The role of the immune system in pain is emerging from recent discoveries, and may hold the key to novel pain treatments. Most people experience brief gut infections from food or contagion without long-term consequences. Many others suffer symptoms for years afterwards - probably the best example of immune-based pain. Our project investigates how immune cells communicate with sensory nerves, and how these communications change from both angles after gut infection or inflammation.
Transient Receptor Potential Channels (TRPs) As Transducers And Targets In Primary Visceral Afferents
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$669,130.00
Summary
Transient receptor potential, or TRP channels, are involved in generating many of the sensations we perceive, such as heat, cold, touch and pain. Some TRP channels are specialized to signal pain from visceral organs, which we must investigate if we are to find treatments for visceral pain, which are currently lacking.
Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment And Facilities - Grant ID: LE0561231
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$671,715.00
Summary
MRI GRID Computing Facility: Design, Optimisation and Image Processing. The MRI Grid Computing Facility provides the IT infrastructure to achieve effective e-research in the area of magnetic resonance (MR) imaging, a field of neuroscience research that revolutionizes the way brain diseases are identified and treated. The facility consists of a dedicated high performance grid compute engine, distributed visualisation workstations, and distributed data warehouse facilities. Software tools acc ....MRI GRID Computing Facility: Design, Optimisation and Image Processing. The MRI Grid Computing Facility provides the IT infrastructure to achieve effective e-research in the area of magnetic resonance (MR) imaging, a field of neuroscience research that revolutionizes the way brain diseases are identified and treated. The facility consists of a dedicated high performance grid compute engine, distributed visualisation workstations, and distributed data warehouse facilities. Software tools accessible through the Internet will enable researchers to archive, retrieve and exchange data and software; access distributed MR image databases and the latest MR image analysis tools; schedule analysis tasks on the grid compute engine, the outcomes of which will be visualized by the visualization workstations.Read moreRead less
ARC Research Network on Intelligent Sensors, Sensor Networks and Information Processing. Sensor networks, a collection of diverse sensors interconnected via an ad-hoc communication network, are identified as one of the key technologies that over the next two decades will change the way we live. This research network brings together an interdisciplinary team of outstanding Australian researchers representing all the key disciplines required to successfully deploy sensor networks and links this te ....ARC Research Network on Intelligent Sensors, Sensor Networks and Information Processing. Sensor networks, a collection of diverse sensors interconnected via an ad-hoc communication network, are identified as one of the key technologies that over the next two decades will change the way we live. This research network brings together an interdisciplinary team of outstanding Australian researchers representing all the key disciplines required to successfully deploy sensor networks and links this team with the foremost international authorities and leading industry players in the area of sensor networks. This research network will guide collaborative research that will ensure Australia to play a world leading role in sensor network development and implementation.
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Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE130101775
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$375,000.00
Summary
Distributed large-scale optimisation methods in computer vision. With the number of images and video available over the internet reaching billions and growing, the need for new tools for handling and interpreting such huge amounts of data is quickly becoming apparent. This project will focus on developing new optimisation methods for efficiently computing solutions for a broad class of large-scale problems.
Investigation and development of robust rule discovery and classification system. This research focuses on a national research priority, namely smart information use. The expected outcomes of the project will greatly advance intelligent system design, such as automatic decision making, fault detection and problem diagnosis, for finance, medical, telecom and many other areas. It has great potential for commercialisation and earning incomes for the future research. The publications will benefit th ....Investigation and development of robust rule discovery and classification system. This research focuses on a national research priority, namely smart information use. The expected outcomes of the project will greatly advance intelligent system design, such as automatic decision making, fault detection and problem diagnosis, for finance, medical, telecom and many other areas. It has great potential for commercialisation and earning incomes for the future research. The publications will benefit the future development of intelligent systems for dealing with missing data. This project directly supports a PhD student and two research assistants who will most likely continue their higher degree study. These contribute to regional tertiary education.Read moreRead less
Attentional asymmetries for navigation in healthy and clinical groups. This project plans to investigate how differences in attentional capacity between the left and right sides of the brain affect the ability to walk or manoeuvre vehicles between obstacles. To navigate our environment and avoid obstacles, we need to attend to stimuli that are important and ignore those that are not. Unfortunately, the brain’s attentional capacity is limited, which can result in errors and collisions. Using the ....Attentional asymmetries for navigation in healthy and clinical groups. This project plans to investigate how differences in attentional capacity between the left and right sides of the brain affect the ability to walk or manoeuvre vehicles between obstacles. To navigate our environment and avoid obstacles, we need to attend to stimuli that are important and ignore those that are not. Unfortunately, the brain’s attentional capacity is limited, which can result in errors and collisions. Using the techniques of cognitive neuroscience, the project aims to provide a better understanding of the cognitive and neural mechanisms that govern attention in an applied setting. It expects to identify the factors that exacerbate lapses in attention and collisions. The effect of everyday impediments such as mobile phones, alcohol and fatigue will be investigated together with means of minimising these attentional lapses and improving safety.Read moreRead less
Semantic change detection through large-scale learning. This project aims to develop technologies which understand the content of images before higher-level analysis is performed. This approach is intended to allow more accurate and reliable decisions to be made using automated image analysis than has previously been possible. The project will particularly investigate the detection of change in the contents of an image.
Automated analysis of multi-modal medical data using deep belief networks. This project will develop an improved breast cancer computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system that incorporates mammography, ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging. This system will be based on recently developed deep learning techniques, which have the capacity to process multi-modal data in a unified and optimal manner. The advantage of this technique is that it is able to automatically learn both the relevant features t ....Automated analysis of multi-modal medical data using deep belief networks. This project will develop an improved breast cancer computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system that incorporates mammography, ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging. This system will be based on recently developed deep learning techniques, which have the capacity to process multi-modal data in a unified and optimal manner. The advantage of this technique is that it is able to automatically learn both the relevant features to analyse in each modality and the hidden relationships between them. The use of deep belief networks has produced promising results in several fields, such as speech recognition, and so this project believes that our approach has the potential to improve both the sensitivity and specificity of breast cancer detection.Read moreRead less
Closing the loop between salience and brain activity. This project aims to understand how animals exposed to an abundance of highly complex information decide what to attend to, that is, how they determine visual saliency. The project will approach this question by systematically tracking visual decision-making in the smallest animal brains, in closed-loop virtual reality environment. This approach will uncover basic working principles applicable to any system that needs to pay attention in a vi ....Closing the loop between salience and brain activity. This project aims to understand how animals exposed to an abundance of highly complex information decide what to attend to, that is, how they determine visual saliency. The project will approach this question by systematically tracking visual decision-making in the smallest animal brains, in closed-loop virtual reality environment. This approach will uncover basic working principles applicable to any system that needs to pay attention in a visually cluttered world, from insects to humans or autonomous vehicles.Read moreRead less