Mr Jones, who was born in Wales, said it was "absolutely fantastic" to have gained the foundation's Miller Scholarship, one of only two awarded throughout the country this year, to support doctoral study.
After moving from Cardiff to Dunedin, he completed a postgraduate diploma in psychology at Otago this year.
His PhD studies will be supervised by Otago psychologist Prof Cliff Abraham, who directs the university's Brain Health and Repair Research Centre.
Mr Jones said people who had earlier experienced non-lethal "mini" strokes also gained some protection against the damage caused by later otherwise lethal strokes.
Stroke was the world's third greatest cause of death and the leading cause of permanent disability.
"Protection from stroke is probably one of the biggest research hopes in neuroscience right now," he said.
He would be investigating whether brain mechanisms involved in learning and memory also helped protect the brain against damage from strokes.
Learning and memory involved changes in the connections - synapses - between nerve cells in the brain, he noted.
Damage to these connections was characteristic of many neurological disorders, including Alzheimers disease.
He and other researchers would investigate if nerve cells had the ability to control the changes in these connections and prevent the changes from escalating, he said.
Understanding how these processes worked could help the development of treatments for stroke and many other common neurological disorders.
The other Miller Scholarship was gained by Auckland University physiology student Paul Drury.
Sarah Parker, an Otago biochemistry student, has also gained a $4000 summer studentship from the foundation to undertake a study which could eventually provide new targets for the treatment of motor neuron disease.
