One of my scientific interests is the use of EEG or fMRI for diagnosis of neurological disorders in individual patients. So far, most studies (including my own) have been able to find statistically significant differences between groups of patients or between patients and healthy subjects. But, as not everyone realizes, these results unfortunately do not always imply that the measure under scrutiny provides a valuable diagnostic tool. For this to be true, the measure needs to have high sensitivity and high specificity, as well. In other words, if the measure does not link abnormal values to patients and normal values to healthy subjects in most of the cases, it is of no clinical value. Now, for applications in psychiatry an interesting result has been obtained by Khodayari-Rostamabad and co-authors from McMaster University in Hamilton (CA), which was published in Current Biology. They show that machine learning algorithms can be used for an automated diagnostic procedure, employing a selection procedure of the most relevant features derived (statistically) from an individual’s EEG. This is a very powerful technique, which only works however, if the training dataset is large enough (in their case they used a training dataset of 207 subjects, entailing three psychiatric disorders and data from healthy subjects, yielding 85% correct diagnoses after training and cross-validation experiments). I would love to do such a study employing EMG-fMRI in patients with different Parkinsonisms or tremors. All I have to do is find the funding …
It is not always easy to find female role models, which is one of the reasons why I volunteer for ‘Spiegelbeeld’, a Dutch initiative to show female highschool students that maths, physics and all exact sciences in general are highly interesting (i.e. not dull or boring at all), are applied in more practical areas than they can think of (even in hospitals) and not just for boys who score super grades. Another way to find female role models is to check out the website of a media organisation called ‘No Country for Young Women’ that highlights female role models in science, engineering and IT, worldwide. So far, most role models are American, but a few Dutch role models have been added in the past couple of months, such as Emily Jacometti, Commercial Director & Co-founder at Flavour in Amsterdam and Karin Sluis, a civil engineer working as director Spatial development and mobility with Witteveen+Bos Consulting engineers in Deventer. A website to check out regularly and mention to your female (and male) students!
I am a bit late to report it but here it is: researchers from Berkeley, Minnesota and Oxford have developed a new ultrafast EPI sequence for fMRI that brings down the repetition time (TR) to only 400 ms at 3T. Their finding was published in the 20 dec 2010 issue of PLoS one. This is exciting news: not only does it mean that faster processes in the brain can be followed than with conventional EPI, it also allows more full brain scans to be collected within a single scan session. Especially in the patients and healthy elderly subjects that I include for my own research, I am always careful not to extend total scanning time beyond one hour. Normally I use TRs of 2 seconds. With this advancement I would get five times the data in the same amount of scanning time! Or, the same amount of data in only one fifth of the time, which would hugely decrease the burden for subjects. This development also seems very interesting from the perspective of concurrent EEG-fMRI recording: even though the gap in temporal resolution is still very large, the two are getting closer together with this finding.
I couldn’t agree more with Randi Silberman in his IEEE Spectrum Tech Talk blog, when he states his amazement at the way fMRI is used in the new Angelina Jolie movie Salt. In the movie it is suggested that fMRI is used as a lie detector without any of the current extended fMRI machinery visible anywhere near the person being interrogated. Yet, this idea may seem less far fetched in hindsight if portable MRI scanners will ever come to the market. Two years ago scientists from Ohio State University published results in MR theory that might one day allow MR scanning without a person actually having to be in the magnet, but only very close to the magnet. Yet, as long as we are not watching science fiction, it would be nice if some of the basics of neuroimaging were respected in movies and series ... My personal favorite in this respect is the way in which MR scanning is performed in the House TV series: the patient is shoved into what looks like an MR scanner but is much more like a CT scanner, with a very wide bore. Even when the head needs to be scanned it is not fixated, patients are allowed to move and talk and everyone just walks in with stethoscopes and other metal devices without any problems!
Professionally I’m interested in why certain old people age with grace whereas others suffer from cognitive problems at a relatively young age. Not only do I use neuroimaging techniques to find out how certain elderly can compensate functionally for the degradation of grey matter and the loss of white matter connectivity, but I am also interested in how we could help people put to good use the brain capacity that they still have. In my spare time I have been an amateur ballet dancer since I was 4 years old and I have always enjoyed it very much. A recent publication in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience attracted my attention because it appealed to these two interests of mine. Apparently, elderly who have practiced amateur dancing for 16.5 years on average performed much better on physical and mental activities than education-, gender- and age-matched controls who did not do any dancing or sports. The difference was due to the dancing group lacking any individuals showing poor performance, whereas these were frequently present in the control group. So it appears that dancing helps you preserve your mental and physical capacities. Another motivation to keep my ballet dancing up!
This initiative is truly one very good example of how internet can be used to benefit other people: Salman Khan has set up the Khan Academy, a not-for-profit organization with the mission of providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere. On his website www.khanacademy.org he provides over 1400 YouTube videos covering everything from basic arithmetic and algebra to differential equations, physics, chemistry, biology and finance. It provides great material for high school students, but also for adults needing a mathematics or physics reminder it is highly valuable. A very admirable initiative!
In the February 19 2009 issue of Nature David Brunner and Klaas Pruessmann from ETH Zurich showed that by using travelling instead of standing radio-frequency waves to acquire MR images, it becomes possible to obtain high-quality images of larger parts of the body at once. More importantly from the perspective of a patient, even at 7T these superb images can be obtained without the need to have the receiver very close to the body, thereby limiting patient room. Actually, this kind of technique will even allow more space around the patient. A nice example of how thinking outside the box, and, according to the press release, a serendipitous event (a conventional MR image with fold-over artefacts) can trigger a new evolution in technology.
TED provides 15 minute presentations by both eminent researchers and young rising stars on very diverse subjects. Both very interesting from a content point of view, but also to learn how to present your topic in only 15 minutes in an accessible, thought-provoking and entertaining way. I loved the talks by Ramachandran and by Petsko on the center of your mind and the coming neurological epidemic (Alzheimer's disease) respectively. On a whole different topic: check out Merrill's talk on 'Siftables'.
It was only today that I learned about ORPHEUS, the Organisation for PhD Education in Biomedicine and Health Sciences in the European System. Since I have been chair of the Educational Committee of our graduate school BCN since 2005, their aims have my special interest and I should have actually known about them sooner. They have published several interesting position papers as well.
They will organize their fourth meeting on 23-25 April 2009 in Aarhus which will have as its theme "Setting Standards for the PhD Degree in Biomedicine and Health Sciences". Also accessible to PhD students!
In my never-ending search for good instructional materials I encountered the site of the Mind Project. There are many interesting animations there, e.g. to explain the generation of action potentials and neuronal synchrony and also a link to a virtual EEG lab where you can design and analyse your own visual EEG experiment!