Neural Circuits For Active Vision In The Primate Cerebral Cortex
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$632,938.00
Summary
This project will try to understand how we use visual information to identify objects by their shape and motion, in natural situations in which the eyes are moving all the time. This will be accomplished by recording the electrical activity of brain cells while a trained animal is performing different types of tasks, such as tracking a moving object or exploring a scene with its eyes.
Mechanisms And Pathways Leading To Saccadic Suppression In Primate Brain
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$858,086.00
Summary
Only the central few degrees of the visual field are viewed in high resolution. Consequently, the eyes must be pointed at targets of interest using saccadic eye movements. Each saccade generates potentially disturbing image motion but this is never perceived: saccadic suppression. This project aims to characterise the neural basis of saccadic suppression using modern techniques. As a result, a prime question in Neuroscience for over 100 years can now be answered.
Motor Passivity Symptoms In Schizophrenia And Mental Representations Of The Body
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$220,180.00
Summary
Individuals with schizophrenia who report passivity symptoms feel that they are no longer in control of their movements and believe that their actions may be willed by some other power. This research aims to examine a set of mental processes which determine how the body is 'represented' in the brain and which, if disrupted, can lead to disorders of body experiences. The outcome of the study will lead to a greater understanding of passivity symptoms and can be used to plan interventions.
The Role Of Attention In Modifying Neural Plasticity In The Adult Human Cortex
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$391,242.00
Summary
The human brain is constantly changing in response to experience. These changes, known as plasticity, are necessary to respond to new environments, to learn new skills and to recover from brain injury. This project will determine how selective attention, a process that filters sensory information in the brain, alters brain plasticity. The outcomes will inform the design of rehabilitation treatments for individuals with a brain injury.
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorde(ADHD) is the most prevalent mental disorder of childhood affecting around 7.5% of Australian school age children. The disorder is strongly genetic and causes significant impairments in academic functioning, family and peer relations with sufferers at increased risk for drug abuse. Identification and characterisation of rare mutations will enhance our knowledge of the neurobiology and advance the search for next generation drug treatments for the disorder.
How are memories stored in the brain? We know much about the brain regions involved in memory storage but we know little or nothing about how individual memories are represented and stored within those brain areas. The purpose of this project is to label and manipulate the specific subsets of brain cells that store individual memories. We will label memory-bearing cells in multiple brain regions and then ask how the connections between those cells encode learned information in the brain.
Neurophysiology Of Attention Deficits After Right Hemisphere Stroke
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$611,742.00
Summary
Stroke is a common and debilitating condition affecting thousands of Australians per year. Problems of attention are common after right hemisphere stroke and arise from lesions to multiple different brain regions. This project utilises a unique multi-modal approach to understand the neurophysiology of sensory, attentional, decision-making and motoric aspects of deficit after right hemisphere stroke and will map these objective signatures to discrete lesion locations.
Adult Vitamin D Deficiency And Cognitive Dysfunction In A Mouse Model
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$419,117.00
Summary
Vitamin D deficiency is common in the Australian adult population. We provide convincing evidence that vitamin D deficiency during adulthood impacts on brain function in a mouse model. If these changes generalize to humans, then this broader program of research could have important public health implications. Vitamin D supplementation is safe and cheap is clearly an attractive candidate for public health intervention.
Neuronal Substrate Of Choice In The Rat Whisker System
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$405,851.00
Summary
Humans and other animals can optimise their goal-directed behaviour by linking stimuli or actions to consequent positive and negative rewards. How does an animal generate such associations, and make decisions in the natural environment where the associations are often uncertain, at times contradictory, and continuously changing? This project uses rat whisker system as an animal model to identify the neuronal basis of perceptual decision making and the role of context.
Do Ongoing Cognitive Demands Affect The Efficacy Of Transcranial Electrical Brain Stimulation In Young And Older Healthy Adults?
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$627,857.00
Summary
Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) of the brain is widely used to enhance cognitive and motor function in healthy individuals and people with neurological disorders. Unfortunately, the efficacy of tDCS is highly variable between individuals. This project tests the hypothesis that ongoing cognitive processes – particularly attention – play an important role in regulating the effect of tDCS on brain function. The knowledge gained will help refine tDCS as a clinical and research tool.