraduate research in biology, Bennett published a paper with Geoffrey Burnstock, Graeme Campbell, and Mollie Holman. They reported the discovery that the accepted paradigm of nearly 50 years, that there are only two transmitters, noradrenaline and acetylcholine, was incorrect. This work showed that other transmitters, in addition to noradrenaline and acetylcholine, exist in the peripheral nervous system. These non-adrenergic and non-cholinergic (NANC) transmitters act on smooth muscle cells and generate action potentials due to the influx of calcium ions. In 1966, Bennett, Burnstock and Holman further showed that inhibitory chemical transmissions from parasympathetic nerves were unaffected by substances that blocked cholinergic and adrenergic junctions.

Bennett went on to show that calcium changes in a nerve terminal directly related to synaptic efficacy. In the succeeding years Bennett and his colleagues elucidated how NANC transmission, involving purines, neuropeptides and nitric oxide, is affected. Bennett's work demonstrated that action potentials can be due to the influx of calcium ions. In 1972 he discovered that lesioned nerve terminals are precisely reconstituted at the same site on a striated muscle cell, indicating the existence of synapse formation molecules on muscle cells, describing a paradigm for synapse formation during development and regeneration. In 2001 Bennett and colleagues showed that once a nerve terminal is established the glial ensheathing cells can guide the formation of new synapses on mature muscle cells in a matter of minutes. In 2007 he observed that microglial cells of the brain can conduct calcium waves that are mediated by the release of NANC transmitters. This work showed that microglial cells, the most dynamic cell in the brain, act as an interface between the neural and immune systems by propagating calcium waves using purines as transmitters, opening up the study of the interaction of the immune and nervous systems at the level of the synapse.

History and philosophy of neuroscience

The main theme of Bennett's philosophical work is that brain scientists have misused language in attributing our psychological capacities as in thinking, remembering, perceiving etc. to the brain. Rather it is the person whose brain it is that possesses these attributes, the brain being necessary for us to express these abilities. This mistake in confusing parts for wholes is referred to as the "mereological fallacy" by Bennett and his colleague Peter Hacker. Clarifying these misunderstandings has profound implications for how we view ourselves.

In his historical work Bennett has followed the evolution of our ideas concerning the functioning of the different components of the brain and their organization from the time of Aristotle to the present. He argues that fundamental ideas arise in this area through a combination of research, prejudice and irrationality and of how appropriate hypotheses concerning brain function are often abandoned for extended periods of time in favour of less logical hypotheses. Such an hypothesis is one in which it is posited that brain function can be considered in isolation from the behaviour of the human whose brain it is, whereas behaviour (broadly conceived) is the bedrock upon which all studies of human attributes rests, neuroscientific or otherwise.

Bennett's books concerning these issues include The Idea of Consciousness (1997), History of the Synapse (2000), Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience (2003; with Peter Hacker) and Neuroscience and Philosophy: Brain, Mind and Language (with Daniel Dennett, John Searle and Peter Hacker; 2006). More recently he elaborated on the theme that much of neuroscience repeatedly makes the mistake of not only attributing to the brain psychological capacities that can only be attributed to the person whose brain it is, but also attributing these capacities to parts of the brain, a "modular fallacy". Furthermore, Bennett argues that cognitive neuroscience "represents" these capacities as interconnected boxes leading to reification of the person with these capacities. These difficulties are spelt out in his books Virginia Woolf and Neuropsychiatry (2013) as well as in History of Cognitive Neuroscience (2008; with Peter Hacker).

Neuropsychiatry

In 2009 Bennett and his colleagues examined functioning of synapses in neuropsychiatric diseases and showed that stress could lead to the loss of synapses in certain parts of the brain, which might result in the loss of grey matter. Such a loss can be observed, using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), in some patients who suffered from stress. Those results helped to define the cellular basis of grey matter changes, determined by MRI. His preliminary calculations then provided the first quantitative account of how synaptic activity in the brain, driving impulse activity, is responsible for utilizing most of the cortical energy, showing that the energy required to maintain a synapse-initiated impulse in a neuron remains the same over different behavioural states and species. This work was followed by a quantitative account of how the loss of nerve pathway integrity in the brain in schizophrenia leads to dysfunction of synapses in the grey matter and hence a decrease in cortical energy. This indicated that changes in the energy expended in particular areas of the brain, and therefore impulse activity there, can be quantitatively explained as due to changes in the integrity of axons joining these areas. Further work suggests that white matter microstructure may be a sensitive measure of age- and disease-related changes that affect cognition. Alterations in microstructure may precede alterations in macrostructure that are characteristic of aging and neurodegeneration.

Awards and lectures

Bennett was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in the 2001 Queen's Birthday Honours, 'for his service to the biological sciences, particularly in the field of neuroscience and as a major contributor to the establishment of organisations aimed at furthering interdisciplinary research in this field, and to education'. In addition, Bennett has received the following recognition:

• 1981, Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science
• 1996, Goddard Research Award, Australian National Heart Foundation
• 1996, Ramaciotti Medal, Clive and Vera Ramaciotti Foundation
• 1998, Renensson Research Award, Australian National Heart Foundation
• 1999, Macfarlane Burnet Medal and Lecture, Australian Academy of Science
• 1999, Malcolm Research Award, Australian National Heart Foundation
• 2000, Centenary Medal (31st of December 2000), Australian Government
• 2001, Distinguished Achievement Medal, Australian Neuroscience Society
• 2001, Excellence in Science (Tall Poppy) Award, Australian Institute of Political Science
• 2001, Almgren Research Award, Australian National Heart Foundation
• 2002, Orator, Academia Ophthalmologica Internationalis (AOI)
• 2009, Honorary Fellow, Australian Neuroscience Society
• 2010, Australasian Neuroscience Society Medallion, Australian Neuroscience Society

In 1996 Bennett gave the Opening Plenary Lecture at the World Congress of Neuroscience (Tokyo). This was succeeded by distinguished lectures in neuroscience, neuropsychiatry as well as in the history and philosophy of neuroscience as follows:

• 2001, Plenary Lecture, International Conference, Research Society on Alcoholism
• 2002, Featured Speaker, XIV World Congress of Cardiology
• 2002, Academia Ophthalmologica Internationalis Oration
• 2005, Plenary Lecture, American Philosophical Association
• 2006, Plenary Lecture, International Congress of Neuropsychiatry
• 2007, Plenary Lecture, The Royal Australian & New Zealand College of Psychiatrists
• 2008, Plenary Lecture, World Congress in Medical Informatics
• 2008, Plenary Lecture, International Congress in Nanotechnology
• 2009, Plenary Lecture, World Congress of Mental Health Nurses
• 2009, Grass Lecture, Indian National Institute of Mental Health & Neuroscience
• 2009, Nour Foundation Lecture (at the United Nations, NY)
• 2013, Franke Lectures, (Yale University)

Interviews

• Bennett, Max; Blythe, Max (1996). "Professor Max Bennett FAA in interview with Dr Max Blythe". OpenEQUELLA. Oxford Brookes University. doi:10.24384/000147.