PRESENTATION: The neuroscience of attention, by Dr. Søren Kyllingsbæk (Copenhagen). Thursday 19th December 10:30am-11:30am

The School of Psychology is proudly hosting a talk by Dr. Søren Kyllingsbæk, Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen.  If you're interested in meeting with Dr. Kyllingsbæk while he visits Newcastle, please email Dr. Ami Eidels (ami.eidels@newcastle.edu.au).


TITLE: A Neural Theory of Visual Attention

WHERE: Keats Reading room (Aviation Building, AVLG17).

WHEN: Thursday 19th December 2013, 10:30am-11:30am.

ABSTRACT: The neural theory of visual attention (NTVA) developed by Bundesen, Habekost, and Kyllingsbæk (2005) is a neural interpretation of Bundesen’s (1990) theory of visual attention (TVA). The theory accounts both for a wide range of attentional effects in human performance (reaction times and error rates) and for a wide range of effects observed in firing rates of single cells in the primate visual system. NTVA provides a mathematical framework to unify the two fields of research—formulas bridging cognition and neurophysiology. I will present NTVA and related new theoretical ideas regarding visual encoding and visual short-term memory.

JUST PUBLISHED: Personal Qualities Assessment Across Cultures

Myself (Miles Bore), Don Munro and David Powis have spent the last 15 years developing and testing personality questionnaires and ability tests for use in the selection of medical students. While much of the focus of our research has been the use of these tests in Australia and the UK, we have also had opportunities to trial the tests in countries where English is not the first language such as Sweden, Israel, Japan, Taiwan, Nepal and Fiji. Recently we were approached by Saharnaz Nedjat from Tehran University of Medical Sciences asking if we would be interested in running the Personal Qualities Assessment tests with her in Iran. We leapt at the chance of course!

We emailed three tests to Tehran for translation into Persian: the Mental Agility Test (a 48-item high powered IQ test), the Mojac Moral Orientation Scale and our Self-Appraisal Inventory which measures the personality traits of Involvement (being empathic, confident with others and not aloof or narcissistic), Resilience (being emotionally stable and not neurotic) and Self-Control (being conscientious and not disorderly). The tests were then back-translated into English so we could check that all 240 questions in the battery, not to mention the instructions for each test, had maintained their original meaning: quite a detailed job! After checking back and forth with Saharnez on a handful of questions that were proving difficult to translate we finally had it all sorted. The real test of this was whether the tests actually worked when given to applicants in Tehran.

The tests were administered to a cohort of medical students at Tehran and the findings reported in a recently published article for the journal Medical Teacher. While the article presents only basic analysis (mean differences between students who entered directly from secondary education compared to those who entered with a tertiary degree) it is the finding that the tests performed reliably when translated into Persian that pleased us most. More detail on that and other cross-cultural comparisons are for another paper.

For more details, please see the following journal article:
Nedjat, S., Bore, M., Majdzadeh, R., Rashidian, A., Munro, D., Powis, D., Karbakhsh, M., & Keshavarz, H. (2013). Comparing the cognitive, personality and moral characteristics of high school and graduate medical entrants to the Tehran University of Medical Sciences in Iran Medical Teacher, 35 (12), 1632-1637 DOI: 10.3109/0142159X.2013.826791

Further information can be found at the Personal Qualities Assessment website: http://www.pqa.net.au/

SYNERGY BETWEEN UON SCHOOL OF PSYCHOLOGY AND HNE HEALTH MAKES A GREAT 2013 PSYCHOLOGY PROFESSIONAL DAY

On Friday 15^th November, UoN School of Psychology successfully hosted and co-organised with Hunter New England Health the biggest Psychology Professional Day in the Hunter in history. More than 230 psychologists gathered together on campus from the Health Service (50%), the University (20%), private practice (15%), government agencies (14%) and NGOs (2%) for a day of professional development on promoting clinical excellence and culturally respectful practices.

Aboriginal psychology was the key theme of this year’s conference. The key note speaker Professor Judy Atkinson has been a ‘big draw’ card for this year’s conference. She is a very experienced and respected clinician and academic in the area of working with Indigenous clients, particularly children who have experienced trauma. She has an extensive track record in research on transgenerational trauma, which the school has actively incorporated in its undergraduate curriculum for first year psychology students since 2011.

The key note speaker: Prof Judy Atkinson

Several members of staff, postgraduate, and undergraduate students attended and played an active role in the day. Stuart Marlin and Sean Halpin welcomed the conference delegates on behalf of the school and psychology clinic at the beginning of the day. Stefania Paolini, as active member of the conference organising committee, acted as a key conduit between HNE and UoN; on the day she convened a stimulating symposium on Newcastle-led research on Aboriginal wellbeing with Dr Mark Lock and Dr Jo Gwynn from the Centre for Rural and Remote Mental Health Research which has attracted the participation of a group of very diverse researchers from a variety of disciplinary areas. Sean Halpin has run a well-attended interactive workshop on assessment and diagnosis and Tony Kemp has offered continuous AV assistance on the lead to the conference and on the day and assisted a long list of speakers and workshop facilitators involved n the day. 

The conference showcased the great talent of psychologists we have locally, demonstrated the varied areas of clinical excellence in practice, and stressed the importance of effective interaction between educators in the school, psychologists working in the community, and the needs of culturally diverse clients.

This year’s event has been a nice demonstration of the psychologists from HNE Health service and The University of Newcastle working together. We look forward to newer opportunities in the future!

Another successful 4th Year Conference

On Monday the 5^th November over 150 fourth year Psychology students and staff piled into buses, trains, and cars and headed to Panthers in Newcastle city to attend and present at the annual fourth year conference.  Honours students presented the results of their year’s research and the audiences were astounded with the quality of the presentations and the excellent research that had been conducted over the year. The annual photograph was taken with much mirth on the part of the photographed. In one presentation, Zisheng Chen explained the results of his study investigating Facebook and addiction to an audience which represented over 90% of the attendees; people were sitting on the floor and squeezing in the door. Karlye Damaso, Laura Wall, Mathew Marchant and Jade Frost won the Best Presentation Awards for their research investigating respectively mismatch negativity, working memory in schizophrenia, cross-species differences in decision making and maternal immune activation and its relation to schizophrenia. Excellent posters were also presented on a variety of topics with Matthew Cologon, Jade Draper, Allanah Hessel, Candice McIntyre and Richard Waters winning the Best Poster Award for their poster on mate choice decisions. Following the presentations and poster sessions, students and staff repaired to the bar for drinks and nibbles, music and dancing, and fun had by all.

Special Colloquium Dr Tony Simon Tuesday 19 November

Next week Dr Tony Simon from the UC Davis MIND Institute is visiting Newcastle. I have asked Tony to give a talk for the School on Tuesday the 19^th of November at 11.30 in the Keats Room. I know it is late notice and not on our usual colloquium day but I hope that as many as possible can attend. Tony is an excellent speaker and does research that will be of interest to many in the School.

Dr. Tony J. Simon is a paediatric cognitive neuroscientist with a primary interest in clinical translational research. His studies focus on the cognitive, affective and neural basis of learning difficulties and psychopathologies that arise in genetic disorders. Dr. Simon’s primary methodology is the use of hypothesis-driven experimental tasks to characterize and measure cognitive and affective processing. His group’s current focus is on attention and aspects of executive function, such as cognitive control and working memory, as well as affective processing of fear and threat. The focus specifically is on how these “cold” and “hot” factors vary dynamically to impact cognitive processing and emotional regulation. The clinical translational research program incorporates standardized clinical measures of anxiety, adaptive functioning and psychopathologic symptomology as well stress biology to further understand the interaction of factors that contribute to each individual’s status as what Dr. Simon and his team refer to as “copers” or “strugglers”. To assess the neural basis of these factors the team acquires data on brain morphology, function and connectivity using T1-weighted structural images, diffusion weighted images, resting-state functional images and electrophysiological/event-related potential data.

All welcome for more information please contact Linda Campbell

Psychology Research Grants at the Hunter Medical Research Institute Awards

Juanita, Renate, Elise, Peter, Lauren and Frini represented Psychology at the Hunter Medical Research Institute (HMRI) Awards last night – a bit like the HMRI Oscars! A number of our Expressions of Interests had led to invitations to submit full applications of very high quality projects. Of these, the two projects below were funded:


HMRI Dalara Foundation Project Grants
Mapping Networks in the Brain
Renate Thienel, Frini Karayanidis, Juanita Todd, Peter Stanwell, Mark Parsons, Chris Levi

This project will use Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy lmaging (MRSI) technology to measure concentrations of neurotransmitters chemicals crucial for communication in the brain and evaluate the relationship between brain function and brain structure in normal and stroke patients to improve the early detection of the disease. This project has implications for translation to clinical samples such as stroke, Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia, multiple sclerosis, dyslexia, as well as cognitive remediation and brain stimulation approaches to functional recovery.


HMRI Male Depression Project Grant
Making use of Gaming Technologies to Help Young People Suffering from Depression and Binge Drinking.
Frances Kay-Lambkin, Peter Walla, Keith Nesbitt
Supported by: Lions Club of Toronto, Lioness Club of Toronto, The Estate of the Late Reginald Leslie Radford

Depression and binge drinking represent significant community problems, particularly for young people. Despite the high prevalence of these problems and the consequent need for treatment, rates of treatment access among young people remain the lowest of any age group. Internet-based treatments have the potential to meet this challenge. By combining startle reflex modulation with behavioural assessment, we will, for the first time, have a better understanding of the cognitive and affective response of young people to web-based psychological treatment for depression and binge drinking problems. The results of this study can facilitate the development of more engaging, and thus effective interventions for young people, and provide a useful methodological approach to evaluating these domains in future treatment studies

The quality of all the work was outstanding, and the non-winners did us proud as well. A list of all awards can be found here.

2013 Professional Psychology Day

Presented by Hunter New England (HNE) Health and the University of Newcastle's School of Psychology, the Professional Psychology Day at the University's Callaghan campus is the biggest meeting of local psychologists in the Hunter.

Psychologists from HNE Health, private practice and the University will come together on 15 November to attend workshops presented by representatives from allied health and medical disciplines, as well as listen to keynote speakers including Professor Judy Atkinson.

The thematic focus of this year's event is Aboriginal psychology and Aboriginal Health related issues. Professor Atkinson has focused her community and academic life working in the field of violence, trauma and healing. Her academic contributions to the understanding of trauma related issues stemming from the violence of colonisation and the healing/recovery of Indigenous peoples from such trauma has won her the Carrick Neville Bonner Award in 2006 for her curriculum development and innovative teaching practice.

The 2013 Professional Psychology Day showcases the great talent of psychologists in the local area, and demonstrates the varied areas of clinical practice. It aims to help improve psychologists' knowledge and skills to enable them to better assess and treat clients, with the subtheme 'promoting clinical excellence and culturally respective practices' covering essential areas of psychology practice.

The day also provides University of Newcastle psychology students with an opportunity to connect with the professionals at the forefront of psychology service provision.

For more information about the 2013 Professional Psychology Day, please contact:

Dr Stefania Paolini (School of Psychology, University of Newcastle)
Stefania.Paolini@newcastle.edu.au

Mary Watson (Senior Clinical Psychologist, Child Adolescent Mental Health Service)
mary.watson@hnehealth.nsw.gov.au

A/Prof. Tanya Hanstock (Senior Clinical Psychologist, Child & Family Health Service) Tanya.Hanstock@hnehealth.nsw.gov.au

PRESENTATION: How the brain processes surprise and prediction, by Dr. Marta Garrido (Queensland Brain Institute)

The School of Psychology is proudly hosting a talk by:

Dr. Marta I. Garrido

DECRA Research Fellow

Queensland Brain Institute

The University of Queensland

Title: Sensitivity to statistical structure in the human brain

Date: Thursday 24^th October 2013, 12-1pm in Keats Reading Room (AVLG17) (video streaming to Science Offices Meeting Room, E1.32 at Ourimbah). If you would like to meet with Dr. Garrido, please contact Dr. Juanita Todd (juanita.todd@newcastle.edu.au).

Abstract: Salient or oddball events in the environment may signal potential rewards or threats. The ability to detect these events is fundamental to survival and adaptive behaviour. In this talk, I will discuss behavioural and magnetoencephalographical (MEG) data that demonstrate the brain’s ability to learn about, and detect changes to, statistical structure in sounds sequences. In addition, I will discuss the usefulness of the oddball paradigm and model-based connectivity in demonstrating functional asymmetries in audio-spatial perception.

PRESENTATION: How objects are represented in the human brain, by Dr. Tom Carlson (Macquarie University)

The School of Psychology is proudly hosting a talk by Dr. Tom
Carlson (ARC Future Fellow, Department of Cognitive Science
Macquarie University)

WHEN: Thursday 10th October 12-1pm

WHERE: AVLG17, Aviation Building, Callaghan Campus
Also videoconferenced to Ourimbah E1.32.

TITLE: Object representations in the human brain: How they
emerge, and their connection to semantic knowledge and
perceptual decision-making

ABSTRACT: Our capacity to recognize visual objects is mediated
by multiple visual areas, in particular inferior temporal cortex
(ITC). Recent technological and methodological advancements have
afforded researchers the capacity to measure the complex
geometrical structure of brain representations. In this talk, I
will describe several studies that examine how the structure of
object representations emerges in the brain, and how this
structure relates to behavior. I will first describe experiments
that use brain decoding methods and magnetoencephalography (MEG)
to study the emergence of object category structure. Our findings
suggest that hierarchical category structure (e.g. human face is
a member of the superordinate category human) is a process of
accumulating evidence in which categories solidified at early
stages of processing inform more abstract category representations
that emerge later. I will then describe two studies that examine correspondences between the structure of object representations in
human ITC and human word usage patterns and decision-making
behavior. These studies show that the structure of object
representations in ITC correlate with human word usage patterns in
language; and ITC’s representational structure predicts reaction
times for object categorization. These studies collectively provide
an important link between the geometry of brain representations and
functional behavior.

PRESENTATION: Dr. Titia Benders (Nijmegen, the Netherlands). How do babies learn language?

The School of Psychology is proudly hosting a talk by Dr. Titia
Bender (Center for Language Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen
The Netherlands)

Thursday, 3rd October, 2013, 12-1pm in AVLG17 (Aviation Building, Callaghan Campus).

How do babies learn language from the way we talk to them?

Babies learn about their native language by listening
to the speech that surrounds them. To understand how language-
learning happens in this situation, we must know: 1) what kind of
speech babies are confronted with and 2) what babies learn from
this.

Babies hear a special type of speech, because most adults speak
differently to babies. It has been proposed that parents speak
to babies in a special register to express their positive affect
and to teach them the language. I will show more fine-grained
analyses of infant-directed speech, which reveal that all parents
do is express positive affect when they speak to their baby. I
will argue that earlier results that were interpreted as language
teaching, were actually happy speech in disguise.

Even though parents do not actively teach their baby language,
babies manage to learn language from what they hear. Listening
experiments provide evidence what babies learn about the language,
but cannot reveal how they learn it. I will illustrate that the
combination of analyses of language input, listening experiments
with babies, and computational modeling can bring us a long way
in answering the question of how babies use the speech that
surrounds them to learn their native language.

Good News from the School

We are now well into the year and the Good News keeps on coming. Our new Head of School, Simon Dennis, has settled in and making is mark on the direction of the School.

Student News

Thesis Outcome

Melissa Prince Has received the outcome of her thesis and has been invited to lodge an electronic copy on NOVA. After this her qualification of PhD (Psychology) will be formalised

Elise Mansfield – Awaiting formal approval from Office of Graduate Studies and then invitation to lodge an electronic copy on NOVA. After this her qualification of PhD (Psychology) will be formalised   

The following Masters of Clinical Psychology students have had their thesis accepted and are awaiting formal awarding of their degree

Eliose Fallon and Lisa Phillips

Submission of Thesis

Toni Metelerkamp has submitted her thesis for examination for the degree of Doctor of Clinical and Health Psychology

Scholarships and funding

Amy-Lee Seward won the first Seascape & Beyond scholarship for honours research on suicide prevention.

Chloe Britts, honours student, won a Shaping Futures scholarship.
Student publications

Clinical doctorate candidate Owen Lello, supervised by Dr Keith Harris, has just published his first paper.

Cocchiniab, G., Lello, O., McIntoshc, R. D., & Della Salac, S. (2013). Phantabulation: A case of visual imagery interference on visual perception. Neurocase: The Neural Basis of Cognition. doi: 10.1080/13554794.2013.826689

Staff News

Our academics to have been busy with numerous publications and other achievements. These include:

Fellow of the Social Sciences Academy

Emeritus Professor Pat Michie has been elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. Election to the Academy is a great honour and recognition by your peers, but also as an opportunity to contribute to the important work of the Academy in promoting the advancement of the social sciences. Congratulations Pat.

Promotion and Secondment

Deb Hodgson has received a promotion to Professor and is undertaking a secondment to Acting PVC Research position.

Invitation to join NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Suicide Prevention
 Dr Keith Harris has been invited to join the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Suicide Prevention (CRESP)  http://www.cresp.edu.au/ . Dr Harris is active in suicide prevention research and is currently working with other investigators at CRESP to improve our understanding of suicide-risk individuals and how information technologies can be employed to help prevent and treat suicidal behaviours  http://www.cresp.edu.au/people/dr-keith-harris

Awards

Mark Rubin has been awarded the Australian Government’s Office for Teaching and Learning (2013) Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning.

Media and Community

Former Student, Sharna Jamadar has been selected as one of the finalists for the University of Newcastle 2013 Young Alumni Award. The recipient will be announced at the University of Newcastle Alumni Awards gala dinner on Tuesday 22 October at Newcastle City Hall.

Peter Walla was invited by Sanitarium (food company) to talk about neuroconsulting, in particular affective neuroscience relevant to the industry.

International Profile

Cornelia Herbert, a very active early career researcher from Germany (emotion and the self) visited in August.

Refereed Journal Articles

Published Articles

Greig, A. J., Patterson, A. J., Collins, C. E. &  Chalmers, K. A. (2013). Iron deficiency, cognition, mental health and fatigue in women of childbearing age: a systematic review. Journal of Nutritional Science, vol. 2, e14. doi:10.1017/jns.2013.7

Guez, D. (2013). Henry et al. (2012) homing failure formula, assumptions, and basic mathematics: a comment. Frontiers in Physiology, 4. doi:10.3389/fphys.2013.00142
Mavratzakis, A. , Molloy, E. & Walla, P. (2013). Modulation of the Startle Reflex during Brief and Sustained Exposure to Emotional Pictures. Psychology, 4, 389-395.

Walla, P. , Rosser, L. , Scharfenberger, J. , Duregger, C. & Bosshard, S. (2013). Emotion Ownership: Different Effects on Explicit Ratings and Implicit Responses. Psychology, 4, 213-216.

Guez, D., and Audley, C. (2013). Transitive or Not: A Critical Appraisal of Transitive Inference in Animals. Ethology 119, 703–726.

In Press Articles

Hawkins, G. E., Marley, A. A. J., Heathcote, A., Flynn, T. N., Louviere, J. J., & Brown, S. D. (in press) Integrating cognitive process and descriptive models of attitudes and preferences. Cognitive Science

Timora, J.R. and Budd, T.W. (In Press) Dissociation of Psychophysical and EEG Steady-State Response Measures of Cross-Modal Temporal Correspondence for Amplitude Modulated Acoustic and Vibrotactile Stimulation. International Journal of Psychophysiology.

Justin Timora (Bill Budd) and Guy Hawkins (Andrew Heathcote) are PhD students (Guy has submitted and is awaiting examiners reports)

Book Chapters 

Peter Walla and Jaak Panksepp (2013). Neuroimaging Helps to Clarify Brain Affective Processing Without Necessarily Clarifying Emotions, Novel Frontiers of Advanced Neuroimaging, Prof. Kostas Fountas (Ed.), ISBN: 978-953-51-0923-5, InTech, DOI: 10.5772/51761. Available from: http://www.intechopen.com/books/novel-frontiers-of-advanced-neuroimaging/neuroimaging-helps-to-clarify-brain-affective-processing-without-necessarily-clarifying-emotions

Peter Walla, Aimee Mavratzakis and Shannon Bosshard (2013). Neuroimaging for the Affective Brain Sciences, and Its Role in Advancing Consumer Neuroscience, Novel Frontiers of Advanced Neuroimaging, Prof. Kostas Fountas (Ed.), ISBN: 978-953-51-0923-5, InTech, DOI: 10.5772/51042. Available from: http://www.intechopen.com/books/novel-frontiers-of-advanced-neuroimaging/neuroimaging-for-the-affective-brain-sciences-and-its-role-in-advancing-consumer-neuroscience
(Shannon Bosshard and Aimee Mavratzakis are Peter’s PhD students)

Grants

Chalmers, K. A. & Karayanidis, F. (2013). Assessment of Children's Working Memory. NSW TechVouchers Scheme & ebilities Pty Ltd, $29,662.

Chalmers, K. A. & Karayanidis, F. (2013). Assessment of Children's Working Memory. Faculty of Science & IT SIRF Grant, $8,495.

JUST PUBLISHED: Your Mind is Always Spinning!

When you see a spoon upside down you do not need to mentally rotate it back to the right way up to know it is a spoon… do you? It is more likely you remember instances when you saw a spoon upside-down and know it is still a spoon. When you see unfamiliar objects upside-down (like my face) you need to return that object to the correct orientation to know whether or not it is the same object, or slightly different.

When we practice mentally manipulating objects in our environment we often see a marked improvement in our ability, we are faster and more accurate. This could be due to increased exposure to those familiar objects or improvement in our ability to mentally manipulate those objects.

In an attempt to describe these two forms of mastery, we (Provost, Johnson, Karayanidis, Brown & Heathcote, 2013) investigated the brain activity of people before and after training in a mental rotation task. When you rotate objects in your mind your brain activity changes and when you rotate an object more this mental rotation related activity increases.

When you have a small number of objects to spatially manipulate, people no longer rotate stimuli in their mind; instead they remember the different orientations of the objects. However, when there is a large number of objects, because it is not possible to remember all of them, improvement come from more efficient spatial cognition characterized by mental rotation related brain activity!

For more information, please see the following journal article:

Provost, A., Johnson, B., Karayanidis, F., Brown, S. D., & Heathcote, A. (2013). Two Routes to Expertise in Mental Rotation Cognitive Science, 37 (7), 1321-1342

Or email Alexander.Provost@newcastle.edu.au