Examining The Metabolic And Cognitive Deficits Caused By Insulin Resistance In The Ventral Striatum
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$400,372.00
Summary
Brain insulin resistance is thought to cause metabolic and cognitive deficits, but the underlying neural mechanisms remain elusive. This project addresses this gap in our knowledge by examining how brain insulin resistance disrupts the metabolic regulation of food intake and the cognitive control of actions. The outcomes will provide new insights in disorders characterised by brain insulin resistance such as obesity and dementia.
Schizophrenia is a serious and debilitating psychotic illness often characterized by delusions: fixed, false beliefs that preoccupy the patient and affect behaviour, and which are resistant to current drug treatments. This project investigates dysfunctions in belief mechanisms that allow delusions to form and be maintained. This will help clinicians design more effective programs of cognitive behavioural therapy for psychosis by allowing more focussed interventions to reduce delusions.
Neuroprotection Against Parkinson’s Disease With Remote Photobiomodulation
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$314,818.00
Summary
Treating the head of rodents with low-intensity 670nm light protects against Parkinson’s disease (PD), but the large size of the human skull and brain precludes clinical translation of this treatment. We have discovered that the brain is also protected when light is targeted at peripheral tissues (e.g. a limb), overcoming problems of delivery. This project aims to optimise this treatment and better understand how it works, to lay the scientific basis for a clinical trial.
Disorders Of Action Control And Learning-related Plasticity In The Basal Ganglia
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$434,874.00
Summary
Disorders of the basal ganglia have long been known to produce severe cognitive symptoms including a deficit in the control of voluntary action. This project will assess the learning processes through which humans and other animals acquire such actions. We will systematically investigate changes in cellular plasticity associated with the acquisition of new actions to establish the role that it plays in action control under normal and pathological conditions.
A Temporal Profile Of Signaling Via Phosphorylation During Myocardial Ischemia - Reperfusion Injury
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$369,641.00
Summary
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the major cause of death in Australians and sequelae post-myocardial ischemia - reperfusion (I-R) are responsible for the greatest proportion of CVD-related mortality. Despite this burden, there is little known of the molecular events that mediate I-R. This project will utilize cutting-edge technology to elucidate the molecular signaling events that lead to I-R injury, as well as determine the basis for protection afforded by clinical pre- and post-conditioning.
Enhancing The Treatment Of Anxiety: The Role Of Mental Imagery
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$246,491.00
Summary
This proposal will conduct the first pre-clinical study augmenting the effectiveness of cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) in the treatment of anxiety disorders using mental imagery. There is an urgent need to develop means to increase the success rate of CBT. This study will utilise recent developments in cognitive neuroscience to show that mental imagery plays an important role in the mechanisms of CBT.
The Extinction Of Conditioned Fear And Its Implications For Cue Exposure Therapy
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$322,430.00
Summary
This project studies extinction of Pavlovian conditioned fear reactions in rats. Extinction of these reactions is an animal model for exposure therapy used in the treatment of anxiety disorders in people. In exposure therapy, the patient, aided by the clinician, confronts trauma-related cues in the absence of any overt danger. The intention of this therapy is to reduce the ability of the trauma-related cues to provoke the fear reactions that are undermining the patient's quality of life. In Pavl ....This project studies extinction of Pavlovian conditioned fear reactions in rats. Extinction of these reactions is an animal model for exposure therapy used in the treatment of anxiety disorders in people. In exposure therapy, the patient, aided by the clinician, confronts trauma-related cues in the absence of any overt danger. The intention of this therapy is to reduce the ability of the trauma-related cues to provoke the fear reactions that are undermining the patient's quality of life. In Pavlovian conditioning, subjects (typically rats) are exposed to a signaling relation between an initially neutral stimulus (e.g., a noise) and a feared outcome (e.g., foot shock). When later repeatedly exposed to the initially neutral but now feared stimulus (the noise) in the absence of the feared outcome, the fear reactions it acquired progressively decline until eventually it fails to elicit any such reactions. The fear reactions are said to have been extinguished. There has been significant progress in understanding the psychological processes and neural mechanisms underlying the acquisition of fear reactions, but much less is known about the processes and mechanisms underlying the extinction of these reactions. The project has two general objectives. The first is to determine the conditions of extinction training that promote long-term loss of fear reactions. The second objective is to determine how the brain controls this extinction of learned fear. Achieving these aims will be significant for two reasons. First, it will contribute to understanding the mechanisms by which animals (including people) learn to adjust their behaviour to bring it into line with the current relations that exist between events in the world. Second, it will provide important information about how such adjustment is facilitated or impaired across extinction training and, thereby, contribute towards understanding both the successes and failures of cue exposure therapy for fear-related disorders.Read moreRead less