Research

Welcome to the Anderson Lab!

Our Applied Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience program seeks to understand the role of sleep and circadian timing for optimal performance, and to apply this knowledge to improve health and safety outcomes in everyday life. Our program stretches from discovery to translation, with two core areas of impact: Drowsy Driving and Healthy Ageing.

These two programs run in parallel by utilising laboratory- and field-based methodologies, each implementing cutting-edge technological and biological approaches to sleep and circadian measurement. These might include polysomnography, circadian assessment, ocular metrics, metabolomics, and neurocognitive testing. Our group themes of driving, ageing, biomarkers and cognition are inter-related to promote a multi-disciplinary, team-based research program. This ensures we best achieve our overarching goal of developing sleep and circadian strategies to maximise cognition and performance across the lifespan.

Our lab currently comprises post-doctoral research fellow, clinical and research PhD graduate students, Honours students, and undergraduate interns and trainees.

Drowsy Driving Program

Our Drowsy Driving Program aims to understand the role of sleep for safe driving, and develop and evaluate next generation technologies and biomarkers for accurate detection of the drowsy state.

Project Leader: Associate Professor Clare Anderson.

Projects

Project DRIVES: Dose Response In-Vehicle Evaluation of Sleepiness
A world-first systematic evaluation of how much sleep is required for safe driving. This study is critical in setting the ‘limit’ for sleep for safe driving and impairment detection.
Project Leader: Dr Jessica Manousakis PhD Students: Elly Francis Pester and William Taylor.
Project ROAD: Roadside Operational Assessment of Drowsiness
An operational trial designed to understand the challenges of roadside testing for fatigue, and creating innovative, safe and effective solutions.
Project Leader: Dr Jessica Manousakis.
A Monash-led consortium in conjunction with Central Queensland University and the Institute of Sleep & Breathing at the Austin Hospital to evaluate the accuracy of fatigue detection technologies and to develop frameworks for future evaluation and implementation.
Consortium Manager: Dr Jessica Manousakis.
The D-Tech Trial led by Monash involves an on-road assessment of native and after-market ocular-based devices.
Project Leader: TBC.
A series of in-lab studies designed to develop metabolomic markers of sleep loss, sleep duration, and sleep sufficiency. We are working with our partners to develop biosensors and device prototypes for translation, and to develop next generation devices to predict sleep loss with high accuracy.
Project Leader: Dr Katy Jeppe.

Sleep and Circadian Ageing Program

Our Sleep, Circadian and Ageing Program aims to understand the role of sleep for optimal cognitive ageing and to develop biomarkers of Alzheimer’s Disease risk, and sleep-circadian intervention strategies, to promote cognition later in life.

Project Leader: Associate Professor Clare Anderson.

Projects

Project STRIVE: Sleep, Timing, and Driving
An assessment of sleep, cognition and driving outcomes in older adults, with and without risk of dementia. This combined field-laboratory project will understand the role of sleep and cognition for safe driving, and develop ocular signatures of cognitive ageing and associated driver safety.
Project Leader: Tiffany Lo.
This highly-controlled in-lab study utilising cutting edge techniques in EEG analysis, blood collection and biomarker analysis (SIMOA-HD, IP-LCMS) to develop sleep biomarkers of AD-risk.
Project Leaders: Dr Jessica Manousakis and Dr Katy Jeppe.
Much is known about the impact of sleep loss on younger adults. This study focusses on the impact of sleep loss in older adults, both in-lab and field-based naturalistic driving studies. Working with Seeing Machines, our goal is to develop age-sensitive approaches and technologies for detection of the impaired state.
Project Leader: Dr Jessica Manousakis.
PhD Students: Anna Cai, Elly Francis Pester and William Taylor.
These studies examine the use of acoustic stimulation to optimise attention outcomes and executive function in middle-aged adults. They provide the first evidence for commercially available devices (the Deep Sleep Headband from Philips Healthcare), in optimising day time cognitive function and night-time cardiac outcomes.
Project Leader: Dr Charmaine Diep.

Clare Anderson Lab

Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health

Research

Welcome to the Anderson Lab!

Drowsy Driving Program

Projects

Sleep and Circadian Ageing Program

Projects