Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment And Facilities - Grant ID: LE0452971
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$102,900.00
Summary
Optical imaging of brain activity: Studies of the neural basis of sensory perception, plasticity and behaviour. Basic to the understanding of the brain is to know how the overall architecture of the nervous system relates to its function. We propose to study this by directly visualising the regions that are functionally active in the living brains of animals, down to resolution limits of less than 100 micrometres. Such "optical imaging" will be done by recording light reflected from the surfac ....Optical imaging of brain activity: Studies of the neural basis of sensory perception, plasticity and behaviour. Basic to the understanding of the brain is to know how the overall architecture of the nervous system relates to its function. We propose to study this by directly visualising the regions that are functionally active in the living brains of animals, down to resolution limits of less than 100 micrometres. Such "optical imaging" will be done by recording light reflected from the surface of the brain, which in turn depends upon activity-dependent intrinsic signals (eg. degree of oxygenation of haemoglobin). These signals will be recorded by a special camera and amplified using the requested system.Read moreRead less
Natural form, aesthetics and the human brain. This project aims to study how the brain represents the emotion of aesthetic experience. This project will establish the characteristics of flowers and floral design that govern their appeal using large scale web based data collection, and identify the neural representation of floral beauty using integrative data analysis. Outcomes of the project are expected to help flower growers and designers with product planning, supporting industry sustainabili ....Natural form, aesthetics and the human brain. This project aims to study how the brain represents the emotion of aesthetic experience. This project will establish the characteristics of flowers and floral design that govern their appeal using large scale web based data collection, and identify the neural representation of floral beauty using integrative data analysis. Outcomes of the project are expected to help flower growers and designers with product planning, supporting industry sustainability. The project will also establish how the brain generates positive experience in response to our visual environment, promoting well-being by enabling informed visual design decisions.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE200101468
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$413,614.00
Summary
Context matters: from sensory processing to decision making. Contextual modulation refers to prominent changes in the processing of information in brain and perception caused by interactions across space and time. Over the past two decades, an enormous amount of work has shown that spatial contextual effects occur throughout the sensory processing hierarchy. However, there has been little work examining how temporal context effects affect information processing and operate for high-level attribu ....Context matters: from sensory processing to decision making. Contextual modulation refers to prominent changes in the processing of information in brain and perception caused by interactions across space and time. Over the past two decades, an enormous amount of work has shown that spatial contextual effects occur throughout the sensory processing hierarchy. However, there has been little work examining how temporal context effects affect information processing and operate for high-level attributes of stimuli as well as interactions of self and environment. The project aims to fill this gap to further understand the nature and mechanisms of temporal contextual modulation on sensory information processing, perception, perceptual judgement and decision making at cellular, circuit and cognitive levels.Read moreRead less
Functional imaging of colour pathways in the living eye. In order to repair or regenerate a diseased eye, we require knowledge of the normal pattern or nerve cell connections, and knowing how biology solves the problem of colour vision can be used to improve the design of artificial vision systems. The adaptive optics machine we will build in this project can be used to image nerve cells, fine blood vessels, and nerve fibre bundles in the normal and diseased eye. This will improve Australia's re ....Functional imaging of colour pathways in the living eye. In order to repair or regenerate a diseased eye, we require knowledge of the normal pattern or nerve cell connections, and knowing how biology solves the problem of colour vision can be used to improve the design of artificial vision systems. The adaptive optics machine we will build in this project can be used to image nerve cells, fine blood vessels, and nerve fibre bundles in the normal and diseased eye. This will improve Australia's research and development capacity in this new area of medical diagnostics. Our machine will be made available to other Australian laboratories and will improve the national capacity for making further scientific discoveries about how the visual system works.Read moreRead less
Discovery And Development Of Better Pain Treatments
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$9,613,850.00
Summary
Many forms of pain remain poorly treated, leading to significant quality of life and economic losses. This Program grant will discover and characterise new peptides from cone snails and spiders that modulate specific channels in nerves that are critical to the transmission of pain signals to the brain. Using advanced chemical and structural approaches, promising leads will be optimised for potency and stability and evaluated in disease and pathway-specific models of pain to establish their clini ....Many forms of pain remain poorly treated, leading to significant quality of life and economic losses. This Program grant will discover and characterise new peptides from cone snails and spiders that modulate specific channels in nerves that are critical to the transmission of pain signals to the brain. Using advanced chemical and structural approaches, promising leads will be optimised for potency and stability and evaluated in disease and pathway-specific models of pain to establish their clinical potential.Read moreRead less
ARC Centre of Excellence - Vision Science. This Centre will generate important new knowledge of the performance, logic and stability of vision and visual behaviour. This knowledge will help reduce the burden of vision impairment in Australia, increasing productivity, promoting healthy ageing and reducing the community costs of visual impairment (ca. $9.85 billion in 2004). The knowledge produced will also make possible world-class innovations in robotics, leading to novel automated vision system ....ARC Centre of Excellence - Vision Science. This Centre will generate important new knowledge of the performance, logic and stability of vision and visual behaviour. This knowledge will help reduce the burden of vision impairment in Australia, increasing productivity, promoting healthy ageing and reducing the community costs of visual impairment (ca. $9.85 billion in 2004). The knowledge produced will also make possible world-class innovations in robotics, leading to novel automated vision systems with applications in industry and national security. Other knowledge will develop novel diagnostic technologies, for application in health delivery.Read moreRead less
Bio-inspired camouflage to prevent shark attacks on surfers. Bio-inspired camouflage to prevent shark attacks on surfers. This project aims to develop a new shark deterrent technology to protect surfers and paddlers. Shark attacks are physically and emotionally devastating for the victims, and make the community disproportionately afraid. Surfers are at most risk of attack, but current surfboard-mounted deterrents are ineffective and not widely used. This project will build on the recent discove ....Bio-inspired camouflage to prevent shark attacks on surfers. Bio-inspired camouflage to prevent shark attacks on surfers. This project aims to develop a new shark deterrent technology to protect surfers and paddlers. Shark attacks are physically and emotionally devastating for the victims, and make the community disproportionately afraid. Surfers are at most risk of attack, but current surfboard-mounted deterrents are ineffective and not widely used. This project will build on the recent discovery that white sharks do not attack counter-illuminated (light emitting) seal-shaped decoys, and use new information about shark vision to understand why this ‘camouflage’ is so successful. This will also help to protect threatened shark species by reducing reliance on culling programs to keep people safe in the water.Read moreRead less
Multimodal retinal imaging provides "insight" into cerebrovascular ageing. Multimodal retinal imaging provides "insight" into cerebrovascular ageing. This project aims to develop a multi-modal imaging technology platform to simultaneously measure amyloid beta and its neurovascular sequelae to identify novel early biomarkers of ageing in the eye and brain. The growing ageing population is an increasing socioeconomic burden. The central nervous system is particularly susceptible to ageing, which i ....Multimodal retinal imaging provides "insight" into cerebrovascular ageing. Multimodal retinal imaging provides "insight" into cerebrovascular ageing. This project aims to develop a multi-modal imaging technology platform to simultaneously measure amyloid beta and its neurovascular sequelae to identify novel early biomarkers of ageing in the eye and brain. The growing ageing population is an increasing socioeconomic burden. The central nervous system is particularly susceptible to ageing, which is difficult to measure at its onset. Critically, as the eye is an easily accessible extension of the cortex, retinal imaging may be a non-invasive surrogate to assess ageing changes in the brain. Anticipated outcomes are a sensitive detector of neural ageing, improved preventative measures, reducing the socioeconomic burden of ageing, and improved quality of life.Read moreRead less
Improved effectiveness of cochlear implants through new simultaneous stimulation techniques. Cochlear implants have brought the gift of hearing to 250,000 people worldwide and are an excellent example of Australian innovation. This project will examine an improved "high fidelity" stimulation strategy with the objective of defining a safe stimulus range for clinical use and providing a commercial advantage for Cochlear Ltd.