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
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE150101108
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$352,000.00
Summary
The ups and downs of visuospatial attention. The brain has a remarkable capacity to provide a coherent experience of the world by seamlessly integrating sights and sounds from different locations. It is only after brain damage, or when faced with a high attentional load, that our limitations become apparent. The project aims to investigate these limitations by determining how spatial location influences attention in relation to distractibility, cross-modal input and emotionality. Eye tracking an ....The ups and downs of visuospatial attention. The brain has a remarkable capacity to provide a coherent experience of the world by seamlessly integrating sights and sounds from different locations. It is only after brain damage, or when faced with a high attentional load, that our limitations become apparent. The project aims to investigate these limitations by determining how spatial location influences attention in relation to distractibility, cross-modal input and emotionality. Eye tracking and physiological measures of arousal will be combined with traditional cognitive measures to provide a deeper understanding of spatial attention. This project aims to improve attentional models and develop innovative strategies to increase safety by decreasing inattention and distraction.Read moreRead less
Improving academic outcomes by moderating anxiety in children with autism. The project aims to investigate links between anxiety and academic enablers for children with autism. As a group, these children are currently achieving at lower rates than their peers, with implications for their future social and economic wellbeing. Effective interventions to improve educational outcomes are lacking. This project will investigate how anxiety, a commonly occurring condition in autism, impacts attitudes a ....Improving academic outcomes by moderating anxiety in children with autism. The project aims to investigate links between anxiety and academic enablers for children with autism. As a group, these children are currently achieving at lower rates than their peers, with implications for their future social and economic wellbeing. Effective interventions to improve educational outcomes are lacking. This project will investigate how anxiety, a commonly occurring condition in autism, impacts attitudes and behaviours that facilitate students’ participation in and ability to benefit from academic instruction in the classroom. Findings are intended to provide an evidence base for the development of an intervention suitable for use by service providers to increase academic achievement in children with autism.Read moreRead less
Image processing techniques for artificial human vision systems. Blindness affects millions of people worldwide and over 100,000 Australians. Our project supports quality of life improvements for them by developing image processing techniques necessary for artificial human vision systems: "bionic eyes". Our approach will extract the most visually informative content in a scene,allowing low resolution images to be generated which optimise usage of the limited number of eletrodes available in prot ....Image processing techniques for artificial human vision systems. Blindness affects millions of people worldwide and over 100,000 Australians. Our project supports quality of life improvements for them by developing image processing techniques necessary for artificial human vision systems: "bionic eyes". Our approach will extract the most visually informative content in a scene,allowing low resolution images to be generated which optimise usage of the limited number of eletrodes available in prototype bionic eye implants. Psychophysical tests presenting such modified images to normally sighted participants will verify the effectiveness of this approach. The techniques developed will provide a real-time image processing toolkit for visual protheses, with significant commercial and social benefits including enhancement of Australilia's neuroprostheses industry profile.Read moreRead less
Transforming The Diagnosis And Management Of Severe Neurocognitive Disorders Through Genomics
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$2,499,330.00
Summary
Neurocognitive disorders (NCD) are one of the most common genetic conditions in our society and it results with a need for ongoing permanent care for many affected people. Until recently, only 30% of people with NCD could be diagnosed but this has changed with the availability of genomic testing where all genes can be tested at once. The use of genomics in the CRE will lead to new NCD genes being identified and this information being translated into a clinical setting.
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE190100136
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$385,288.00
Summary
The influence of naturalistic context on visual short-term memory. This project aims to understand visual short-term memory in natural visual environments using a combination of behavioural and brain data. Visual short-term memory is thought to be critical to complex cognitive tasks such as learning and problem solving, but how low-level image context and high-level semantic information influence short-term memory is poorly understood. This project will use advanced computational image processin ....The influence of naturalistic context on visual short-term memory. This project aims to understand visual short-term memory in natural visual environments using a combination of behavioural and brain data. Visual short-term memory is thought to be critical to complex cognitive tasks such as learning and problem solving, but how low-level image context and high-level semantic information influence short-term memory is poorly understood. This project will use advanced computational image processing tools, neuro-imaging, and psychophysical experiments to provide a comprehensive analysis of short-term memory in naturalistic images. The expected outcome is a better understanding of the neural bottlenecks that limit short-term memory, and a model that predicts memory constraints in natural visual environments.Read moreRead less
Normalising Ability Diversity through Career Transitions:Disability at Work. This project aims to investigate how the higher education sector can better support people with disabilities to transition from economic exclusion to work. One in five Australians have a disability and of these 47.3% are not employed. This is a significant issue with regulatory failures and challenges often affecting rights to education and work being exercised on an equal basis. This project seeks to examine internatio ....Normalising Ability Diversity through Career Transitions:Disability at Work. This project aims to investigate how the higher education sector can better support people with disabilities to transition from economic exclusion to work. One in five Australians have a disability and of these 47.3% are not employed. This is a significant issue with regulatory failures and challenges often affecting rights to education and work being exercised on an equal basis. This project seeks to examine international legal norms, theories and strategic and operational practices in the higher education sector. Expected outcomes include advances in scholarship on ableism, informed policy reform, and transferable operational processes for the education and employment sectors, to improve the transition of people with disabilities to work.Read moreRead less
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.
Every Day Matters: Reducing School Non-Attendance in Autistic Students. Autistic children miss one day a week of school, three times more than their peers. This significantly impacts their learning, wellbeing and later, their vocational outcomes. This project aims to identify the factors that put autistic children at increased risk of missing school and map the supports and interventions used to reduce school non-attendance. Expected outcomes include an autism-specific model of the how and why s ....Every Day Matters: Reducing School Non-Attendance in Autistic Students. Autistic children miss one day a week of school, three times more than their peers. This significantly impacts their learning, wellbeing and later, their vocational outcomes. This project aims to identify the factors that put autistic children at increased risk of missing school and map the supports and interventions used to reduce school non-attendance. Expected outcomes include an autism-specific model of the how and why school non-attendance is elevated for autistic students. It is anticipated that this model make the important step of enabling teachers and professionals to identify which autistic children are most at risk of absenteeism and select the best strategies to support a positive and beneficial return to school.Read moreRead less
Probing cross modal interactions in the perception of object motion and self-motion. How the brain integrates information from the different senses is not yet understood. This project aims first, to uncover how the brain integrates sound and visual information when perceiving moving objects and second, to probe more complex sensory interactions between sound, vision, and our vestibular senses when perceiving self-motion. This project will expand Australia's knowledge base, strengthen collabora ....Probing cross modal interactions in the perception of object motion and self-motion. How the brain integrates information from the different senses is not yet understood. This project aims first, to uncover how the brain integrates sound and visual information when perceiving moving objects and second, to probe more complex sensory interactions between sound, vision, and our vestibular senses when perceiving self-motion. This project will expand Australia's knowledge base, strengthen collaborative ties between Australia and Japan, and provide unique training opportunities for Australian and Japanese students. Publication of research in top-ranking journals will further promote Australian science abroad. Results will lead to improvements in the design of human-machine interfaces in both industry and entertainment.Read moreRead less