Tobacco smoking is often referred to as being a habit that takes much difficulty in breaking, however surprisingly little research has addressed this question. Using the rat self-administration paradigm, we can model how nicotine addiction develops and determine whether behavioural characteristics such as habits may be important in the persistence of smoking behaviour. My current research program is addressing the best parameters to use to model this behaviour in rats, followed by characterisation of the presence or absence of habits in rats that have received either brief or chronic nicotine exposure. Future research will be focused on discovering the brain processes underlying these changes in behaviour and determination of novel pharmacological and behavioural therapies that might target breaking the smoking habit.

The field of internet-delivered treatments for common mental disorders is evolving rapidly. This talk will provide an update on recent advances in the treatment of depression and anxiety via the internet, including advances in guided and self-guided interventions. An update on future directions for our new internet research clinic, the eCentreClinic, will also be provided.

A substantial literature describes the development of bullying during the school years, but research on the consequences of bullying beyond adolescence remains limited. This talk presents findings from longitudinal research identifying developmental processes underlying the relationship between school bullying and physical aggression in early adulthood. The central question is whether and how two experiences during the transition to early adulthood– drinking, and participation in work or university study– disrupt or entrench aggressive pathways from school bullying to adult aggression. Turning points theory posits that engagement in adult institutions such as employment can disrupt aggressive pathways; other researchers suggest that ‘snares’ such as substance use may trap aggressive individuals within aggressive behaviour patterns. Researchers also disagree about whether adult experiences have the same effects on behaviour for all antisocial youth, or are most influential for those individuals who onset antisocial behaviour during adolescence. Using data from a three-wave longitudinal study of young Australians, I find that participants who bullied other students during childhood and adolescence, or during adolescence only, reported more physical aggression during early adulthood than those who never bullied.

Importantly, however, these relationships depended upon early adult factors. The former bullies only reported significantly higher adult aggression if they were also drinking at above-average frequencies.
Conversely, participation in university, compared to being in the workforce, was associated with significantly less adult aggression amongst the at-risk groups.  Findings suggest that particular contexts during early adulthood can offer youth on aggressive trajectories (as evidenced by bullying at school) unique opportunities to turn their behaviour around. Others, however, may exacerbate aggressive behaviour patterns. Implications for violence prevention and further research will be discussed.

Oxytocin has been implicated in maternal behaviour across mammalian species. Human research has thus far concentrated on oxytocin plasma levels which correlate with maternal sensitivity and successful infant bonding. Improving maternal bonding has implications for increasing children’s attachment and their resiliency to psychiatric illness.

Current pharmacological treatments for postnatal depression (PND) fail to remediate associated mother-infant disturbances and nasal oxytocin may be a potential alternative when combined with behavioural interventions. We report on the first study to evaluate the combined and individual effects of maternal sensitivity training and nasal spray oxytocin on maternal bonding. Eighty mothers with sub-clinical levels of PND (M= 8.5 EPDS) with infants 8- 30 weeks were randomly allocated to receive 24IU oxytocin or placebo nasal-spray across two sessions as an adjunct to mother-baby interaction coaching. Measures were taken across three time periods (Baseline, T1, T2) for questionnaire data (Postpartum Bonding Questionnaire) and observational data (Murray’s Global Rating scale for maternal sensitivity and responsivity). Preliminary analyses reveal depression levels remaining stable across time in contrast with a significant reduction in bonding difficulties over the three visits (p=.032). This was more pronounced for mothers receiving oxytocin over placebo (p=.082). Improving maternal bonding via delivery of intranasal oxytocin will provide further evidence of a role for the neuropeptide in regulating maternal behaviours, and provide proof of concept for its potential use as a treatment for early bonding problems.

Most people are naturally able to perceive, appreciate, and remember music. Such skills occur without conscious effort and require no training. However, these basic skills are lacking in a small proportion of individuals who otherwise have normal auditory and intellectual abilities.Congenital amusia, commonly referred to as tone deafness, is a rare disorder of music processing that manifests in the absence of acquired brain injury. Like specific language impairment, congenital amusia emerges early in life and continues throughout adulthood. Up to 15% of individuals suspect that they are tone-deaf, but as little as 2-4% of the population has true amusia. In this talk I will describe the nature of this disorder and why it appears to be restricted to music. I will next describe two recent studies in which we showed that the disorder can extend to the realm of language. First, we found that a group of British amusics had significantly reduced sensitivity to emotional meaning conveyed by tone of voice or “speech prosody”. Second, we found that Chinese amusics who speak a tone language (Mandarin) were impaired in their ability discriminate words that share the same segment but differ in "tone". Results illustrate that some impairments associated with congenital amusia occur at a stage of processing that is relevant to both music and language. 

Over the next 5 to 10 years, Australia’s workforce is expected to contract dramatically as a result of an ageing population. The result is an increasing dependence on younger, less experienced personnel, many of whom will have yet to develop the expertise of their retiring counterparts. This is particularly significant in so-called high reliability, high consequence organisations such as power system control, rail control, and medical practice, wheretimely interventions are often dependent upon efficient and accurate diagnoses.

Despite a long-held fascination with expertise amongst philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists, we have yet to accurately understand how expertise is acquired, the cognitive and psychomotor foundations of expertise, and how expertise is maintained. Part of the difficulty associated with understanding the nature of expertise relates to our inability to differentiate experienced from expert practitioners. The research program that I will be discussing is designed to develop a psychometric tool that differentiates experts from non-experts where performance is dependent upon diagnoses from information arising from human-computer interfaces.

Using a cue-based paradigm of expert performance, we have developed a battery of tests that collectively, appear to reliably differentiate expert from non-expert performance amongst power system controllers and paediatricians. Current and future empirical work will be discussed, together with an explanation of the possible applications of the tool in the future.