The Rane And Spain Routes In The Brain: Functional Studies And Remediation In Dyslexia Subtypes.
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$374,426.00
Summary
According to a recent DEST report a disturbingly high number of Australian school children are failing to meet a minimum acceptable standard in literacy . Failure to reach these standards is associated with poorer outcomes in mental health and socioeconomic status, greater representation among the prison population and with failure to achieve to true ability. Further, failure to correct these problems may well result in transmission of the problems associated with failed literacy into the next g ....According to a recent DEST report a disturbingly high number of Australian school children are failing to meet a minimum acceptable standard in literacy . Failure to reach these standards is associated with poorer outcomes in mental health and socioeconomic status, greater representation among the prison population and with failure to achieve to true ability. Further, failure to correct these problems may well result in transmission of the problems associated with failed literacy into the next generation. Despite the obvious immense social and personal ramifications and cost, literacy instruction for adults continues to lack a theoretical and research based approach . It is plain that improving population literacy would have significant benefits and it is also plain that early detection, intervention and remediation is desirable. This project brings to bear on these important aims current expertise in the nature of reading, how children learn to read and why some have so much difficulty in doing so, and techniques for determining the neural substrates of the mechanisms involved in reading and learning to read. We will subdivide child readers on the basis of their ability to read words using the letter to sound route or dictionary look-up route. We will use magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy to examine which parts of the brain are disrupted and-or disconnected when ability to read in either of these two routes is poor. We will then remediate these poor readers using targetted remediation therapy and re-image them to see whether remediation has altered the way the brain reads.Read moreRead less
Quantum Generative Diffusion Models for Molecular Research. This project will devise quantum generative diffusion models to equip classical counterparts with the ability to harness quantum data that naturally arise in molecular research. Theoretical foundations for analysing fast sampling methods with the help of inductive bias regarding the input data and employed circuits will validate efficient quantum generative diffusion models that have training and sampling advantages over classical count ....Quantum Generative Diffusion Models for Molecular Research. This project will devise quantum generative diffusion models to equip classical counterparts with the ability to harness quantum data that naturally arise in molecular research. Theoretical foundations for analysing fast sampling methods with the help of inductive bias regarding the input data and employed circuits will validate efficient quantum generative diffusion models that have training and sampling advantages over classical counterparts. Outcomes include applications in molecular conformation generation, compound screening, and drug design. The innovative research will significantly benefit Australia’s science, industry and health, and will maintain Australia’s global leading role in quantum machine learning and molecular research.Read moreRead less
Functional Connectivity Between Visual Cortical Areas In The Non-human Primate
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$387,585.00
Summary
Visual information going from the eyes to the brain is processed in different parts of the brain to extract useful information. However, to be able to select what is important from among the vast number of objects in the scene, top-down signals from higher areas need to act on incoming signals in earlier areas. This project aims to identify what sort of neural pathways are involved in this and how it is done at the cellular level.
Structural And Functional Studies On The Interaction Between Alpha2-Antiplasmin And Plasmin
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$280,400.00
Summary
Fibrinolysis is the process by which the body dissolves clots. In this proposal we aim to investigate how the fibrinolysis inhibitor alpha2-antiplasmin interacts with the clot dissolving protease enzyme plasmin. These data will be useful for developing new approaches to accelerate plasmin-mediated clot breakdown.
Auditory Processing Deficits In Specific Language Impairment And Specific Reading Disability:Their Effects And Treatment
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$314,250.00
Summary
One possible cause of specific language impairment (SLI) and specific reading disability (SRD; commonly known as dyslexia) is an inability to discriminate between sounds. Such an impairment could affect the ability to discriminate between simple speech sounds (phonemes) which are the basic building blocks for developing spoken language and reading skills. How many children with SLI or SRD have poor sound discrimination? What pattern of spoken language and reading impairments do these children ha ....One possible cause of specific language impairment (SLI) and specific reading disability (SRD; commonly known as dyslexia) is an inability to discriminate between sounds. Such an impairment could affect the ability to discriminate between simple speech sounds (phonemes) which are the basic building blocks for developing spoken language and reading skills. How many children with SLI or SRD have poor sound discrimination? What pattern of spoken language and reading impairments do these children have as a result of this impairment? Can poor sound discrimination be fixed? If it can, does it improve spoken language and reading impairments? And if it does, does it have an immediate effect or does it take some time to make a difference? These are some of the questions that will be addressed by this research. The answers will help us develop a training program that focuses specifically on improving the sound discrimination abilities of children who really need it. This will be a more efficient and inexpensive (if not free) than the Fast ForWord program that trains multiple non-verbal and verbal processing abilities regardless of whether a child has an impairment in all (or any) of these abilities and is therefore time consuming (approximately 80 hours) and expensive (approximately $AUD2000). The data will also help up better identify the spoken and written language profiles that characterise children who have sound discrimination deficits so we can better predict whether they would benefit from training programs such as Fast ForWord. And the data will tell use whether impaired sound discrimination can be used to predict whether infants might be at risk for later spoken language and reading problems.Read moreRead less
Structure And Function Of The Third Geniculocortical Pathway In Primates.
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$296,777.00
Summary
Our understanding of the human visual system has been based on the idea that there are two main nerve pathways from the eye to the brain. One, called the parvocellular pathway, is for colour and detail vision, and the other, called the magnocellular pathway, is for movement perception. Damage to either pathway by disease such as glaucoma, or a lesion such as stroke, will cause specific changes in visual perception and these changes can be used to diagnose the nature of the disease or lesion. We ....Our understanding of the human visual system has been based on the idea that there are two main nerve pathways from the eye to the brain. One, called the parvocellular pathway, is for colour and detail vision, and the other, called the magnocellular pathway, is for movement perception. Damage to either pathway by disease such as glaucoma, or a lesion such as stroke, will cause specific changes in visual perception and these changes can be used to diagnose the nature of the disease or lesion. We will study a recently recognised third subdivision of the visual pathway, called the koniocellular pathway. The properties of koniocellular cells have not previously been studied in anthropoid primates, and their importance for human vision is not well understood. We will study the way that koniocellular cells respond to moving and patterned stimuli, and their connections with the cerebral cortex, in order to determine whether this pathway could contribute to aspects of normal and abnormal visual perception. We will follow up our preliminary evidence that koniocellular cells respond to visual stimuli of the type used to diagnose the early stages of eye diseases such as glaucoma. The results will give us a better understanding of the way that the nervous system processes visual information, and will clarify the basis of disturbances to normal visual function.Read moreRead less
Interactions Between Afferent Channels In Vision: Basic Neurophysiology And Implications For The Pathology Of Dyslexia
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$423,662.00
Summary
We intend to study the interactions between different information channels in the primate visual system. The pathways from the eyes to the brain consist of different types of nerve fibres carrying distinct sorts of information. These channels have been believed to remain separate as they transmit the information through various levels of the brain. Finally, in the neocortex, it has been suggested that the visual information goes along two major streams, one dorsally to the parietal cortex and th ....We intend to study the interactions between different information channels in the primate visual system. The pathways from the eyes to the brain consist of different types of nerve fibres carrying distinct sorts of information. These channels have been believed to remain separate as they transmit the information through various levels of the brain. Finally, in the neocortex, it has been suggested that the visual information goes along two major streams, one dorsally to the parietal cortex and the other ventrally to the temporal cortex. Based upon recent studies, we question this strict segregation of the pathways and propose to study how interactions occur between the two streams and whether the two channels do come together at early levels of the visual pathway. We will also test our idea whether, of the dorsal and ventral streams, one stream might actually gate the other and decide what goes through the other stream. In fact, from our own recent studies, we have reason to believe that the way our attentional system might operate to select salient aspects of the visual scene may be through the dorsal stream selecting what goes into the ventral stream, which seems to be responsible for identifying objects. In the proposed project we will test this idea rigorously. From various lines of evidence, we also argue that the neural mechanisms that underlie this attentional spotlight is exploited by human children when they learn to read. It follows that any defect in the dorsal pathway or in the fibres and cells that feed into this will cause difficulties in reading. We believe this to be the underlying problem in dyslexic children. The project will undertake a number of experiments to test this idea.Read moreRead less
An International Randomised Trial Of Low-dose Aspirin To Prevent Recurrent Venous Thromboembolism (INSPIRE)
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$1,989,986.00
Summary
Patients who develop venous blood clots or pulmonary embolism, without an underyling cause, are at very high risk of recurrence once anticoagulant treatment (warfarin) is discontinued. The international INSPIRE trial is assessing whether low-dose aspirin treatment (a simple and cheap alternative to warfarin) is effective and safe in preventing further blood clots. If proven effective, aspirin could potentially prevent thousands of patients worldwide from experiencing such events.