Development Of Executive Functions In Children With Frontal Lobe Lesions
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$160,379.00
Summary
Executive functions (EF), refer to the ability to problem solve, think flexibly and in abstract terms and pay attention. EFs are essential for managing daily life activities. The frontal lobes of the brain are believed be important in coordinating EFs. In childhood, frontal areas are developing rapidly and damage may affect ongoing development due to impairments in a child's capacity to function normally within their environment, interfering with adaptive functions such as new learning and reaso ....Executive functions (EF), refer to the ability to problem solve, think flexibly and in abstract terms and pay attention. EFs are essential for managing daily life activities. The frontal lobes of the brain are believed be important in coordinating EFs. In childhood, frontal areas are developing rapidly and damage may affect ongoing development due to impairments in a child's capacity to function normally within their environment, interfering with adaptive functions such as new learning and reasoning. Executive dysfunction in children manifests as disorganisation, impulsivity, inattention and inappropriate behaviour. Such problems are often masked in early chilhood, due to highly structured environments and support of parents and care-givers in day-to-day activities. However, as children mature, expectations of indepence increase and executive deficits become more apparent (ie. child 'grows into' these problems). Appropriate treatment and management is dependent on (i) improvement in early identification of patients at risk for such sequelae; (ii) establishing long-term consequences of executive deficits to ongoing development. This research aims to advance our understanding of EFs and their development through childhood, both in healthy children and children with cerebral lesions to regions believed to subsume EFs(ie the frontal lobes). While anecdotal case data is available, to our knowledge, no other study has attempted to do this using a longitudinal group design. Specific predictions include; (i) Children with frontal lobe damage will perform more poorly on EF measures, in comparison to children with damage to other cerebral areas and healthy children; (ii) Children with frontal lobe damage will show increasing deficits on EF tasks over time, reflecting an inability to acquire executive skills in the expected time frame, when compared with children with localised damage to cerebral areas excluding the frontal lobes, and healthy children.Read moreRead less
Reinstating Emotion Perception After Brain Damage: An Experimental Approach
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$338,421.00
Summary
Many people with traumatic brain injury (TBI) cannot recognise emotions in others. This disrupts social behaviour leading to isolation and unemployment. In this project we determine whether: (1) selectively attending to a person's expression improves empathy and emotion recognition; (2) whether mimicking an expression improves recognition of the emotion and; (3) whether poor recognition of emotional tone of voice (prosody) and audiovisual displays is improved by focusing on voice or face alone.
Which Treatment Works? New Approaches To Treating Emotion Perception Deficits After Brain Injury
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$500,937.00
Summary
Many people with traumatic brain injury (TBI) cannot recognise emotions in others. This makes appropriate social behaviour impossible and leads to isolation and unemployment. In this project we compare training that minimises errors (errorless learning) versus training that provides strategies for recognising emotions while allowing errors to occur. Adults with severe TBI will be allocated to one of the two treatments, a social non-therapeutic group or to deferred treatment (waitlist control).
Abnormal Auditory System Function In Schizophrenia: An ERP And MEG Study Of Its Origin, Course And Generality.
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$250,770.00
Summary
In 1991, an Australian group found that schizophrenia patients have a reduced brain response to deviant sounds in a repeating pattern of identical sounds. Deviant sounds produce a brain electrical response known as mismatch negativity which is generated by the auditory cortex in the brain's temporal lobes and by adjacent areas in the frontal lobes. A smaller mismatch negativity in patients has since been replicated in laboratories in the US, Europe and Australia. The importance of this finding i ....In 1991, an Australian group found that schizophrenia patients have a reduced brain response to deviant sounds in a repeating pattern of identical sounds. Deviant sounds produce a brain electrical response known as mismatch negativity which is generated by the auditory cortex in the brain's temporal lobes and by adjacent areas in the frontal lobes. A smaller mismatch negativity in patients has since been replicated in laboratories in the US, Europe and Australia. The importance of this finding is that it had not been previously recognised that patients have low level auditory problems that could potentially have a profound impact on higher level functions. Finnish researchers have gone on to show in healthy individuals that mismatch negativity can reveal important features about how well the auditory system works, e.g., for the brain to respond to a deviant sound, it must have a memory of what happened in the past. Mismatch negativity provides a measure of the integrity of these memory functions. But it also provides an index of how well the auditory system discriminates different aspects of sound, pitch, loudness, and temporal features, such as duration. There are hints in our data and from US researchers that processing of the temporal features of sounds is particularly impaired in schizophrenia. We have also recently discovered that first-degree relatives of patients may have a similar deficit. The aim of this project is to use mismatch negativity to probe what is wrong with the auditory system in schizophrenia and those at risk (first degree relatives). Is it the areas of the brain primarily involved in sound perception (the temporal lobes) that are faulty or is the problem in the frontal lobes? Is it the case that processing of temporal features are particularly compromised and if so, is this a biological marker for schizophrenia. Answers to these questions will greatly enhance our understanding of the nature of the brain dysfunction in schizophrenia.Read moreRead less
The Impact Of Circadian Disturbances On Sleep Quality, Cognition And Psychiatric Symptoms In Neurodegenerative Disease
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$496,340.00
Summary
There is an increasing awareness that neurodegenerative diseases are associated with disturbances in sleep. Our group have recognised that patterns of sleep disturbance in these patients are also related to problems with memory and mood. The proposed study will be the first of its kind to explore whether disruptions in the circadian system represent a common mechanism underlying these comorbid disease features. Understanding this pathology will hopefully lead to the development of new therapies.
Progressive Aphasia And Amyloid Deposition: A Multidisciplinary Approach To Improving Dementia Diagnosis
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$528,245.00
Summary
We aim to understand the role of amyloid deposition in the genesis of symptoms in Alzheimer's disease. Patients presenting with progressive deterioration of language (aphasia) some of whom are known to have Alzheimer's disease will be studied using brain imaging techniques, including a PET method (PiB) that labels amyloid in vivo, and to compare imaging changes with a range of language assessments. This will improve the early diagnosis and management of patients with progressive aphasia.
Investigation Of Dysfunction Of OPRS1, A Novel Gene Implicated In Neurodegeneration
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$535,471.00
Summary
A new gene has recently been discovered to play an important role in various brain and nerve degeneration disorders, including frontotemporal dementia and motor neuron disease. The aim of this project is to discover what biological processes are involved when this gene malfunctions, as this will provide knowledge important for development of new treatments for the many people worldwide affected with these disorders.
PATHOGENESIS OF ALZHEIMERS DISEASE AND RELATED DISORDERS: MECHANISM OF TAU PATHOLOGY
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$295,983.00
Summary
A protein called tau has an essential role in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD), frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and related dementias. We have developed novel transgenic models, which allow us to treat the mice and to abrogate the clinical symptoms. As we have dissected the underlying molecular mechanisms, our ultimate goal is to develop a treatment approach based on these mechanisms and thereby reduce the socio-economic burden of these debilitating diseases.
Crossmodal Interactions In Selective Attention: A Combined Human Lesion/transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Study
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$188,182.00
Summary
Aspects of attention are of central importance in guiding human behaviour. The brain uses these mechanisms to enhance the processing of sensory information that is currently relevant for behaviour, and to suppress irrelevant sensory information. Although there is a considerable body of knowledge, from both animal and human research, on how attention operates within individual sensory modalities (vision, touch, hearing, etc.), very little is known about how attention integrates information across ....Aspects of attention are of central importance in guiding human behaviour. The brain uses these mechanisms to enhance the processing of sensory information that is currently relevant for behaviour, and to suppress irrelevant sensory information. Although there is a considerable body of knowledge, from both animal and human research, on how attention operates within individual sensory modalities (vision, touch, hearing, etc.), very little is known about how attention integrates information across these different modalities. An understanding of these 'crossmodal' attentional mechanisms is important for several reasons. First, much brain activity in primary sensory areas is modulated by the attentive state of the individual, so discovering how crossmodal attention works will facilitate our understanding of the neural mechanisms of sensory processing generally. Second, the most basic aspects of human perception are fundamentally dependent upon attention; without attention we would perceive inputs from the different senses as fragmentary, rather than as bound together into coherent multimodal representations. Finally, many acquired and developmental neurological disorders are characterised by debilitating impairments of attention. This project will examine crossmodal spatial attention in stroke patients with damage to an exclusively visual brain area (occipital cortex), or to a multisensory brain area (parietal cortex). It will also measure the extent of crossmodal interactions in healthy participants, using cortical transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to induce reversible, 'virtual' lesions that mimic those of the stroke patients. The specific goals of the research are to explain how inputs from the senses of vision and touch interact to give rise to coherent perception; and to provide an empirical foundation for the development of more effective rehabilitative techniques for stroke patients, by exploiting any preserved crossmodal attentional mechanisms.Read moreRead less