Models of adolescent drug use and its consequences. Recent concerns surround the impact of drug abuse - particularly binge drinking, inhalant abuse and cannabis use - on the mental health of adolescents. Early drug use is associated with mental health problems although the mechanisms involved are not well characterised. The present proposal aims to use animal models to characterise substance abuse that occurs during the adolescent period and to investigate its effects on brain and behaviour. Inc ....Models of adolescent drug use and its consequences. Recent concerns surround the impact of drug abuse - particularly binge drinking, inhalant abuse and cannabis use - on the mental health of adolescents. Early drug use is associated with mental health problems although the mechanisms involved are not well characterised. The present proposal aims to use animal models to characterise substance abuse that occurs during the adolescent period and to investigate its effects on brain and behaviour. Increasing our knowledge of the causes and consequences of adolescent drug abuse will improve Australia's ability to confront this problem and to develop early interventions and treatments that minimise associated harms.Read moreRead less
Plasma protein profiles in normal brain ageing and early stages of dementia. Brain changes related to ageing and dementia are associated with altered proteins that can be detected in the blood. This project will examine blood samples from a number of well-characterised ageing cohorts to discover proteins that may serve as potential markers of brain ageing and the early stages of dementia.
Moral reasoning and mental illness: towards a model of moral judgment and moral accountability. This research examines capacities for moral judgment in people with schizophrenia, some of whom act on their delusional beliefs and commit crimes. Findings will, in turn, inform legal and philosophical consideration of the moral accountability of mentally ill defendants, and advance theoretical knowledge of healthy moral decision making.
The electrophysiological signature of inner speech. This project aims to develop an objective neurophysiological marker that identifies when a person is talking silently to themselves in their head (inner speech), and what they are saying internally. Such a marker would be an important development in the field of cognitive science. It could reveal the fundamental nature of inner speech (whether inner speech is actually a special form of overt speech), and lead to ‘brain-computer interface’ techn ....The electrophysiological signature of inner speech. This project aims to develop an objective neurophysiological marker that identifies when a person is talking silently to themselves in their head (inner speech), and what they are saying internally. Such a marker would be an important development in the field of cognitive science. It could reveal the fundamental nature of inner speech (whether inner speech is actually a special form of overt speech), and lead to ‘brain-computer interface’ technologies that can decipher inner speech and communicate it with the outside world.Read moreRead less
Radio follow-up of gravitational wave events. This project aims to use three Australian radio telescopes to search for and monitor radio waves from future gravitational wave events. The detection of gravitational waves and electromagnetic radiation from a neutron star merger was a scientific breakthrough, with important implications for physics and astronomy. The observations from this project will provide key information to reveal what causes some of the most energetic events in the Universe, t ....Radio follow-up of gravitational wave events. This project aims to use three Australian radio telescopes to search for and monitor radio waves from future gravitational wave events. The detection of gravitational waves and electromagnetic radiation from a neutron star merger was a scientific breakthrough, with important implications for physics and astronomy. The observations from this project will provide key information to reveal what causes some of the most energetic events in the Universe, their environment and how they evolve. The outcomes of this project include increased international collaboration with this global effort, and new techniques for automatic data processing and analysis, as well as engaging future students as we build Australian expertise in a new area of research.Read moreRead less
Normal and abnormal processes of social attention orienting. Human beings are capable of rapidly detecting the direction of another person's eye-gaze and shifting attention reflexively in that direction. This project will compare shifts of attention to non-social and social cues of direction to determine whether attentional shifts to gaze-direction are fast because humans are biologically hard-wired to respond to social cues of evolutionary significance (eyes) or because humans are well-practice ....Normal and abnormal processes of social attention orienting. Human beings are capable of rapidly detecting the direction of another person's eye-gaze and shifting attention reflexively in that direction. This project will compare shifts of attention to non-social and social cues of direction to determine whether attentional shifts to gaze-direction are fast because humans are biologically hard-wired to respond to social cues of evolutionary significance (eyes) or because humans are well-practiced at using a number of different signals for direction in their environment. Findings from this work will than be used to investigate whether a selective impairment of responding to gaze-direction contributes to the social impairments so characteristic of people with schizophrenia.
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Do black holes exist? This project aims to verify if black holes can actually exist in our Universe. It is still unknown if any of the candidate objects possess the key black hole feature -- a trapped region from which no signal can escape. By focusing on conditions for existence of trapped regions, this project expects to describe their neighborhoods and observable properties. This information is critical for interpretation of the data from the next generation of gravitational wave detectors an ....Do black holes exist? This project aims to verify if black holes can actually exist in our Universe. It is still unknown if any of the candidate objects possess the key black hole feature -- a trapped region from which no signal can escape. By focusing on conditions for existence of trapped regions, this project expects to describe their neighborhoods and observable properties. This information is critical for interpretation of the data from the next generation of gravitational wave detectors and radio telescopes, and for determining the true nature of astrophysical black hole candidates. Further benefits include simplification of calculations of the observable properties of compact objects and resolution of a long-standing black hole information loss paradox.Read moreRead less