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
Dealing with distraction: understanding recovery after interruption. Interruptions impair cognitive performance but modern environments have normalised distractions in our workplaces, homes, schools and cars. Daily tragedies occur because people are unaware of their attentional capacity limits. This Fellowship explores the consequences of interruption in moving displays using cutting-edge methods to determine how the brain holds information over an interruption and the process of attentional rec ....Dealing with distraction: understanding recovery after interruption. Interruptions impair cognitive performance but modern environments have normalised distractions in our workplaces, homes, schools and cars. Daily tragedies occur because people are unaware of their attentional capacity limits. This Fellowship explores the consequences of interruption in moving displays using cutting-edge methods to determine how the brain holds information over an interruption and the process of attentional recovery. It includes translational work determining effective ways to raise awareness of attention limits and guide policy. The outcomes will advance knowledge of the mechanisms of recovery from interruption, raise awareness of capacity limits beyond academia, and guide policy to improve safety.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
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE230100380
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$447,683.00
Summary
The dynamics of object representations in the human brain. The human brain's ability to effortlessly recognise and categorise objects enables effective behavioural responses in complex everyday environments. Despite the apparent efficiency of this process, it is still unknown how the brain solves object recognition. This project capitalises on cutting-edge advances in artificial intelligence and neuroscience to resolve the spatiotemporal dynamics of object processing in the human brain. The outc ....The dynamics of object representations in the human brain. The human brain's ability to effortlessly recognise and categorise objects enables effective behavioural responses in complex everyday environments. Despite the apparent efficiency of this process, it is still unknown how the brain solves object recognition. This project capitalises on cutting-edge advances in artificial intelligence and neuroscience to resolve the spatiotemporal dynamics of object processing in the human brain. The outcomes will be a step change in our understanding of the nature and development of the multi-dimensional space underpinning neural object processing. This will ultimately facilitate the diagnosis and treatment of brain disorders across the lifespan and accelerate the development of intelligent machines.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE240100614
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$443,007.00
Summary
How does the brain process conflicting information? Learning is the means by which we adapt to our environments. Occasionally, what we learn contradicts our present knowledge about the world. When this occurs, the old and new (contradictory) information compete for control over behaviour. Yet, how the brain processes contradictory information and resolves this competition is poorly understood. This project uses modern genetic tools in rodents to examine how the brain encodes and retrieves contra ....How does the brain process conflicting information? Learning is the means by which we adapt to our environments. Occasionally, what we learn contradicts our present knowledge about the world. When this occurs, the old and new (contradictory) information compete for control over behaviour. Yet, how the brain processes contradictory information and resolves this competition is poorly understood. This project uses modern genetic tools in rodents to examine how the brain encodes and retrieves contradictory information to influence behaviour. The outcomes include new insights regarding the neural basis of adaptive behaviour; and the benefits include an understanding of why we sometimes fail to adapt to change, and disorders characterized by such failures (e.g., anxiety disorders, addiction).Read moreRead less
Risky choices: From cells and circuits to computations and behaviour. This project aims to ask and answer fundamental questions about how we safely make risky decisions to guide our behaviour. It combines theoretically driven approaches from experimental psychology with state-of-the-art technology for mapping and manipulating brain function. The project expects to show, with unprecedented behavioural, brain cell type, and circuit precision, how we safely make choices, how these choices are shape ....Risky choices: From cells and circuits to computations and behaviour. This project aims to ask and answer fundamental questions about how we safely make risky decisions to guide our behaviour. It combines theoretically driven approaches from experimental psychology with state-of-the-art technology for mapping and manipulating brain function. The project expects to show, with unprecedented behavioural, brain cell type, and circuit precision, how we safely make choices, how these choices are shaped by experience, and how controlling these cells and circuits controls choice. This outcome should provide significant benefits including a new knowledge base bridging behavioural, cognitive, and neural sciences to advance theories of behaviour and laying a new basic science platform to understand impulsive behaviours.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.
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