Preventing Academic Difficulties In Preterm Children: An Adaptive Working Memory Training Intervention.
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$711,566.00
Summary
Preterm children exhibit high rates of learning disability which has considerable social and economic consequences. It is proposed that these learning difficulties are related to reduced working memory capacity. This randomised controlled trial will investigate the ability of an established working memory training program to improve academic functioning and prevent learning disability in children born extremely preterm. Neuroimaging will be performed to study functional neuroplasticity associate ....Preterm children exhibit high rates of learning disability which has considerable social and economic consequences. It is proposed that these learning difficulties are related to reduced working memory capacity. This randomised controlled trial will investigate the ability of an established working memory training program to improve academic functioning and prevent learning disability in children born extremely preterm. Neuroimaging will be performed to study functional neuroplasticity associated with improved working memory capacity.Read moreRead less
Preventing Early Academic Problems By Improving Working Memory: Translational Randomised Trial
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$831,085.00
Summary
Learning difficulties are common and can cause school failure and poor self-esteem. They are associated with specific problems with temporarily remembering and using information (‘working memory’). Research suggests that improving working memory might improve academic achievement. We will study this intervention in a large group of primary school children who have poor working memory. If successful, the intervention will provide a way to improve the learning skills of these high-risk children.
A Window Of Vulnerability: Impaired Fear Inhibition In Adolescent Rats
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$335,849.00
Summary
Adolescence is a period of increased vulnerability to anxiety disorders. The brain undergoes substantial maturation during adolescence, particularly the prefrontal cortex (PFC), a region critical for inhibiting fear. This project examines why fear inhibition is impaired in adolescents and compares the neural mechanisms mediating treatments that enhance fear reduction in adolescence. This research adds new knowledge about novel approaches for early interventions for adolescent anxiety.
A core feature of clinical anxiety is the inability to learn about safety and suppress fear. Impaired safety learning underpins excessive fear responding, overgeneralisation of fear, as well as treatment resistance in clinical anxiety. Very little is known about the brain mechanisms for learned safety. This project maps and manipulates these mechanisms to lay the basic science foundation for the next generation of treatments of anxiety.
Brain Circuits Promoting Abstinence And Preventing Relapse To Alcohol Seeking
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$591,995.00
Summary
This project maps and manipulates the brain circuits that promote abstinence from alcohol use. It uses new techniques from neuroscience to control the activity of specific cell types in discrete brain circuits. In this way we can alter the activity of these circuits to build on the normal neural restorative processes that occur during abstinence from alcohol use to reduce, and possibly prevent, relapse.
Disorder in the circuits that process emotional stimuli are central in the pathogenesis of anxiety disorders. In this grant we will study the circuits that are inolved in fear learnng. Our results will provide the background to developing more effective therapies for a range of anxiety related disorders such as generalised anxiety and post traumatic stress disorder.
A Memory Retrieval - Extinction Procedure To Prevent Relapse To Drug Seeking
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$387,929.00
Summary
This project shows how relapse to drug seeking can be modulated, and possibly prevented, by novel approaches that manipulate the stability of drug related memories.
Strengthening Frontline Clinicians’ Infection Control: A Multi-method Study To Reduce MRSA Infection And Transmission
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$800,339.00
Summary
Despite handwashing initiatives and the introduction of alcohol gels, cross-infection in hospitals remains a terrible risk for patients and creates a huge cost for health care funders. This study deploys a video-based technique called video reflexivity to alert frontline clinicians to the infection risks that are inherent in their every practice, educating them to become smarter about such risk.
Enhancing Extinction Of Alcohol-Predicitve Stimuli Through Modulation Of Noradrenergic Signaling
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$374,508.00
Summary
A major obstacle for alcohol-abuse treatment is the high risk of relapse and stimuli previously paired with alcohol use contribute importantly to this risk. Reducing the ability of such stimuli to trigger alcohol-seeking behaviors could significantly improve treatment outcomes. The experiments in the current proposal will develop both behavioral and pharmacological strategies for improving extinction learning with the long term goal of reducing the ability of stimuli to elicit alcohol-seeking.
Problems in learning, memory and other complex mental processes are common to many brain disorders. This project will study the impact of mutations on a family of genes reported in autism and schizophrenia, on complex cognitive behaviours using novel behavioural technologies. This will not only shed fundamental insights into the specific mental processes regulated by these genes and their role in disease, but importantly provide novel targets for the development of therapies.