Chronic pain is a common and debilitating condition. One in five people in the Australian community have been found to experience chronic pain at any one time. Although there is no evidence of a consistent increase in rates of chronic pain, the rate of permanent disability has increased dramatically in recent decades. This has contributed to the growing cost of chronic pain. For example, back pain is the most common reason for filing workers' compensation claims and leads to loss of 101.8 millio ....Chronic pain is a common and debilitating condition. One in five people in the Australian community have been found to experience chronic pain at any one time. Although there is no evidence of a consistent increase in rates of chronic pain, the rate of permanent disability has increased dramatically in recent decades. This has contributed to the growing cost of chronic pain. For example, back pain is the most common reason for filing workers' compensation claims and leads to loss of 101.8 million workdays annually. The annual costs of medical care for back pain alone have been estimated at $AUD50 billion in the US and $10 billion in Australia. Not only is chronic pain a considerable economic burden, it is also a considerable personal burden to patients. Pain is one of the strongest predictors of poor quality of life and has consistently been found to be associated with high rates of depression. Although there is a large body of research that investigates what factors are associated with chronic pain, there is surprisingly little research that investigates the mechanisms that cause chronicity. Theories of chronic pain suggest that psychological characteristics increase the propensity for people to develop chronic pain. Specifically, theories argue that those people who tend to be fearful of pain will over-attend to painful sensations and avoid pain-provoking activities and as a result are at risk of developing chronic pain. This study will test those theories. If it is found that over-attending to pain does predispose patients to develop chronic pain, this will have important implications for preventing the development of chronic pain. These findings could help to devise early interventions to prevent chronicity and thereby reduce the economic burden to health services and the emotional burden to patients in terms of reduced quality of life.Read moreRead less
Effects Of Prism Adaptation On Space Perception Following Chronic And Reversible Cortical Lesions
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$319,336.00
Summary
Damage to one side of the brain following a stroke often produces a debilitating disorder called spatial neglect. Affected patients persistently ignore objects, sounds or touches on the side of space opposite their brain injury. This disorder occurs despite normal sensory function, and reflects damage to the brain's internal representations of one side of space, causing patients to behave as if that side of space no longer exists. Spatial neglect is difficult to rehabilitate and is a major predi ....Damage to one side of the brain following a stroke often produces a debilitating disorder called spatial neglect. Affected patients persistently ignore objects, sounds or touches on the side of space opposite their brain injury. This disorder occurs despite normal sensory function, and reflects damage to the brain's internal representations of one side of space, causing patients to behave as if that side of space no longer exists. Spatial neglect is difficult to rehabilitate and is a major predictor of poor functional recovery after stroke, but there are no effective treatments for it. A promising new treatment for spatial neglect has been recently discovered, which involves patients practicing pointing to a visual target while wearing spectacle-mounted prism lenses that systematically correct for their altered view of the world. Following a brief period of this training, patients' show increased ability to perceive visual objects presented to the previously neglected side of space. Studies have shown that the prism treatment can have long-term benefits for many neglect sufferers. However, it is not known what the brain mechanisms underlying the treatment effects are, and to what degree the effects generalize to all affected senses. The proposed project aims to investigate whether prism treatment ameliorates spatial neglect of sounds as well as visual objects in a group of stroke patients. The project will also systematically examine which part of the brain is critical for the beneficial effects of prism treatment by using focal magnetic stimulation to create reversible, virtual lesions in the brains of healthy participants. Addressing these issues has clear implications for identifying suitable candidates for the treatment, and for understanding how the sensory world is represented in the human brain.Read moreRead less
Neuroanatomical Dynamics Of Attention In Stroke Patients And Healthy Individuals: A Magnetic Stimulation Investigation
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$360,363.00
Summary
Mechanisms of selective attention are of central importance in guiding human behaviour. The brain uses attention to enhance the processing of information that is behaviourally relevant, and to suppress irrelevant information. The operation of attention within sensory modalities (vision, touch, hearing) has been studied for many decades; however, little is known about how attention combines information between different senses. An understanding of 'crossmodal' attention is important for many reas ....Mechanisms of selective attention are of central importance in guiding human behaviour. The brain uses attention to enhance the processing of information that is behaviourally relevant, and to suppress irrelevant information. The operation of attention within sensory modalities (vision, touch, hearing) has been studied for many decades; however, little is known about how attention combines information between different senses. An understanding of 'crossmodal' attention is important for many reasons. First, real events in the environment provide inputs simultaneously from different locations to multiple senses, and these inputs must be integrated to yield coherent perception. Second, the most basic aspects of human perception depend upon attention; the brain implements selective mechanisms in order to filter the immense quantities of information that constantly bombard our sensory receptors. Finally, many neurological disorders are characterised by impairments of attention; these syndromes are debilitating for the patients themselves, and also place a heavy burden on caregivers and the healthcare system. This project will examine mechanisms of attention in healthy individuals and in stroke patients with attentional deficits. In all experiments, we will employ a new technique in neuroscience called 'transcranial magnetic stimulation' (TMS). TMS enables the safe and reversible stimulation of brain activity in humans. In the current project, we will use TMS with two broad objectives: (i) to determine the key brain areas involved in crossmodal attention in healthy individuals, and (ii) to treat attentional deficits that occur within and between the senses in stroke patients ('magnetic stimulation rehabilitation'). This research will provide important insights into the brain mechanisms that govern selective attention in the healthy brain, and will help guide future methods for managing and treating neurological disorders in which deficits of attention are prominent.Read moreRead less
Selective Attention And The Processing Of Observed Actions.
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$343,812.00
Summary
Our ability to understand the hand and face gestures of others is a crucial part of social interaction. Deficits in the ability to perceive others' actions are associated with clinical disorders such as autism and apraxia. We will examine how specific regions of the brain operate to process and recognise actions that we observe. This is a crucial first-step toward understanding and redefining clinical disorders such as apraxia that involve deficits in the perception of actions and gestures.
The Genetics Of Cognitive Deficits In Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$675,512.00
Summary
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common psychiatric disorder of childhood that is marked by age-inappropriate levels of inattention and-or hyperactivity-impulsivity. The disorder appears genetic with a number of different genes likely contributing risk for ADHD. This project takes an innovative approach by asking whether there are different genetic profiles associated with children with ADHD who do or do not have neurocognitive deficits.
Functional Interactions Between Primate Cortical Areas In Tasks Involving Attention And Short-term Memory
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$267,280.00
Summary
To navigate and operate in the cluttered and dynamic sensory world around us, our brains need to be able to attend to specific objects or features in the environment, identify them and also know where they exist at any one instant of time, prior to performing the appropriate action. The attention, memory, decision and motor components involved in this process possibly involve a variety of cortical areas and neuronal operations. The special primate preparation we have developed permits us to eluc ....To navigate and operate in the cluttered and dynamic sensory world around us, our brains need to be able to attend to specific objects or features in the environment, identify them and also know where they exist at any one instant of time, prior to performing the appropriate action. The attention, memory, decision and motor components involved in this process possibly involve a variety of cortical areas and neuronal operations. The special primate preparation we have developed permits us to elucidate at a neuronal level many of these brain mechanisms. By recording neuronal activities in two different cortical areas simultaneously as the monkey performs a memory task that he has been trained on, we will test the following ideas: (1) A cortical region in the dorsal, parietal stream directs spatial attention by gating other visual areas to process only a selected region of the visual world (2) A region in the ventral, temporal stream directs attention to specific features in the visual world by gating earlier cortical areas (3) The parietal cortical areas that mediate intention for action hold the relevant information in working memory till it is forwarded to the more anterior premotor areas. These experiments have the potential to reveal the basic neuronal scheme that underpins functions such as attention, visual recognition and memory, which are impaired in many neurological disorders.Read moreRead less