Postgraduate Prizes with talks by winners (University of Sydney Psychology)

H. Tasman Lovell Memorial Medallion winner: Dr Matthew Blanchard (in absentia)

Faculty of Science Prize for Outstanding PhD Thesis nominee: Dr Tao Chen

Title: Behavioural Rigidity in Dementia: From Clinical Significance to Neurobiological Mechanisms

Abstract:

With the rapid ageing of the global population, dementia poses an increasing challenge to healthcare systems worldwide. Neuropsychiatric symptoms are common in dementia and are associated with faster disease progression, poorer quality of life and greater caregiver burden. Neuropsychiatric symptoms frequently co-occur, determining which symptoms should be prioritised for intervention remains a major clinical challenge. In particular, behavioural rigidity is increasingly recognised as a clinically important symptom, yet the rationale for prioritising it as an intervention target, together with its underlying neural and neurochemical mechanisms, remains incompletely understood.

    In this talk, I will present a series of studies using transdiagnostic dementia cohorts to address these challenges. First, I will introduce a data-driven framework for prioritising co-occurring neuropsychiatric symptoms by quantifying their relative contributions to caregiver burden, thereby identifying behavioural rigidity as a priority intervention target. I will then present multimodal neuroimaging findings that provide new insights into the neural mechanisms underlying behavioural rigidity, followed by spatial neurochemical mapping using normative neurotransmitter maps to indirectly investigate its underlying neurochemical basis. Finally, I will discuss how integrating clinical, neuroimaging and neurochemical evidence can inform mechanism-informed strategies for developing targeted interventions for neuropsychiatric symptoms in dementia.

Bio:

Dr Tao Chen is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Brain and Mind Centre, The University of Sydney. His research focuses on understanding the neural and neurochemical mechanisms underlying neuropsychiatric symptoms in dementia, particularly behavioural rigidity and cognitive flexibility. By integrating multimodal neuroimaging with computational approaches in transdiagnostic dementia cohorts, he aims to translate neurobiological insights into clinically meaningful intervention strategies for dementia.

    Dr Chen received his PhD in Psychology from the University of Sydney, where his doctoral thesis passed examination without corrections, was nominated for the Australian Psychological Society (APS) Excellent PhD Thesis Award and received the Faculty of Science Prize for Outstanding PhD Thesis. He has authored more than 10 first-author peer-reviewed publications, with his work appearing in leading international journals, including Brain, Human Brain Mapping, and Clinical Psychological Science. He also serves as a reviewer for Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews and is a recipient of the 2026 Psychology Early Career “Pathway” Grant from the School of Psychology, The University of Sydney.

APS Award for Excellent PhD Thesis in Psychology nominee: Dr Amaani Hatoum

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A.H. Martin Scholarship winner: Olivia Avery

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