BIOMED Seminar

Title:
Footprints, Fairness, and the Future of the Planet

Speaker:
Paul Brandt-Rauf, ScD, MD, DrPH
Distinguished University Professor and Dean
School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems
Drexel University

Details:
Achieving healthy populations worldwide depends at least partly on environmental justice for all. This requires not only acting locally in a different way, but also thinking globally in a different way. Understanding the inherent unfairness of our ecological footprints is a key first step, but acting upon this understanding will require a new level of thinking, an eco-enlightenment.

Biosketch:
Dr. Paul W. Brandt-Rauf is Dean and Distinguished University Professor in the School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems at Drexel University. He was previously Dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), where he also held appointments as Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences in the School of Public Health, Professor of Medicine in the College of Medicine, Professor of Bioengineering in the College of Engineering, and Professor of Public Administration in the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs.

Dr. Brandt-Rauf received his BS, MS, and ScD in Applied Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, his MD, and his MPH and DrPH in Environmental Sciences from Columbia University. He did post-graduate training in anatomic/environmental pathology, internal medicine, and occupational/environmental medicine, and he is certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine and the American Board of Preventive Medicine in Occupational Medicine. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, the American College of Preventive Medicine, the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, and the Royal Society of Medicine. After completing his post-graduate training, Dr. Brandt-Rauf joined the faculty at Columbia, where he was most recently Professor and Chair of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences in the Mailman School of Public Health, as well as Professor of Medicine, Earth and Environmental Engineering, and International and Public Affairs. He became Professor Emeritus at Columbia University upon assuming his position at UIC.

BIOMED-SJTU Dual PhD Thesis Defense

Title:
Assessment of Cognition and Neuromodulation Using Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy in Mental Health

Speaker:
Adrian Curtin, Dual PhD Candidate
School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems
Drexel University

School of Biomedical Engineering
Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU)

Advisors:
Hasan Ayaz, PhD
Associate Professor
School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems
Drexel University

Shanbao Tong, PhD
Professor
School of Biomedical Engineering
Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU)

Jijun Wang, PhD
Professor Shanghai Mental Health Center
School of Medicine
Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU)

Details:
Prefrontal cortex activity can be effectively and routinely monitored using functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS), a non-invasive neuroimaging method that measures cortical hemodynamic responses through relative changes in the absorption of near-infrared light. fNIRS offers a number of advantages over other neuroimaging methodologies, particularly in outpatient environments, and in recent years has become an emerging tool in clinical psychiatry. As ongoing technological improvements make neuroimaging systems more practical, more reliable, and more affordable, fNIRS is poised to tackle long-standing challenges in psychiatric practice. Despite these advances, research is often restricted to the observation of individual phenomena which are rarely successfully translated into use in clinical settings. The goal of this thesis is to propose the use and application of fNIRS-based neuroimaging to characterize cognitive function in mental health patients and monitor their response to pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical interventions. The platform introduced in this study offers potential new indices of patient status, treatment efficacy, and targets for novel treatment approaches.

In this thesis, it is proposed that fNIRS can address two distinct, but related, needs in psychiatric practice: as a tool for comprehensive evaluation of patient cognition and to monitor neurophysiological response to non-invasive brain stimulation. In the first case, fNIRS is employed to evaluate patient cognition as a means of tracking patient status and procognitive treatment response. Using schizophrenia as a reference disorder, this work presents a novel multidomain cognitive battery as well as results from the performance of the battery. Participants’ neurocognitive abilities were evaluated from the perspective of four domains: working memory, verbal fluency, speed of processing, and sustained attention. The primary goal of this assessment was to identify neural bases for these deficits and the secondary goal was to determine the degree to which they related to clinical status and response to antipsychotic treatment. While it was not expected that antipsychotic therapy would improve participant cognition, the identification of stable deficits and activity which relates to clinical state can help establish composite biomarkers of clinical status to inform future therapy through Brain-Integrated Psychiatry. These candidate biomarkers offer potential utility for diagnosis, classification, and monitoring of treatment response within schizophrenia.

In the second case, fNIRS is assessed as a technique to monitor and evaluate noninvasive brain stimulation (NIBS) using repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). rTMS is a growing non-pharmaceutical intervention that promises potential mitigation of psychosis, depression, and cognitive dysfunction. Neurostimulation using rTMS often requires targeting regions without any peripheral physiological measure to assess its immediate cortical or therapeutic effects. Here, the utility of fNIRS is presented as a technique to measure immediate cortical responses to TMS, the effects of stimulation on cognition, and the relationship of cortical response to clinical outcomes in major depressive disorder (MDD) and schizophrenia. This section includes for the first time, the monitoring of rTMS effects using an LED-based fNIRS sensor, the influence of rTMS on speed of processing, and the influence of different rTMS therapies on individuals with MDD and schizophrenia. Together, this project aims to promote non-invasive neuroimaging methodologies as a tool to shed light on patient state through objective measures of cognition and treatment response.