Dr Lindsay Squeglia (Medical University of South Carolina)Abstract Adolescent alcohol and cannabis use is pervasive and affects the developing brain. Substance use prevention and treatment efforts are typically underutilized and only modestly effective. Utilizing neuroscience in prevention and treatment efforts can make tangible differences in substance use outcomes. Findings from recent neuroscience-informed adolescent substance use […]

A/Prof Fiona Kumfor (USYD)Abstract Historically, neuropsychologists have focused on examining traditional cognitive domains such as attention, memory and visuospatial ability. However, people with some neurological conditions can perform well on traditional neuropsychological tests, despite having difficulties in everyday life. This is particularly the case in frontotemporal dementia, where the earliest changes are in behaviour and personality. […]

Ashleigh Morse & Iseult Cremen (NSW Department of Customer Service) Abstract Policymakers in Australia and the world over are increasingly using evidence and data to guide policy decisions. The NSW Behavioural Insights Unit (BIU) partners with NSW Government agencies to use the latest evidence and data to help them deliver better services to citizens. We […]

A/Prof Stefan Volk (USYD Business School) Abstract Most modern workplaces place high value on teamwork in advancing the goals of the organization, and much research effort has been devoted to understanding and optimizing organizational and team dynamics and behavior. A notable conflict within organizational goals is incentivizing employees to improve both individual and team performance […]

Dr Sophie Li (Black Dog Institute) Abstract Rates of depression are increasing among adolescents. A novel way to reduce depression is by improving sleep. We evaluated whether an app-based intervention for insomnia improved sleep and depression, and whether changes in insomnia mediated changes in depression. We conducted a 2-arm single-blind randomised controlled trial at the […]

Dr Celia Harris (Western Sydney University) Abstract Theoretical approaches from philosophy and cognitive science emphasise how experience, cognition, memory, and self are embedded within and distributed among the social and material environment. This ‘scaffolding’ perspective implies that the characteristics of the social and material environment are critical for cognition. This perspective provides new avenues for […]

Dr Nathan Holmes (UNSW) Abstract Animals and people integrate information acquired at different times when responding to novel situations or problems. For example, after being attacked by a boy at school, a child may become fearful of places where the boy had been previously encountered; and after learning the relationship between a particular sound and […]

Dr Ashley Luckman (University of Exeter) Abstract Reason-based accounts of decision-making, such as Query Theory, have been successfully applied to a range of binary preferential choice phenomena, such as default, framing and immediacy effects. In a series of Experiments we explore the role reasons play in multi-alternative choice, particularly the attraction effect. In Experiment 1 […]

A/Prof Mac Shine (University of Sydney) Abstract Perception is thought to rely upon evolving activity within a recurrent, distributed thalamocortical network whose interconnections are modulated by bursts of noradrenaline. To test this hypothesis, we leveraged a combination of pupillometry, fMRI and recurrent neural network modelling of an ambiguous figures task. Shifts in the perceptual interpretation […]

Dr Laura Bradfield (UTS) Abstract Neuroinflammation has been observed in the striatum and hippocampus of individuals with psychiatric disorders and neurodegenerative diseases to different extents, but whether this causes the behavioural disturbances experienced by such individuals or is simply another symptom of their disease is unknown. In our lab we have begun to piece together […]