ACNS Conference
Launceston 2019

We look forward to welcoming three fantastic researchers to our conference.

Professor Nici Wenderoth

Neural Control of Movement Lab, ETH Zurich

Nicole Wenderoth has been a Professor for Neural Control of Movement in the Department of Health Sciences and Technology at ETH Zurich, since 2012. Using task-related and resting-state fMRI, non-invasive brain stimulation, and a novel muscle-computer interface, her lab has investigated how new memories are encoded, consolidated and subsequently reconsolidated, with a focus on applying this knowledge to enhance rehabilitation protocols. They also investigate how learning and decisions are influenced by motivation and reward, for example how the relationship between stimuli and outcomes is encoded in the brain, how we can use rewards to motivate non-preferred actions (i.e. effort from a non-dominant effector), and how a deficit in reward processing could manifest into clinical disorders such as Autism. Another line of investigation has been brain connectivity in normal and pathological conditions, for example, for better understanding and treatment of Autism (ASD) or stratification of therapy in Cerebral Palsy based on connectivity biomarkers.

Professor James Vickers

Director, Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre, University of Tasmania

The University of Tasmania Faculty of Health is now the biggest provider of dementia education in the world, reaching thousands of students in over 100 countries; indeed Dementia MOOCs have reached over 50,000 people worldwide. Professor of Pathology James Vickers’ research has focused on ways to maintain or improve plasticity of the brain. A world first study, The Tasmanian Healthy Brain Project, is exploring education as an intervention to alleviate cognitive decline in later life. Subjects undertake study at university and have regular psychological assessments to test higher brain functions such as processing speed, reasoning, and memory.

Associate Professor Helen Zhou

Multimodal Neuroimaging Lab, Duke-NUS Singapore

Dr. Juan (Helen) Zhou is an Associate Professor and Principal Investigator of the Multimodal Neuroimaging in Neuropsychiatric Disorders LaboratoryCentre for Cognitive Neuroscience, Neuroscience and Behavioral Disorders Program at Duke-National University of Singapore Medical School , Singapore. She is also a principal investigator at Clinical Imaging Research CenterA*STAR , and National University of Singapore. Her research focuses on the network-based vulnerability hypothesis in disease. Her lab studies the human neural bases of cognitive functions and the associated vulnerability patterns in aging and neuropsychiatric disorders using multimodal neuroimaging methods and psychophysical techniques