Brain injuries due to traffic accidents and falls are expected to be the 7th and 17th major cause of death, respectively, by 2030. Only severe cases of head injury receive close medical investigation, and many are assessed only by rudimentary behavioural observation or the subject’s self-reporting.
This is of concern given that there is currently limited understanding of how the brain is affected by head trauma that occurs in contact sports such as AFL football. Hence there is an urgent need to be able to rapidly and accurately assess the effects of head impact on the brain. One promising approach to quickly and non-invasively examine brain function is through assessment of visual processing.This project will examine visual processing (including a combination of eye-tracking and/or behavioural testing of visual processing speed and attention) in people with and without history of brain injury. Increasingly, neurocognitive testing is being utilised by professional athletes, though refinement of the best measures to accurately identify those with a concussion is needed. In addition, this research can help to uncover the neural and cognitive mechanisms associated with concussion.
Other projects ideas - Studies on emotion, perception, attention, cognition in anxiety and neurodevelopmental disordersStarting Reference
Laycock R, Crewther SG, Chouinard PA. Blink and you’ll miss it: A core role for fast and dynamic visual processing in social impairments in autism spectrum disorder. (In Press). Current Developmental Disorders Reports.
Other references
Uljarevic, M., & Hamilton, A. (2013). Recognition of emotions in autism: a formal meta-analysis. Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 43(7), 1517-1526
Laycock, R., Wood, K., Wright, A., Crewther, S.G., Goodale, M.A. (In Press). Saccade latency provides evidence for reduced face inversion effects with higher autism traits. Frontiers Human Neuroscience. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2019.00470.
Shilton, A.L., Laycock, R., Crewther, S.G. (2019). Different effects of trait and state anxiety on global-local visual processing following acute stress. Cognition, Brain, Behavior. 23(3):155-170. doi:10.24193/cbb.2019.23.09
Cross AJ, Goharpey N, Laycock R, Crewther SG. (2019). Anxiety as a Common Biomarker for Children with Additional Educational Needs. Frontiers in Psychology. 10, 1420. doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01420.
Laycock. R., Cutajar, L. & Crewther. S.G. (2019). High schizotypy traits associated with atypical processing of negative emotions with low spatial frequencies. Schizophrenia Research. 210, 294-295. doi:10.1016/j.schres.2018.12.035 Laycock. R., Cutajar, L. & Crewther. S.G. (2019). Subclinical high schizotypy traits are associated with slower change detection. Acta Psychologica, 195, 80-86.
Peel, H., Sherman, J., Sperandio, I., Laycock, R., Chouinard, P. (2019). Perceptual size discrimination requires awareness and late visual areas: a continuous flash suppression and interocular transfer study. 67, 77-85. Consciousness and Cognition. doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2018.11.012