Interest in psychedelic compounds is growing due to their remarkable potential for understanding altered neural states and their breakthrough status to treat various psychiatric disorders. However, there are major knowledge gaps regarding how psychedelics affect the brain. The Computational Neuroscience Laboratory at the Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, Monash University, uses multimodal neuroimaging to test hypotheses of the brain’s functional reorganisation under psychedelics, informed by the accounts of hierarchical predictive processing, using dynamic causal modelling (DCM). DCM is a generative modelling technique which allows to infer the directed connectivity among brain regions using functional brain imaging measurements. In this webinar, Associate Professor Adeel Razi and PhD candidate Devon Stoliker will showcase a series of previous and new findings of how changes to synaptic mechanisms, under the control of serotonin receptors, across the brain hierarchy influence sensory and associative brain connectivity. Understanding these neural mechanisms of subjective and therapeutic effects of psychedelics is critical for rational development of novel treatments and for the design and success of future clinical trials. Associate Professor Adeel Razi is a NHMRC Investigator Fellow and CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar at the Turner Institute of Brain and Mental Health, Monash University. He performs cross-disciplinary research combining engineering, physics, and machine-learning. Devon Stoliker is a PhD candidate at the Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, Monash University. His interest in consciousness and psychiatry has led him to investigate the neural mechanisms of classic psychedelic effects in the brain.

Spatial neglect is a syndrome that is most frequently associated with damage to the right hemisphere, although damage to the left hemisphere can also result in signs of spatial neglect. It is characterised by absent or deficient awareness of the contralesional side of space. The screening and diagnosis of spatial neglect lacks a universal gold standard, but is usually achieved by using various modes of assessment. Spatial neglect is also difficult to treat, although prism adaptation training (PAT) has in the past reportedly showed some promise. This seminar will include highlights from a series of studies designed to identify knowledge gaps, and will suggest ways in which these can be bridged. The first study was conducted to identify and quantify clinicians’ use of assessment tools for spatial neglect, finding that several different tools are in use, but that there is an emerging consensus and appetite for harmonisation. The second study included PAT, and sought to uncover whether PAT can improve engagement in recommended therapy in order to improve the outcomes of stroke survivors with spatial neglect. The final study, a systematic review and meta-analysis, sought to investigate the scientific efficacy (rather than clinical effectiveness) of PAT, identifying several knowledge gaps in the existing literature and a need for a new approach in the study of PAT in the clinical setting.

A key question for basic biology and regenerative medicine concerns the way in which evolution exploits physics toward adaptive form and function. While genomes specify the molecular hardware of cells, what algorithms enable cellular collectives to reliably build specific, complex, target morphologies? Our lab studies the way in which all cells, not just neurons, communicate as electrical networks that enable scaling of single-cell properties into collective intelligences that solve problems in anatomical feature space. By learning to read, interpret, and write bioelectrical information in vivo, we have identified some novel controls of growth and form that enable incredible plasticity and robustness in anatomical homeostasis. In this talk, I will describe the fundamental knowledge gaps with respect to anatomical plasticity and pattern control beyond emergence, and discuss our efforts to understand large-scale morphological control circuits. I will show examples in embryogenesis, regeneration, cancer, and synthetic living machines. I will also discuss the implications of this work for not only regenerative medicine, but also for fundamental understanding of the origin of bodyplans and the relationship between genomes and functional anatomy.

Transcranial electrical stimulation (tES) techniques, including transcranial alternating and direct current stimulation (tACS and tDCS), are non-invasive brain stimulation technologies increasingly used for modulation of targeted neural and cognitive processes. Integration of tES with human functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) provides a novel avenue in human brain mapping for investigating the neural mechanisms underlying tES. Advances in the field of tES-fMRI can be hampered by the methodological variability between studies that confounds comparability/replicability. To address the technical/methodological details and to propose a new framework for future research, the scientific international network of tES-fMRI (INTF) was founded with two main aims: • To foster scientific exchange between researchers for sharing ideas, exchanging experiences, and publishing consensus articles; • To implement the joint studies through a continuing dialogue with the institutes across the globe. The network organized three international scientific webinars, in which considerable heterogeneities of technical/methodological aspects in studies combining tES with fMRI were discussed along with strategies to help to bridge respective knowledge gaps, and distributes newsletters that are sent regularly to the network members from the Twitter and LinkedIn accounts.