Tag: women

The brain activities in goal-directed learning: Meet Sophia Liang

By Vina Putra

Sophia is a PhD candidate in the School of Psychology, UNSW. Her research looks into how the brain learns to perform specific actions in order to produce certain outcomes, otherwise known as goal-directed behaviour. In particular, she studies the activity of different parts of the brain to understand their role in the action-outcome learning process. Understanding the communication within the brain during this process could be the first step towards improving learning ability and addressing the learning challenges commonly seen in our aging population, especially those with dementia.

Sophia is a PhD candidate in the School of Psychology, where she studies the brain activities in learning

Throughout life, we continuously learn new things that help us achieve our goals or simply to just get things done. For example, learning to drive a car, opening a push/pull door, or operating a machine. These are known as goal-directed behaviour – when we perform action that results in desired outcome, the action-outcome relationship. While much is known about how our brain understands the action-outcome relationship after long periods of time (Matamales et al., 2020), Sophia’s work focuses on the very early stages of this learning and the areas of the brain that receives this action-outcome relationship way before it is retrieved by other regions of the brain. 

Without realising, humans learn action-outcome relationships every day. This learning consists of three main stages: 1) acquisition when we first learn the information, 2) consolidation when we remember that learning, and 3) retrieval, when we retrieve that memory so that we can perform the learned behaviour. In her research, Sophia has shown that early in the acquisition stage, the prelimbic cortex is the region responsible for how we learn that action produces an outcome. Later on, she explores another region called the dorsal hippocampus which is important in acquiring contextual information – that is, the dorsal hippocampus helps us know where it is appropriate to perform or apply those relationships. While the two regions are responsible for similar functions, they are, however, not connected at all directly in the brain. Sophia’s work investigates the possible pathways or how communication occurs between the two regions in mediating learning.

Unfortunately, in the aging population, the ability to learn action-outcome relationships deteriorate. This can become very distressing, especially for people with dementia who begin to lose their ability to learn and retain new learning memories in every aspect of life. “Understanding how the two involved regions talk to each other means that we can then start to figure out what biological components are involved, which could be important targets in the development of therapeutic or pharmaceutical alternatives for dementia patients.”, Sophia shares the excitement for the future possibility of applying her research to clinics. This is how her research becomes the first step to improving learning in aging populations.

Sophia demonstrates how our brain might work during learning in certain situations, such as when we learn to push or pull a door. The cortex is highlighted in blue and the hippocampus is highlighted in green.

Working as an allied health professional to help others heal and improve their health has always been Sophia’s purpose. This led her into pursuing science in high school, although she admitted that she disliked biology and chemistry. For her high school exam, Sophia recalled that chemistry ended up being the subject that she performed the worst at and how it affected her overall score. The surprising twist was that among the range of allied health subjects that she wanted to do after high school such as physiotherapy, speech pathology, and occupational therapy, she also listed psychology without realising that it is a science subject. Soon in her psychology degree, she found herself enjoying the research work in behavioural neuroscience, studying various drugs’ effects on nervous systems, the modulation of pathways and behaviour – being immersed in more biology and chemistry than ever before.

In her second-year undergraduate study, Sophia received the UNSW Summer Science Vacation Scholarship which allowed her to experience research in social psychology early on. Under the mentorship of Professor Lisa Williams, Sophia worked on a collaborative project with the Red Cross Blood Donation Centre where she investigated how emotions shape the experience of first-time blood donors and influence their return rate for future donation (Williams et al., 2018).

Sophia’s journey to her current research started from her fascination with the possibility in manipulating the brain. When she joined Prof. Bernard Balleine’s lab as an honour’s student, Sophia learned the techniques of turning on/off specific regions in the brain. This process typically involves injecting a virus that causes the brain to express certain receptor proteins that can later be activated by a specific drug. When the virus is injected into specific brain regions, the virus makes receptors multiply, and the receptors will only be activated with a certain drug – clozapine (commonly used) – injected at a certain timepoint, resulting in brain regions turning on/off. This then translates to changes in behaviour that can be monitored to support the relevant hypothesis.

Sophia (second from left) and her team working with an animal model in the lab

Going back to her honour’s year, Sophia was looking to turning on the region called the orbitofrontal cortex, hypothesised to be involved in learning some actions that produce no outcome. The increased activity of this region is shown in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) where they compulsively perform actions even though they learn no outcomes would appear (Ursu & Carter, 2009). Sophia used animal models and train them on action-outcome relationships for a period of time before removing the outcome. She then observed whether animals with increased activity in the orbitofrontal cortex would still perform the actions, even if they get no reward. Sophia then continued working as a research assistant in Prof. Bailleine’s lab, working on a project that closely links to her now PhD research. Using the same virus-mediated brain manipulation technique in rats, she turned off the dorsal hippocampus region and trained those rats on action-outcome relationships to study the pathways in goal-directed learning.

Sophia (top row, second from left) enjoys playing OzTag with her team

Sophia enjoys many things that come with being a PhD candidate such as teaching undergraduate psychology courses, mentoring honours students, and seeing new findings emerge from her experiments. Apart from science, Sophia also loves history, and she always finds the chance to visit museums and historical sites wherever she travels, to learn about the different stories and the people of that area. She also enjoys watching movies and playing OzTag – her favourite ways to have a break and have fun.

As a champion, Sophia’s advice to young women who would like to pursue science is, “Don’t doubt yourself! Even if you don’t do well in science in school, it should not stop you from having career goals in science. The important thing is if you are passionate about something, go for it because you will adapt, learn, and grow.”

Follow Sophia on Twitter @SophiaLiang_

Climate science for a better world: meet Rachael Isphording

By Inna Osmolovsky

Rachael Isphording is a Scientia PhD candidate in the Climate Change Research Center at UNSW (affiliated with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes). She studies climate science and climate adaptation. These fields focus on understanding how and why Earth’s climate has changed in the past and how it could change in the future. The research involves close work with policymakers, stakeholders and communities, helping better prepare for high-impact, catastrophic weather and climate events. Rachael’s research focuses on understanding how well high-resolution, regional climate models simulate rainfall across Australia, on one hand. On the other, she looks into how this knowledge can be leveraged to improve stakeholder decision-making across sectors. With the official announcement of a third, consecutive, year of La Niña in Australia, her findings are helping local communities to anticipate, prepare and adapt to extreme rain events.

Her passion for climate adaptation research stems largely from her childhood experiences, living through Hurricane Ivan (2004) and Hurricane Katrina (2005). Growing up in Alabama, on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, she witnessed firsthand the detrimental impacts of extreme events and their impact on the communities around her. For her, it’s not just about understanding how weather patterns and extreme events might change in the context of climate change. As a self-described humanitarian, she’s also driven by the “people” side of climate science: what does it mean for us – society – and our overall well-being? What can we do to make things better for future generations?

Her journey into academia started at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. There, she first aspired to become a pilot and research meteorologist, flying into hurricanes to collect data. During the completion of her meteorology degree, she took an Environmental Security course which changed the trajectory of her career.  The course focused on how climate change affects human security, helping her realize where her passion truly lies.

During the completion of her bachelor’s Rachael interned for the NASA DEVELOP Program. She was partnered with decision-makers in ‘Mobile (Alabama) Area Water and Sewer System’ company. Her role involved helping to predict how the future growth of the city could affect the local drinking water reservoir. This directly affected water quality for the local community, including Rachael’s grandparents. Rachael was empowered by the fact that the results of her research—as an undergraduate student—would inform actual decision-making to help her local communities.

Sadly, not all of Rachael’s experiences in academia were positive. After graduating with her bachelor’s and interning with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Rachael pursued a PhD at a U.S. university. The working environment during that time wasn’t very supportive or healthy. Despite her impressive achievements and dedication to pursuing a career in science, she started to lose confidence in her abilities and struggled with her mental health. Rachael realized how toxic the environment was and bravely left the program with a master’s degree.

What helped her through this difficult time was a group of fellow graduate students; they supported each other through the tough times and continue to support each other to this day. They also were the ones to encourage Rachael during her challenging job search following the completion of her master’s degree. After nearly a year of rejections, she was finally offered an internship with a defense contractor at NASA. This internship helped rebuild Rachael’s confidence in herself and her abilities. The program also helped her to remember her lifelong dreams of becoming a scientist and using her knowledge to help people. After completing this program, Rachael returned to the DOE where she worked for over two years. This was when she applied and was accepted into the Scientia PhD program at UNSW, researching climate change and water security – her dream research.

A picture says 1000 words! Rachael studies rainfall across Australia

Nowadays, a typical day in her life—while not traveling abroad for exciting workshops, conferences, and collaborations—includes exploring how well regional climate models simulate rainfall and how rainfall patterns across Australia may change in the future. She works with local stakeholders to understand the challenges they face and determine how climate information can help to inform their decision-making.

While traveling to South Africa for a World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Workshop (September 2022), Rachael worked with fellow climate scientists, Nicholas Herold, and Jorge Vazquez-Aguirre, to help sector leaders from different African countries analyze historical climate data to include in their climate adaptation plans

Understanding rainfall is surprisingly complex – where will it rain? For how long? How much rain will fall, and when? What are the diurnal rainfall cycles? What will rain patterns look like during extreme droughts? Or extreme rainfall? For her research, Rachael is analyzing over 1 terabyte of observational and climate model data. To manage the analyses of such large quantities of data, Rachael works on the Australian supercomputer.

Rachael presents her research at the Swiss Climate Summer School in Grindelwald, Switzerland (August 2022)

Rachael says that she is very grateful to have found such a supportive research department and supervisors at UNSW.  Her all-female supervisory team is a major source of inspiration and encouragement for her as she continues to grow and learn, professionally and personally. She also takes full advantage of being a PhD student – acknowledging that she is still learning and embraces asking others for help to expand her skillset and expertise.

In her role as a Women in Science and Maths champion, Rachael hopes to inspire other women and young girls to pursue careers in STEM. She hopes that by telling the story of her unique career path—the hardships and successes— she would help others to embark and persevere through their own journey of realizing their dreams. Rachael hopes to inspire young girls to believe that their only limitation is their own ambition.

Follow Rachael on Twitter!