ProfessorAdam Guastella

Project Opportunities

Title: Digital innovation in neurodevelopmental healthcare for children, families and services.

The aim of our program of research is to partner with people with lived experience, families and services to use digital innovations and evidence based evaluations to demonstrate the potential utility of technology to provide personalised care in health systems. This opportunity is open to individuals from a range of backgrounds (psychology, allied health, engineering, medical, pharmacy) to identify specific projects that can be suited to the interesst and expertise of the individual and the supervision team.     

Title: Understanding social problems in youth mental health

Summary of opportunity:

To improve cognitive-behavioural interventions and develop a better understanding of the interaction between biological and psychological processes. My current interests focus on anxiety disorders, autism, schizophrenia, and substance misuse. Please see the research summary below (synopsis) regarding project specifics. However, this research opportunity must be considered in the context of the facilities provided at the BMRI. The BMC allows for front-line community-based research and the provision of quality treatment for hundreds of individuals across many mental health conditions, with over a thousand youth aged 12 to 30 acessing our services every year.  We use a wide variety of neuroscience technology (e.g., Genotyping, PET, EEG, Chronobiology, eye-tracking) with a multi-disciplinary team of neuroscientists, neurologists, psychiatrists, general practitioners, clinical psychologists, nurses, social and youth workers to facilitate the development of research and psychobiological treatment approaches. This base provides a unique environment to conduct trials that have real community relevance while also integrating a range of potential neurobiological assessments/interventions. 

Identifying Markers of Social Anxiety Disorder and How They Change Following Successful Cognitive-Behavioural Treatment
This research focuses on using fear-conditioning, cognitive attention tasks, decision making, hormonal and autonomic measures from young patients with Social Anxiety Disorder to determine how these markers change over the course of cognitive-behavioural treatment programs and are unique to the development of Social Anxiety Disorder. Social Anxiety Disorder is one of the most-common mental health problems in young people and we conceptualise it as a gateway disorder that substantially increases risk for chronic and persistent mental ill health over the course of a lifetime. This project will, therefore, substantially advance our knowledge of what marks the disorder in young people and how these markers change following successful treatment. This base provides a unique environment to conduct trials that have real community relevance while also integrating a range of potential neurobiological assessments/interventions

Opportunity synopsis:

CBT treatment of young adults with Autism 
We currently run an active group program to treat social concerns in young people, but there is a real need to develop a specialised program for young people with autism. This project seeks to develop a program for young adults transitioning from school into adult environments who are diagnosed with high functioning autism. You will lean on many of the programs we currently run to treat social difficulties in psychosis and social anxiety, but also develop novel aspects to specifically treat autism. This project will result in a new psychosocial group and individual treatment program for young adults with autism.

--------------------------------------------------

Project Opportunities

Title: Supporting children with neurodevelopmental conditions and their families in health services

Summary of opportunity:

This project uses the Australian and Sydney Child Neurodevelopment Registry, a registry embedded mainly public health services to study support needs of children with neurodevelopmental conditions and their families. The registry is used to advocate for the needs of different groups and to test solutions for providing higher quality evidence based care to children with neurodevelopmental conditions and their families. Solutions may include clinical advances, technology, or the testing of different models, methods or interventions.

Opportunity synopsis:

The Australian and Sydney Child Neurodevelopment Registry is an embedded data registry in clinical services, largely public health clinical services, to underpin clinical practice of clinical teams with collected data about the needs of children with neurodevelopmental conditions and their families. Projects can develop novel questions within the dataset about understanding the needs of children and families in services, or they can propose testing changes of practice or improvements with technology for better outcomes. The description of this project is broad because projects could be undertaken from a broad range of multidisciplinary students (psychiatry, medicine, pharmacy, psychology, engineering, allied health) and focus on different aspects of the data (e.g., cultural groups, different diagnosed conditions), testing experimental tasks (e.g., eye tracking, executive function, clinical practices), testing new technology (automated report practices, artificial intelligence, experience sampling methods), or public health approaches (economic evaluation and policy advocacy). 

--------------------------------------------------

Project Opportunities

Title: Investigating the role of sleep in learning, well-being and development for children and youth with neurodevelopmental conditions and their families.

Summary of opportunity:

This project employs the Australian and Sydney Child Neurodevelopment Registry to study to investigate the role of sleep in child development and learning for children with neurodevelopmental conditions. The aim of this project is to identify novel markers of learning that interact with sleep to understand their impact on development and well-being in children.

Opportunity synopsis:

The Australian and Sydney Child Neurodevelopment Registry or the Youth Neurodevelopment Research Cohort, with of which are embedded in services, largely to underpin clinical practice. We aim to collect data on the needs of people (children and/or youth) with neurodevelopmental conditions and their families.

_x000D_

This project works with the researchers at the Brain and Mind Centre to develop novel questions about sleep and its role in learning, development and wellbeing for understanding the needs of children and families in services. The project could investigate the use of apps and actigraphy to understand the interaction between  sleep, learning and development, and to identify novel markers that can predict disability and well-being.  

----------Current Research Projects----------

• _x000D_ Clinical trials and child development
• _x000D_ Novel interventions and assessments for autistic children and adults
• _x000D_ Novel approaches to promote holistic care in public health services for neurodevelopment and mental health
• _x000D_ Digital tools for promoting well being in neurodevelopment
• _x000D_ The use of AI in assessment and support
• _x000D_ Employment supports for people with neurodevelopmental conditions
• _x000D_ Cognitive-Behaviour Therapy, Mental Health and Neurodevelopment
• _x000D_ Oxytocin, autism in toddlers: Multi-site large scale investigations