How the brain solves problems, and what happens when this ability is impaired, for example in Alzheimer's disease, are the subjects of a new University of Queensland study.
Work being conducted by Dr Greig de Zubicaray of UQ's Centre for Magnetic Resonance is providing better understanding of the labyrinthine workings of both the healthy, and the impaired human brain.
Dr de Zubicaray, a senior research officer, was recently awarded the first University of Queensland PhD using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a non-invasive technology for measuring brain activity.
His is also believed to be the first UQ PhD awarded in the associated field of cognitive neuroscience, a relatively new discipline concerned with imaging brain mechanisms responsible for information processing.
"Our Centre is very interested in mapping areas of brain activation occurring during the performance of various cognitive tasks," he said.
"We use functional magnetic resonance imaging to measures changes in cerebral blood oxygenation associated with performance on the tasks. This is important for determining normal function neuroanatomy, but has application for people with neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's disease.
"The Centre for Magnetic Resonance is currently monitoring early onset changes and the progression of the disease to achieve a better understanding."
Dr de Zubicaray's thesis looked at the activity in the brain occurring during the suppression of habitual or routine responses to situations when people perform different tasks requiring motor and verbal responses.
"For example, what happens in the brain when someone is asked to name what general category of things a carrot belongs to, and then is asked to name a category that it does not belong to. They tend to take longer to perform the latter task," he said.
"There is evidence to suggest that people routinely or automatically assign categories to items and vice versa, so I am interested in the strategies people use to solve novel problems such as this. Our results indicate that they first need to suppress the normal category response before applying a strategy to generate a novel one.
"There's considerable literature on the fact that the ability to suppress habitual responses is impaired in neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, attention deficit disorder or schizophrenia."
The University of Queensland has recently invested in three magnetic resonance imaging scanners, two of which will be installed at the Wesley hospital and one at the Royal Brisbane Hospital mid-year.
Dr de Zubicaray is involved in a number of fMRI studies to be performed on these new scanners which are also expected to contribute to major advances in cardiac diagnosis, treatment and research, and treatment of stroke and Alzheimer's disease.
Dr de Zubicaray's work has recently resulted in two papers presented at the Australian Functional Brain Mapping Symposium in Melbourne in May, and in April his work was featured at the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine meeting in Glasgow. He will present further research findings at the International Organisation for Human Brain Mapping meeting in the United Kingdom in mid-June.
A University of Queensland graduate (Bachelor of Arts, 1990, Postgraduate Dipoloma in Psychology with distinction 1992, Master of Clinical Psychology (Neuropsychology) 1995, Dr de Zubicaray conducted much of his PhD work at the Institute for Psychiatry in London.
He was supervised by Professor David Doddrell of the Centre for Magnetic Resonance and Dr Glen Smith of the Defence Science and Technology Organisation in Adelaide.
Media: Further information, telephone Dr Greig de Zubicaray, telephone 07 3365 4250, email greig.dezubicaray@cmr.uq.edu.au or Jan King at UQ Communications 0413 601 248.
Or email: communications@mailbox.uq.edu.au
