The Helmsman Project: Giving at-risk adolescents skills to navigate life’s journey and make a difference. This project aims to investigate how to keep able but disadvantaged youth engaged in school and give them the psychological tools they need to succeed. To meet this challenge, this project aims to propose a randomised control and extended baseline control test of a combined personal coaching and outdoor education (sailing experience) program designed to foster positive psychological outcomes ....The Helmsman Project: Giving at-risk adolescents skills to navigate life’s journey and make a difference. This project aims to investigate how to keep able but disadvantaged youth engaged in school and give them the psychological tools they need to succeed. To meet this challenge, this project aims to propose a randomised control and extended baseline control test of a combined personal coaching and outdoor education (sailing experience) program designed to foster positive psychological outcomes by developing goal strategies, hope, resilience, and self-regulation. The study aims to be extensive and novel, capturing the experiences of not just the participants but their peers, parents, teachers, and alumni mentors of the program. Both traditional survey and experience sampling data will be collected.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE120100235
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$375,000.00
Summary
A novel approach to modelling nicotine dependence in the rat. With repeated exposure, tobacco smoking can rapidly develop into a habit. How this happens is poorly understood. This project will model the changes to the brain and behaviour of rats during the development of nicotine-seeking habits with a view to better understanding how to reduce tobacco dependence.
Industrial Transformation Training Centres - Grant ID: IC210100019
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$4,583,816.00
Summary
ARC Training Centre for Optimal Ageing. The ARC Training Centre for Optimal Ageing aims to address issues identified by older adults as essential for quality of life. With our industry partners, we aim to train the next generation of researchers to understand, detect and improve psychosocial factors that support mental activity, physical health and social connectedness, and embrace advances in artificial intelligence, digital-enriched environments and adaptive workplaces to deliver effective dig ....ARC Training Centre for Optimal Ageing. The ARC Training Centre for Optimal Ageing aims to address issues identified by older adults as essential for quality of life. With our industry partners, we aim to train the next generation of researchers to understand, detect and improve psychosocial factors that support mental activity, physical health and social connectedness, and embrace advances in artificial intelligence, digital-enriched environments and adaptive workplaces to deliver effective digital solutions. By developing new capacity and capability to drive the digital transformation of industries supporting our ageing population, our Centre seeks to deliver economic and social benefits that enable Australians to live enriched, healthy and independent lives as they age.Read moreRead less
Testing posterior parietal cortex contributions to human episodic memory. This project aims to determine the involvement of parietal brain regions for episodic memory. Using novel experimental tasks and multimodal neuroimaging techniques in young and healthy aging, this project expects to clarify the role of posterior parietal structures, and their interactions with core memory structures, during memory retrieval. Expected outcomes include advanced understanding of how we remember the past in ri ....Testing posterior parietal cortex contributions to human episodic memory. This project aims to determine the involvement of parietal brain regions for episodic memory. Using novel experimental tasks and multimodal neuroimaging techniques in young and healthy aging, this project expects to clarify the role of posterior parietal structures, and their interactions with core memory structures, during memory retrieval. Expected outcomes include advanced understanding of how we remember the past in rich contextual detail, and how such processes are altered in healthy aging. This potentially provides significant benefits in predicting and treating memory dysfunction due to brain injury or neurodegeneration.Read moreRead less
Human hippocampus subregions organisation and associative memory processes. This proposal will investigate the hippocampus, a highly inter-connected structure containing many subregions. Although considered the memory centre of the brain, we still do not know the exact roles of these subregions during memory processes. Using novel brain neuroimaging acquisition methods and analyses, this project aims to map the internal structure and functions of the hippocampus and its functional networks under ....Human hippocampus subregions organisation and associative memory processes. This proposal will investigate the hippocampus, a highly inter-connected structure containing many subregions. Although considered the memory centre of the brain, we still do not know the exact roles of these subregions during memory processes. Using novel brain neuroimaging acquisition methods and analyses, this project aims to map the internal structure and functions of the hippocampus and its functional networks under different memory conditions and how these functions change with age. The intended outcome of this proposal is to provide the foundations for the first integrated model of human memory and its biological basis and to generate a benchmark against which future development of memory interventions and retraining can be measured.Read moreRead less
Charting age-related changes in the quality of episodic memory. As we get older, our capacity to remember events in rich detail becomes less efficient. The mechanisms driving these changes remain unclear, severely limiting our capacity to accurately assess and optimise memory function in later years. This project aims to determine how memory accuracy and memory quality change across the adult lifespan using cutting-edge experimental and neuroimaging techniques. It will deliver new insights into ....Charting age-related changes in the quality of episodic memory. As we get older, our capacity to remember events in rich detail becomes less efficient. The mechanisms driving these changes remain unclear, severely limiting our capacity to accurately assess and optimise memory function in later years. This project aims to determine how memory accuracy and memory quality change across the adult lifespan using cutting-edge experimental and neuroimaging techniques. It will deliver new insights into the relationship between confidence, memory success and memory quality, and the underlying neural substrates of these processes. This work will provide the essential empirical foundation to augment memory function, ensuring that older adults can continue to participate as active members of society.Read moreRead less
Neural substrates of higher-order conditioned fear. Higher-order conditioning processes are thought to contribute to the maintenance of maladaptive behaviours such as clinical anxiety, however, little is known about the psychological and neural processes by which this conditioning occurs. Accordingly, this project uses an animal model to investigate these substrates.
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE210100790
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$419,308.00
Summary
Understanding how the brain combines sensory information. The ease with which we perceive the external world belies the complexity involved in integrating different sensory inputs. How does the brain achieve this fundamental operation? The project will address this question using a multidisciplinary approach that combines computational modelling, brain imaging, and psychophysical techniques. The expected outcomes of the project are a better understanding of how people perceive the world through ....Understanding how the brain combines sensory information. The ease with which we perceive the external world belies the complexity involved in integrating different sensory inputs. How does the brain achieve this fundamental operation? The project will address this question using a multidisciplinary approach that combines computational modelling, brain imaging, and psychophysical techniques. The expected outcomes of the project are a better understanding of how people perceive the world through optimal integration of sensory cues. In addition to advancing basic scientific knowledge, the findings will illuminate perceptual anomalies in normally developing children and will provide a foundation for reducing a debilitating side effect of virtual reality systems known as ‘cybersickness’.Read moreRead less
Understanding and improving sustained attention under vigilance conditions. This project aims to address a major global challenge caused by technological advances: human operators have to monitor computer-control (e.g., in autonomous vehicles, rail and airtraffic control) but sustaining attention is very difficult under these conditions. Developing innovative behavioural and neural methods, this internationally collaborative project bridges basic and applied science to understand lapses of atten ....Understanding and improving sustained attention under vigilance conditions. This project aims to address a major global challenge caused by technological advances: human operators have to monitor computer-control (e.g., in autonomous vehicles, rail and airtraffic control) but sustaining attention is very difficult under these conditions. Developing innovative behavioural and neural methods, this internationally collaborative project bridges basic and applied science to understand lapses of attention under monitoring conditions. It creates a novel intervention, based on brain activity patterns, to improve performance. Outcomes will increase our neural understanding of attention and lay a foundation for a novel system to detect lapses of attention in high-risk environments, preventing errors before they occur.Read moreRead less
Flavour learning and food consumption in rats and humans: Implications for obesity. Between-meal snacks and sweet drinks are major contributors to human obesity. Consumption of a food is greatly influenced by its flavour and the properties of flavours are largely learned. This project examines how what is learned about a flavour influences both short-term and long-term food consumption by rats and humans. Short-term effects are studied by adding a flavour to a pre-meal (snack) and measuring how ....Flavour learning and food consumption in rats and humans: Implications for obesity. Between-meal snacks and sweet drinks are major contributors to human obesity. Consumption of a food is greatly influenced by its flavour and the properties of flavours are largely learned. This project examines how what is learned about a flavour influences both short-term and long-term food consumption by rats and humans. Short-term effects are studied by adding a flavour to a pre-meal (snack) and measuring how much is eaten in a subsequent meal. Long-term effects are studied when the value of sweetness is altered by exposure to non-nutritive sweeteners. The results will extend basic understanding of flavour learning in relation to obesity.Read moreRead less