Colloquium Talk: Dr. Andrew Gardner on Sports-Related Concussion.

The School of Psychology is proudly hosting a talk by:

Dr. Andrew Gardner

Clinical Neuropsychologist

Hunter New England Health

Title: The assessment and investigation of sports related concussion in active and retired athletes

Date: Thursday 22nd August 2013, 12-1pm in Keats Reading Room (AVLG17) (video streaming to AV3 in the Ourimbah library)

If you would like to meet with Dr. Gardner, please contact A/Prof Frini Karayanidis (frini.karayanidis@newcastle.edu.au).

Abstract: A brief overview of the field of sports-related concussion will be presented, before an in-depth discussion surrounding assessment and management (return-to-play/school/work). There will be an emphasis on the role of cognitive assessment in this decision-making process. Finally, an overview of the current research being conducted within the field of sports related concussion (neuropsychological assessment, neuroimaging, genetic testing etc.), with discussion surrounding its clinical application. There will also be an emphasis on the potential long-term consequences of concussive injury (i.e. Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy) and the current discussion around this issue.

Bio: Dr Gardner completed his Bachelor of Psychology with 1st class Honours at the University of New England in 2005 and subsequently completed a Doctor of Psychology (Clinical Neuropsychology) at Macquarie University in 2009. His doctoral dissertation on sports-related concussion won the USA's National Academy of Neuropsychology's most outstanding dissertation of the year award last year, the first recipient of this prestigious award who studied outside of the USA. Sports-related concussion has always been his research focus and he is currently examining the potential long-term consequences of participation in collision sports. He is currently attempting to delineate the potential evidence or clinical manifestations of long-term issues related to a history of sports concussion amongst current and retired collision sports athletes through cognitive testing, neurological examination, genetic testing and neuroimaging.

Welcome to Our New Head of School!

Prof Simon Dennis

We like to extend a very warm welcome to our new Head of School, Prof Simon Dennis.

Simon was educated at the University of Queensland. He has worked at UQ, as well as the University of Colorado, the University of Adelaide, and the Ohio State University.

Simon’s main areas of research are in human memory and language processing. He focuses primarily on episodic recognition and serial recall and the processes behind the extraction of propositional information from text. He is also involved in a number of applied projects in the areas of defense, education, and information technology.

In a recent interview for the University’s Seahorse magazine, Simon commented on the School of Psychology's strengths:

“The School achieved outstanding results in the latest ERA [Excellence in Research for Australia] assessment – a score of five in the psychology section and in the cognitive science section, a score of four. No school in Australia scored a five for cognitive science and I would like to make Newcastle the first to do so.”

“Beyond research, I would like the School to continue providing a quality educational experience for our students and prepare for important changes in the delivery of instruction. We need to be leading, not following, these trends.”

Welcome Simon – we look forward to working with you!

We'd also like to take this opportunity to thank Dr Miles Bore for his work as the Head of the School of Psychology over the last 18 months. Miles has left the School in an extremely strong position, overseeing several new appointments, several successful teaching accreditation and quality reviews, and an ERA (2012) performance that places the School in the top 4 of the 41 assessed psychology departments in the country. Thank you Miles for all your hard work.

JUST PUBLISHED: Context Effects in Decision-Making - Do You Really Want that Extra Large Popcorn?

For those of you have children who watch the "Brain Games" series on Foxtel you may remember an episode about how our decisions can be manipulated by marketing. They described a scenario where movie goers were offered a small popcorn for $2 or a large one for $7. Everyone chose the cheaper option until a third one was introduced, a medium popcorn for $6.50, which caused people to prefer the large popcorn with comments like "We may as well get it because it is only 50c more".

This is an example of a decision context effect, where the introduction of a third option (which doesn't get chosen) causes a change in preference between the original two options. Our paper shows that this context effect, and two others, occur not only in consumer decisions but also in simple perceptual decisions (about the size of rectangles) and so tell us something fundamental about most, if not all, human decision processes.

This work arose out of a visit to the Newcastle Cognition Laboratory in 2012 by Jennifer Trueblood, a graduate student at Indiana, now faculty at UC Irvine. We presently are revising a paper that has been invited for resubmission at Psychological Review, describing a new theory of these effects, the MLBA model, hopefully something we can describe in more detail in a future post!

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For more information, please see the following journal artcile:

Trueblood, J., Brown, S., Heathcote, A., & Busemeyer, J. (2013). Not Just for Consumers: Context Effects Are Fundamental to Decision Making Psychological Science, 24 (6), 901-908 DOI: 10.1177/0956797612464241

or email Andrew.Heathcote@newcastle.edu.au

JUST PUBLISHED: Posttraumatic Growth: Conflicts, Disasters, War, Genocide and Humanitarian Aid Workers

Increasingly in the 21st century, humanitarian work is carried out at the front line of modern global conflicts and disasters, which may include experiencing genocide.  The consequences of finding oneself caught in the swift and complex forces of genocide are phenomenologically beyond psychoanalytic conceptualization.  Psychological challenges for humanitarian aid workers who experience such events are therefore complex.  How do they make sense of that dual threat to self and those they seek to help, and how do they reintegrate with family and community on return home?

A Spanish nurse with starving children in Goma camp. Photograph: Angel Diaz/ EFE/Corbis

A recently published study (McCormack & Joseph, 2013) interviewed international aid personnel who had experienced the phenomenon of genocide.  What these participants had witnessed was beyond comprehension.  However, their distress was complicated on return by what they perceived as invalidating support from their deploying organisation, some family members and their workplace.  They felt betrayed, isolated and rejected.  They began to self blame and experienced feelings of shame.  For years they struggled with posttrauma distress, and for a period, lost their altruistic sense and empathy for others.  

Increasingly, the construct of posttraumatic growth is recognised as an extension to the theories of trauma.  The researchers were therefore interested in whether these participants might, over time, redefine their experiences positively and growthfully.   Though it took years, shame eventually gave way to self forgiveness.  Empathy re-emerged and they began the process of self-caring again.  Eventually their altruistic identities recalibrated but with a better sense of their limitations.  The study recognised the difficulty in reintegrating after such deployments and the importance of family and organisations in validating the work of humanitarian aid personnel.  Though it is difficult to find the words to express such horror, narratives need a voice and validating support post-mission is paramount for psychological and psychiatric wellbeing.

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For more information about this work please see the following journal article:

McCormack, L., & Joseph, S. (2013). Psychological growth in humanitarian aid personnel: reintegrating with family and community following exposure to war and genocide Community, Work & Family, 16 (2), 147-163 DOI: 10.1080/13668803.2012.735478

or contact Dr Lynne McCormack at Lynne.McCormack@newcastle.edu.au

JUST PUBLISHED: Early Life Determinants of Reproductive Success

Infertility is a rising problem around the world. Coupled with a current tendency to delay childbearing, the growth in the population of many countries has come to halt. Bacterial infections are an often overlooked cause for infertility. This is particularly relevant to the recent increase in Chlamydia infections among young people. When untreated, Chlamydia in pregnant women can be transmitted to the newborn. As a result, up to 15% of newly born babies are currently known to be infected with Chlamydia, reducing their reproductive potential.

Animal studies have demonstrated that exposure to bacteria during early development can lead to a change in the onset of puberty, as well as in ovarian morphology and sexual behaviour. Luba Sominsky and colleagues from the University of Newcastle, Australia, have shown that when infant rats are injected with lipopolysaccharide molecules that are normally found on the exterior of bacteria, the expression of genes in their ovaries changes, especially for genes implicated in immune-mediated inflammatory disease.
 
Sominsky et al. propose that during early development, immune factors are major regulators of ovarian development, so that an immune imbalance during this period may interfere with the formation of ovarian follicles, compromising fertility later in life.
 
This link between adult fertility and infections during critical periods of development may help explain the ongoing trend for declining fertility in young women worldwide.

For more information about this work, please see the following journal article:

Sominsky, L., Sobinoff, A., Jobling, M., Pye, V., McLaughlin, E., & Hodgson, D. (2013). Immune regulation of ovarian development: programming by neonatal immune challenge Frontiers in Neuroscience, 7 DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2013.00100

Please click here for an open access copy of the journal article or, for further information, please contact Luba.Sominsky@newcastle.edu.au

JUST PUBLISHED: Sexuality and Suicide - Call for a More Nuanced Approach

The evidence that sexual minorities (e.g., lesbians, gay males, bisexuals, and those questioning their sexuality: LGBQ) are at increased risk of suicide is fairly robust. This study (anonymous, online survey, N = 1,016), as several others, found LGBQ participants were more likely to meet standardized assessment criteria for suicide-risk.

Knowing which groups are at increased risk of suicide provides great help for outreach, treatment and prevention. Unfortunately, some may view at-risk groups in a tick box manner, recognizing the risk but not looking for nuances in risk behaviors. This study was the first to methodically compare suicide-risk heterosexuals with suicide-risk LGBQ.

Matched pairs analyses compared suicide-risk LGBQ and suicide-risk heterosexuals (n = 79; aged 18 – 76) on suicidal behaviors (i.e., ideation, attempts, disclosure of suicidal intent, and prediction of future suicide). As shown in previous research, LGBQ reported greater likelihood to disclose their suicidal intent. LGBQ also reported more suicide attempts and were more likely to predict future attempts. However, the two groups showed no statistically significant differences on suicidal ideation. Ideation was assessed through current wish to die, past year ideation, and through engagement in an internal debate on whether to live or die (lifetime).

This study demonstrated the necessity of assessing suicide risk beyond thoughts, and looking at a more complete scenario of risk behaviors. This study showed that looking beyond the tick box label of “high risk” can yield important and interesting details of how a group can be at increased risk.


For more information, please see the following journal article:

Harris, K. (2013). Sexuality and Suicidality: Matched-Pairs Analyses Reveal Unique Characteristics in Non-Heterosexual Suicidal Behaviors Archives of Sexual Behavior DOI: 10.1007/s10508-013-0112-2

or email Keith.Harris@newcastle.edu.au 

JUST PUBLISHED: Treating Anxiety by Modifying Negative Cognitive Biases

Dr Sirous Mobini and colleagues have recently published a integrative review of the literature investigating the treatment of anxiety using cognitive bias modification.

Cognitive theories of social anxiety indicate that negative biases in thinking play a key role in causing and maintaining social anxiety. On the basis of these cognitive theories, research has shown that individuals with social anxiety interpret ambiguous social situations in a negative (or less passive) manner.

Cognitive Bias Modification for interpretative biases (CBM-I) was developed from this experimental research to reduce these negative interpretative biases in social anxiety. CBM-I intervention is entirely delivered by computer and there is no contact with a clinician. Over several sessions participants are trained to develop positive interpretations of ambiguous social scenarios. Participants read a series of ambiguous social scenarios presented on the computer screen which are ultimately resolved positively via completion of incomplete words (e.g. p--as-nt). All passages are presented in four lines individually and the participants’ task is to complete the word fragment (last word in the passage) after reading the passage by keying the first missing letter (in this example the letter ‘l’ for pleasant.

The results of the literature review have shown that this CBM-I positive training not only reduces negative interpretations of ambiguous social situations but also reduces social anxiety symptoms in individuals with social anxiety. However, the long-term positive effects of CBM-I need to be investigated with patients with social anxiety disorder.

For more information, please see the following journal article:

Mobini, S., Reynolds, S., & Mackintosh, B. (2012). Clinical Implications of Cognitive Bias Modification for Interpretative Biases in Social Anxiety: An Integrative Literature Review Cognitive Therapy and Research, 37 (1), 173-182 DOI: 10.1007/s10608-012-9445-8

or e-mail Dr Mobini at Sirous.Mobini@newcastle.edu.au

Colloquium Presentation, by Dr. Renate Thienel, on side effects of haliperidol vs. risperidone is schizophrenia treatment.

The School of Psychology is proudly hosting a talk by:

 Prof. Renate Thienel

Priority Centre for Translational Neuroscience & Mental Health Research

University of Newcastle

Title: Differential effects of risperidone vs. haloperidol on brain activation during a working memory task in first episode schizophrenia patients.

Date: Thursday 23^rd May 2013, 12-1pm in Keats Reading Room (AVLG17) (video streaming to AV3 in the Ourimbah library)

If you would like to meet with Dr. Thienel, please contact A/Prof Scott Brown (scott.brown@newcastle.edu.au).

Abstract: Neurocognitive impairments in schizophrenia are common and clinically relevant. The majority of people diagnosed with schizophrenia will experience a significant decline in global, social and occupational function levels in the course of their illness. Amongst the different cognitive domains, memory impairments in particular are regarded as possible intermediate phenotypes of schizophrenia. I investigated whether haloperidol and risperidone - two neuroleptic drugs with differential receptor binding profiles - show distinct impacts on functional networks mediating working memory. Differential effects of first- and second-generation antipsychotics on cognition have been reported before, however most of the previous results where employing disproportionately high doses of haloperidol, with the associated increased risk of unwanted side effects, such as cognitive impairment and extrapyramidal motor side effects. I compared the functional haemodynamic response during an n-back task in first-episode schizophrenia patients on a comparably low to moderate dose of haloperidol versus risperidone. Risperidone treated patients showed stronger activations than haliperidol patients in a cortical network that has previously been associated with this type of working memory task. As the results were controlled for medication dose, and neither side effects nor co-treatment differed between the groups, the results are not likely to be affected by these confounding factors, but rather reflect the drugs different receptor binding profile, such as their differential mesocortical dopaminergic input, and pro-cholinergic properties. On the basis of the behavioural results these differences in activation might represent adaptive processes in order to maintain a sufficient level of performance on the one hand, whilst on the other hand patient’s slower behavioural performance might rest upon a failure to recruit task-relevant brain areas comparably.

Bio: Dr Renate Thienel who graduated in Germany (B.A. [Hons.] M.Psych. [Research], Ph.D. [Dr. rer. nat.] in 2007) currently holds a University of Newcastle Postdoctoral Research Fellowship and is based at the Priority Centre for Translational Neuroscience & Mental Health Research. Renate is affiliated with the Schizophrenia Research Institute and the Hunter Medical Research Institute and is an active member of the Australasian Society of Psychiatric Research. Her research focuses on the aetiologies and the rehabilitation of schizophrenia by studying event related potentials, functional magnetic resonance imaging, magnetic resonance spectroscopy, and diffusion tensor imaging. Renate collaborates with national and international colleagues on various neuroimaging research projects into schizophrenia, the prediction of transition to psychosis, the shared biological basis of schizophrenia, a genetically high risk population (22q11DS), and a novel neuro-feedback procedure to modify brain perfusion using functional magnetic resonance imaging with applications for neurocognitive rehabilitation in schizophrenia and dementia as well as cerebral stroke. Her strong translational approach also includes the creation of a normative database of electroencephalographically recorded sensory auditory memory function in children and adolescents with great potential as a diagnostic tool for the detection of “at-risk mental state”.

Colloquium Presentation: Prof. Polina Golland, MIT, on better ways to investigate fMRI data.

Prof. Polina Golland

Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Title: Alignment-Free Exploratory Analysis of fMRI Data

Date: Thursday 9^th May 2013, 12-1pm in Keats Reading Room (AVLG17) (video streaming to AV3 in the Ourimbah library)

If you would like to meet with Prof. Golland, please contact A/Prof Scott Brown (scott.brown@newcastle.edu.au).

Abstract: We present an exploratory method for simultaneous parcellation of multisubject fMRI data into functionally coherent areas. Our motivation comes from visual fMRI studies with increasingly large number of image categories. The method is based on a solely functional representation of the fMRI data and a hierarchical probabilistic model that accounts for both inter-subject and intra-subject forms of variability in fMRI responses. The resulting algorithm finds a functional parcellation of the individual brains along with a set of population-level clusters. The model eliminates the need for spatial normalization while still enabling us to fuse data from multiple subjects.

If time permits, I will also discuss our current research in
characterizing the spatial variability of activation patterns across
subjects.

(Joint work with Danial Lashkari, Ramesh Sridharan, George Chen,
Ed Vul and Nancy Kanwisher.)

Bio: I am an associate professor in the EECS Department and the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT. My primary research interest is in developing novel techniques for image analysis and understanding. I particularly enjoy working on algorithms that either explore the geometry of the world and the imaging process in a new way or improve image-based inference through statistical modeling of the image data. I am interested in shape modeling and representation, predictive modeling and visualization of statistical models. My current research focuses on developing statistical analysis methods for characterization of biological processes using images (from MRI to microscopy) as a source of information. In this domain, I am interested in modeling biological shape and function, how they relate to each other and vary across individuals.