Project - Determining the role of neuromodulatory impairment in neurodegenerative disease and dementia (2020-2023)
- Investigating the interactions between neuromodulatory systems and their modulation of cognitive function
- Further identification of the separate and shared characteristics of dementia syndromes and neurodegenerative diseases by determining the specific neuromodulatory systems that have significant pathology that contribute to disease progression
Research Project Description
Determine the role of the noradrenergic impairment in neurodegenerative disease and dementia, specifically focusing on differences in cognitive and attentional task performance; to identify the noradrenergic role in executive function.
- Structural MRI of Locus Coeruleus using neuromelanin-sensitive acquisitions to determine the integrity of the noradrenergic Locus Coeruleus in a neurodegenerative population
Identify differences and abnormalities in functional connectivity across brain networks in relation to ascending neuromodulatory fluctuations in neurodegenerative disease during task-specific analysis of cognition and attention performance using fMRI.
- Determine noradrenergic role in executive cognitive function by using task-specific fMRI analysis, understand the global alteration in brain network topology relating to performance on cognitive tasks
- Determine the structural and functional connectivity of the noradrenergic system using specialised imaging methodological analysis in order to understand whether structure and functional connectivity relates to cognitive ability
Redefine the neuromodulatory role in brain function, by determining the unique contributions of noradrenergic and other neuromodulators in executive function, in order to explain the diverse symptoms of neurodegenerative disease in relation to the neuromodulatory impairment which alters brain networks and circuitry.
- DoDetermine a computational model of the role of neuromodulatory systems on global states of brain dynamic functional connectivity
Determine whether heightened anxiety alters the dynamic functional connectivity during walking in Parkinson’s Disease
- Elucidate the influence of anxiety in alterations in brain network topology during a virtual reality walking task-based fMRI paradigm with varying anxiety inducing conditions in a freezing of gait PD population
- General linear models will be used to determine whether network topology differs across 3 different modalities of threat
- Determine functional connectome in anxiety in freezing of gait in PD