Anatomy and Neuroscience - Research Publications
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ItemAssessing esport candidacy for critical thinking education(University of New England, Armidale, 2020-12-01)Critical thinking in education is mainstream with ever increasing industry support for soft skills and capacity for graduates to solve problems, plan strategy, make decisions and communicate creatively. However, teaching and assessing critical thinking is resource intensive especially when scaling to large remote or online classes. Often, the solutions are bespoke, custom outcomes for a single classroom that are expensive to scale. Commercial computer games and esports may offer a solution. In this paper we aim to define critical thinking in education and how this relates to skills in esports, including decision making, problem solving, making a game plan, developing strategy and communication. To achieve this, we propose a conceptual framework to assess effectiveness of esports in teaching critical thinking using an adapted digital game-based learning framework and the learning goals of critical thinking. We support the framework with an esport case example of Rocket League with a lesson plan.
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ItemChallenges for Computational Stem Cell Biology: A Discussion for the Field(CELL PRESS, 2021-01-12)The first meetup for Computational Stem Cell Biologists was held at the 2020 annual meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research. The discussions highlighted opportunities and barriers to computational stem cell research that require coordinated action across the stem cell sector.
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ItemSimulating bidirectional peripheral neural interfaces in EIDORS(IEEE, 2020-01-01)Bioelectronic neural interfaces that deliver adaptive therapeutic stimulation in an intelligent manner must be able to sense and stimulate activity within the same nerve. Existing minimally-invasive peripheral neural interfaces can provide a read-out of the aggregate level of activity via electrical recordings of nerve activity, but these recordings are limited in terms of their specificity. Computational simulations can provide fine-grained insight into the contributions of different neural populations to the extracellular recording, but integration of the signals from individual nerve fibers requires knowledge of spread of current in the complex (heterogenous, anisotropic) extracellular space. We have developed a model which uses the open-source EIDORS package for extracellular stimulation and recording in the pelvic nerve. The pelvic nerve is the primary source of autonomic innervation to the pelvic organs, and a prime target for electrical stimulation to treat a variety of voiding disorders. We simulated recordings of spontaneous and electrically-evoked activity using biophysical models for myelinated and unmyelinated axons. As expected, stimulus thresholds depended strongly on both fibre type and electrode-fibre distance. In conclusion, EIDORS can be used to accurately simulate extracellular recording in complex, heterogenous neural geometries.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableThe Electric Field System of a Macular Ion Channel Plaque(IEEE, 2011-01-01)Recent empirical neuroscience evidence increasingly supports an active role for the endogenous electromagnetic (EM) field system of brain tissue. These results undermine the long-held view that the field system is a causally inert byproduct of action potential and synapse electrochemical activity. The dominant originating mechanism for the endogenous EM field remains undetermined. The new observations make the isolation of an unambiguous original EM field source a matter of some urgency. As part of the process of elaboration of the field systems produced by coherent transmembrane filamentary currents (the most plausible original mechanism), this paper looks at the contribution by a localized density of cooperating ion channels in the form of the macular synaptic plaque engaged in conducting a post-synaptic current. The method uses the volume conduction formalism driven by filamentary currents that stand in for ion channels. Not surprisingly, the result is a pulsing dipole. Despite its extreme material abstraction, the result forms one of the basic mechanisms for future models capable of revealing whole-neuron and network-level endogenous EM field system.
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ItemAcoustic analysis of the effects of 24 hours of sustained wakefulness(Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association, 2010)The effect of 24 hours of sustained wakefulness on the speech of healthy adults is poorly documented. Therefore, speech samples were systematically acquired (e.g., every four hours) from 18 healthy adults over 24 hours. Stimuli included automated and extemporaneous tasks, sustained vowel and a read passage. Measures of timing and frequency were derived acoustically using Praat and significant changes were observed on all tasks. The effect of fatigue on speech was found to be strongest just before dawn (after 22 hours). Key features of timing (e.g., mean pause length), frequency (e.g., F4 variation) and power (alpha ratio) changed as a function of increasing levels of fatigue. Index Terms: fatigue, voice, tiredness, clinical marker
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ItemPrecision Medicine: Dawn of Supercomputing in ‘omics Research(eResearch Australasia, 2011)