Killing which averts suffering: the role of norms and empathy. Abattoir workers and butchers kill animals to prepare food, farmers to cull stock, and veterinarians to alleviate suffering. Soldiers kill other humans in war, police or security guards to protect the public, and doctors to enact legal euthanasia. Research shows that these tasks can be confronting, and even traumatic. This project aims to test the processes through which people learn socially supported palliative killing to avert suf ....Killing which averts suffering: the role of norms and empathy. Abattoir workers and butchers kill animals to prepare food, farmers to cull stock, and veterinarians to alleviate suffering. Soldiers kill other humans in war, police or security guards to protect the public, and doctors to enact legal euthanasia. Research shows that these tasks can be confronting, and even traumatic. This project aims to test the processes through which people learn socially supported palliative killing to avert suffering and their neural underpinnings, with a focus on norms and empathic distress. It will focus on two core samples: veterinarians, who must euthanize animals, and health practitioners in Victoria, where legal changes will introduce ‘voluntary assisted dying’ in mid-2019. It will investigate how practitioners learn palliative killing, and what the impact is on psychological variables such as empathy and identity. It will generate new understandings of social influence around life and death decisions, provide an evidence basis to inform policy makers, and help institutions and practitioners seeking to manage distress and respond to fast-moving, controversial policy changes.Read moreRead less
The elusive engram: What can infantile amnesia tell us about memory? Revealing the 'engram' is one of the greatest challenges neuroscience has faced. Substantial advances have been made in elucidating the mechanisms underlying memories that last for a few hours or days but much less is known about the cellular and molecular processes that mediate memories across remote periods of time. An underutilised approach to this problem is to study forgetting. The infant rat is an ideal model as they typi ....The elusive engram: What can infantile amnesia tell us about memory? Revealing the 'engram' is one of the greatest challenges neuroscience has faced. Substantial advances have been made in elucidating the mechanisms underlying memories that last for a few hours or days but much less is known about the cellular and molecular processes that mediate memories across remote periods of time. An underutilised approach to this problem is to study forgetting. The infant rat is an ideal model as they typically display good memory for a day or two but forget after a week or more. That is, they exhibit a specific impairment in the maintenance of remote memories. This project aims to determine the molecular/cellular processes underlying infantile amnesia and is expected to provide unique insights into memory processes in general.Read moreRead less
New generation psychology advances in science motivation and engagement. Following alarming declines in science participation and performance at school and beyond, this project aims to harnesses educational psychology, physiological psychology, and neuro-psychology, to develop “new generation” advances in science motivation and engagement. Building on latest developments in mobile data capture in psychology, the project will identify key elements of student motivation and engagement associated w ....New generation psychology advances in science motivation and engagement. Following alarming declines in science participation and performance at school and beyond, this project aims to harnesses educational psychology, physiological psychology, and neuro-psychology, to develop “new generation” advances in science motivation and engagement. Building on latest developments in mobile data capture in psychology, the project will identify key elements of student motivation and engagement associated with outcomes in school-based scientific disciplines. With a comprehensive understanding of motivation and engagement, effective intervention to boost outcomes is possible. Enhancing the motivation and engagement that underpins research and innovation in society can enhance a nation’s competitiveness and optimise students’ potential.Read moreRead less
Effects of early life trauma on fear memory and fear extinction in rats. This project aims to increase our understanding of how early life stress affects fear regulation across development. The results will provide unique insights into normal developmental changes in fear regulation as well as abnormal developmental changes in these processes in those exposed to early life stress.
The emotional face: Effects on orienting, visual search, and categorization. The processing of facial expressions of emotion is essential for successful social functioning however our understanding of how these important signals are processed and of the factors which may impede appropriate processing is lacking. Using a range of converging methodologies drawn from neuroscience, social, and cognitive psychology, this project aims to advance our understanding of the processing of the expressions o ....The emotional face: Effects on orienting, visual search, and categorization. The processing of facial expressions of emotion is essential for successful social functioning however our understanding of how these important signals are processed and of the factors which may impede appropriate processing is lacking. Using a range of converging methodologies drawn from neuroscience, social, and cognitive psychology, this project aims to advance our understanding of the processing of the expressions of two central social emotions, happiness and anger, by delineating the conditions that support or limit it in the general population. This research aims to provide an invaluable knowledge base for subsequent applied research into deficits of emotional expression processing such as occur in autism, anxiety, or old age.Read moreRead less
Cognitive neuroscience of spatial asymmetry: behaviour, genes and brain imaging. When humans distribute their attention in space, biases or asymmetries of spatial attention exist. Healthy individuals exhibit a processing advantage favouring left space but this advantage is lost in disorders such as unilateral spatial neglect, ADHD and dyslexia. This project will develop novel electrophysiological methods to dissociate the sensory, attentional, decision-making and motoric contributions to spatial ....Cognitive neuroscience of spatial asymmetry: behaviour, genes and brain imaging. When humans distribute their attention in space, biases or asymmetries of spatial attention exist. Healthy individuals exhibit a processing advantage favouring left space but this advantage is lost in disorders such as unilateral spatial neglect, ADHD and dyslexia. This project will develop novel electrophysiological methods to dissociate the sensory, attentional, decision-making and motoric contributions to spatial asymmetries. By interfacing electrophysiology with genetic, neurochemical and brain imaging methods, this project will comprehensively map the biology of spatial asymmetry. This knowledge is vital to developing effective treatments for disorders where atypical patterns of spatial asymmetry index neurological vulnerability.Read moreRead less
The causes of intrusive memories. Intrusive memories are pivotal to many psychological disorders. This project will extend current models of intrusive memories by integrating biological, cognitive, and neural measures to specify the causes of these memories.
The neural substrates of a false fear memory in rats. This project aims to use laboratory rodents to study false memory of an aversive experience (false fear memory). Memory is not always a faithful record of an experience. Particularly under emotional circumstances, events can be remembered in ways they never occurred. This project studies how a false fear memory forms, and the neural substrates of this memory in the amygdala and hippocampus. The findings should advance knowledge about how the ....The neural substrates of a false fear memory in rats. This project aims to use laboratory rodents to study false memory of an aversive experience (false fear memory). Memory is not always a faithful record of an experience. Particularly under emotional circumstances, events can be remembered in ways they never occurred. This project studies how a false fear memory forms, and the neural substrates of this memory in the amygdala and hippocampus. The findings should advance knowledge about how the brain represents events, how retrieved event representations associate with aspects of present events, and how learning about retrieved-but-absent events blurs the line between fantasy and reality.Read moreRead less
Learning whether and learning when: rate and timing in human associative learning. This project investigates how people learn to use antecedent cues to anticipate upcoming events. In particular, the project examines how sensitive people are to the rate at which one event follows another, how they learn about the timing of the second event with respect to the first and how this learning affects their behaviour.
How the brain resolves motivational conflict. This project aims to map the mechanisms by which motivational conflict shapes our behaviours, decisions, and choices. By combining state of the art approaches from neuroscience with theoretically driven approaches from experimental psychology and associative learning, this project expects to provide new mechanistic knowledge about how the brain resolves motivational conflict, from cells to circuits to behaviour, and it expects to enhance Australia's ....How the brain resolves motivational conflict. This project aims to map the mechanisms by which motivational conflict shapes our behaviours, decisions, and choices. By combining state of the art approaches from neuroscience with theoretically driven approaches from experimental psychology and associative learning, this project expects to provide new mechanistic knowledge about how the brain resolves motivational conflict, from cells to circuits to behaviour, and it expects to enhance Australia's research capacity in psychology. This should provide significant benefits including providing a new knowledge base advancing theories of associative learning, motivation and decision-making, as well as laying a new basic science platform for understanding emotional resilience.Read moreRead less