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DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Sydney:20230811T150000
DTEND;TZID=Australia/Sydney:20230811T160000
DTSTAMP:20260426T033632
CREATED:20250507T045154Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250507T045154Z
UID:106-1691766000-1691769600@psychology-events.sydney.edu.au
SUMMARY:Psychology Colloquium: Dr Ashley Luckman: Investigating reason-based decision-making in the attraction effect and its dimensional extensions
DESCRIPTION:Dr Ashley Luckman (University of Exeter)\nAbstract\nReason-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 we find reasons supporting the target option were generated earlier and in greater quantity than those supporting the competitor\, as predicted by Query Theory. This replicates in Experiment 2\, when we extend the attraction effect to more complicated stimuli with more attributes. In Experiment 3\, we investigated the causal relationship between reasoning and choices by exogenously manipulating the order in which participants generated their reasons. As predicted\, the size of the attraction effect was a function of this query order manipulation. Finally we explore the structure of the reasons people generate\, and how they relate to attentional processes measured through mouse-tracking/lab methods.
URL:https://psychology-events.sydney.edu.au/event/psychology-colloquium-dr-ashley-luckman-investigating-reason-based-decision-making-in-the-attraction-effect-and-its-dimensional-extensions/
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DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Sydney:20230818T150000
DTEND;TZID=Australia/Sydney:20230818T160000
DTSTAMP:20260426T033632
CREATED:20250507T045154Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250507T045154Z
UID:107-1692370800-1692374400@psychology-events.sydney.edu.au
SUMMARY:Psychology Colloquium: A/Prof Mac Shine: Noradrenergic modulation of brain network topology and energy landscape dynamics mediates conscious resolution of perceptual ambiguity
DESCRIPTION:A/Prof Mac Shine (University of Sydney)\nAbstract\nPerception 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 of an ambiguous image were associated with peaks in pupil diameter\, implicating noradrenergic gain alteration in the perceptual switch. We trained a 40-node recurrent neural network to perform a similar perceptual categorisation task\, manipulated the gain of the RNN to mimic the effect of noradrenaline and observed an earlier perceptual shift as a function of heightened gain. We then used a dimensionally-reduced form of the RNNs activity to develop two novel predictions: perceptual switches should occur with peaks in low-dimensional brain state velocity and with flattened energy landscape dynamics. We used whole-brain fMRI data to confirm these predictions. These results confirm the core role of the noradrenergic system in the large-scale network reconfigurations that mediate perception.
URL:https://psychology-events.sydney.edu.au/event/psychology-colloquium-a-prof-mac-shine-noradrenergic-modulation-of-brain-network-topology-and-energy-landscape-dynamics-mediates-conscious-resolution-of-perceptual-ambiguity/
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DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Sydney:20230825T150000
DTEND;TZID=Australia/Sydney:20230825T160000
DTSTAMP:20260426T033632
CREATED:20250507T045154Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250507T045154Z
UID:108-1692975600-1692979200@psychology-events.sydney.edu.au
SUMMARY:Psychology Colloquium: Dr Laura Bradfield: Striatal and hippocampal neuroinflammation has unique consequences for neuron-glia interactions and action selection
DESCRIPTION:Dr Laura Bradfield (UTS)\nAbstract\nNeuroinflammation 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 causal evidence from studies in rats and mice that neuroinflammation in the dorsal striatum\, ventral striatum\, and dorsal hippocampus alters goal-directed action and choice behaviours in a region-specific manner. Specifically\, we injected the endotoxin lipopolysaccharide in each region to induce neuroinflammation in separate cohorts of animals and then tested them on a range of behavioural assays. Rats with dorsomedial striatal neuroinflammation demonstrated aberrant intact goal-directed control in a range of conditions under which control animals did not\, such as when fed a high-fat high-protein home chow\, or after training that otherwise induced habits. By contrast\, ventral striatal neuroinflammation abolished goal-directed action control. In dorsal hippocampus\, neuroinflammation produced an acceleration of goal-directed action control in females and a facilitation of Pavlovian approach behaviour in male mice. Immunohistochemical analyses linked the expression of astrocytes but not microglia in the striatum to changes in behaviour\, whereas both microglia and astrocyte expression in dorsal hippocampus were associated with behavioural changes. Consistent with these findings\, chemogenetically altering the activity of astrocytes in both striatal regions abolished goal-directed action control\, whereas this was only partially true for the dorsal hippocampus. Evidence from cell culture experiments confirmed that the activation of both microglia and astrocytes caused neuronal excitation in hippocampal neurons. Together\, these results reveal that region-specific differences in neural-glial interactions that result from neuroinflammation lead to different profiles of choice behaviour in a manner that could give insight into the mechanisms underlying psychiatric diseases and neurodegenerative disorders.
URL:https://psychology-events.sydney.edu.au/event/psychology-colloquium-dr-laura-bradfield-striatal-and-hippocampal-neuroinflammation-has-unique-consequences-for-neuron-glia-interactions-and-action-selection/
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