NEURONAL RESPONSES ELICITED BY VIEWING HUMAN BODY MOTION AND GESTURE.
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$135,822.00
Summary
This project aims to study human brain regions active in viewing movements of the body, face and hands, as well as gestures (i.e. movements with meaning). We will map the location of these human motion sensitive brain regions relative to brain areas dealing with other visual functions. We will use a new method of brain scanning (functional MRI) and recordings of the electrical activity of the brain to achieve these goals. Subjects for this project will be epilepsy patients undergoing investigati ....This project aims to study human brain regions active in viewing movements of the body, face and hands, as well as gestures (i.e. movements with meaning). We will map the location of these human motion sensitive brain regions relative to brain areas dealing with other visual functions. We will use a new method of brain scanning (functional MRI) and recordings of the electrical activity of the brain to achieve these goals. Subjects for this project will be epilepsy patients undergoing investigation for seizure surgery at the A and RMC and Royal Children's Hospitals in Melbourne. Functional MRI - a new non-invasive method for studying brain function - will locate the brain structures involved in the detection and analysis of human motion. Recording electrodes are surgically placed inside the brains of these patients in order to find the source of their seizures, and these electrodes will be utilised for this study. A number of facial, hand and body movement and gestural stimuli will be used. First, brain locations responding to face, hand and body movements will be identified. It is predicted that regions sensitive to hand motion could be located near areas known to participate in adjusting the subject's own visually-guided reaching behaviour. Similarly, regions sensitive to facial motion could be located near areas thought to deal with lip-reading. Second, differences in brain activity to gestures and movements of the face and hand will be studied, so as identify brain regions that process increasingly complex information. Third, differences in brain responses to incompatible (e.g. head facing left and moving right) versus compatible human motion will be studied. A brain 'map' with locations of these human motion sensitive regions relative to visually sensitive regions will be generated. These data will not only aid planning for future seizure surgery, but have implications for our understanding of the visual aspects of motor apraxia.Read moreRead less
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.
Functional MRI And MR Spectroscopic Studies Of Penicillin Induced And Kindled Sheep Models Of Epilepsy
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$311,244.00
Summary
Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological disorders, affecting 1-2% of the population. Many epilepsy patients do not respond to drug therapy and their only hope for seizure control is surgical removal of the part of the brain responsible for their seizures. Successful surgery is very much dependent on the ability to exactly localize the seizure focus and this is often not possible using the imaging techniques currently available. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a new techni ....Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological disorders, affecting 1-2% of the population. Many epilepsy patients do not respond to drug therapy and their only hope for seizure control is surgical removal of the part of the brain responsible for their seizures. Successful surgery is very much dependent on the ability to exactly localize the seizure focus and this is often not possible using the imaging techniques currently available. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a new technique which may improve our ability to localize the seizure focus from which seizures arise, if the brain can be imaged at, or near, the time of a seizure. MR spectroscopy (MRS) enables us to detect metabolic changes in the brain which may persist at the site where seizures have begun for up to 30 minutes after the seizure. The aim of our research is to obtain a greater understanding of the changes detected with these MR modalities so that we can learn to apply these techniques to human sufferers of epilepsy. Ultimately it may help enable previously incurable epilepsy patients to undergo successful surgery and live normal lives.Read moreRead less
Representation Of Spatial Coordinate Systems Within Posterior Parietal Cortex And Hippocampus
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$43,759.00
Summary
To accurately reach for an object or walk from one room to another, our brains need to be able to locate objects around us and detect obstacles in our path. Our amazing ability to make an accurate eye movement directly towards an object such as a cup of tea and move our hand smoothly and directly to the cup is something we all take for granted. However, this ability requires enormous computational complexity which our brains have evolved to handle with ease. We plan to determine the parts of the ....To accurately reach for an object or walk from one room to another, our brains need to be able to locate objects around us and detect obstacles in our path. Our amazing ability to make an accurate eye movement directly towards an object such as a cup of tea and move our hand smoothly and directly to the cup is something we all take for granted. However, this ability requires enormous computational complexity which our brains have evolved to handle with ease. We plan to determine the parts of the brain that perform these computations by using a relatively new technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging or fMRI. This is a non-invasive technique that requires a person to lie in an MRI scanner and perform simple eye movement tasks while the scanner takes images of the brain. With this technology we are able to determine which regions of the brain are most active during the performance of each task, thereby giving us an insight into how the brain works. An area of the brain called the parietal lobe is thought to be involved in the localization of objects, such as reaching for a cup of tea. We will study this area using fMRI to determine how a map of space is represented within the parietal lobe. This region of the brain communicates with another region, the hippocampus which is thought to be involved in navigation, such as walking about the house or driving in the city. Functional MRI will be used to study the hippocampus of our subjects while they perform simple navigational tasks through a maze which is simulated on a computer screen. This will reveal the role hippocampus plays in navigation and the relationship between the parietal lobe and hippocampus. We hope that the greater understanding of hippocampus that will arise from this study will enable us to devise a robust method for imaging hippocampal function with fMRI. We expect that these techniques will aid in the diagnosis of hippocampal abnormalities in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy.Read moreRead less