Like a lot of people, after a particularly long day at work, David Niddam likes to have a beer and relax. Unlike most people, he can explain how the alcohol in that beer moves from his bloodstream to his spinal cord, cerebellum and cerebral cortex, where it increases dopamine and norepinephrine levels, decreases the transmission within his acetylcholine systems, bumps up the production of beta-endorphin in his hypothalamus and puts a smile on his face.
Niddam works in the Integrated Brain Research Unit (IBRU) of Taipei Veterans General Hospital, a facility under the administration of both the hospital and National Yangming University. Earlier this week he gave the Taipei Times a tour of the facilities, where current research topics include epilepsy, cognitive linguistics, mood disorders and the genetic mapping of spino-cerebellar ataxia, a type of neuro-muscular degeneration specific to Taiwanese.
For his part, Niddam researches pain. He has been with the IBRU since 2002, coming to Taiwan after completing his doctoral studies at Aalborg University in his native Denmark. He chose to work at the IBRU, he said, because the facility is among the best in the world in terms of the quantity and quality of hardware available to researchers, making his research a little less painful.
PHOTO: DAVID MOMPHARD, TAIPEI TIMES
"In brain research the gold standard is to know which local brain networks are involved in a specific task and how they are connected through global networks," he said.
Equally important are knowing the order in which those networks are activated, being able to follow the information that flows through them, and understanding the biochemistry involved in the process.
"Ideally, we would like to have all that information from the same subjects or patients," Niddam said, instead of piecing together bits of information from hospitals and research centers across the globe.
PHOTO COURTESY OF DAVID NIDDAM
To make that possible, National Yangming University and Taipei Veterans Hospital have established the Research Center for Neuroimaging and Neuroinformatics to bring into one facility all the instruments required in neurological research.
"This is a new trend worldwide and it's called multimodal brain imaging," Niddam said, adding that the researchers at National Yangming University and the Veterans Hospital were the only ones in the past year to receive money from the National Health and Research Institute of Taiwan to establish a center.
"So it means this area has been acknowledged as a key research area for Taiwan," he said.
Among the hardware available to Niddam and his fellow researchers are six magnetic imaging resonance (MRI) machines as well as electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) machines.
EEGs and MEGs record from outside the brain. The EEG does so when the patient puts on a rather unfashionable Lycra cap with dozens of electrodes attached to it. The MEG has the patient sit in a room that has been shielded from the earth's magnetic forces and place their head in an inverted bowl.
The benefit of both the EEG and MEG is an ability to follow brain activity in real time, down to the millisecond. However, the machines cannot pinpoint where in the brain the activity is taking place to an area smaller than 100,000 or more brain cells.
With the MRI technology that looks deep into the brain, activity can be located to areas smaller than a millimeter, but cannot provide the temporal accuracy of an EEG or MEG. MRI works by tilting the spin of every atom in the body in the same direction, then sending pulses of radio waves into the scanner which knock the nucleus of each cell out of its proper alignment. When it realigns, it sends a signal which the scanner records, analyzes and drafts into an image.
Another form of MRI measurement, called a functional MRI, can measure brain activity by detecting oxygen levels in specific brain areas.
Niddam's colleague, Yeh Tzu-chen (葉子城), showed the MRI scan of a patient with a brain tumor. The functional MRI, he explained, is used not only to pinpoint the location of the tumor, but to discern what functions the areas of the brain beside the tumor control.
Because of the tumor's location on the left side of the patient's brain, there was a risk that surgery could leave the patient without the use of the right hand.
"During the MRI, I stood next to the patient and tapped on their foot," said Yeh, who is also an assistant professor in the Department of Radiology at National Yangming University Medical School. "They knew that when I did they should move their right hand. The MRI recorded exactly which part of the brain next to the tumor was responsible for moving the hand, creating an indispensable map for surgeons to use in removing the tumor."
"Remember those guys who invented [MRI] got the Nobel for it?" Niddam said, referring to American Paul C. Lauterbur and Briton Sir Peter Mansfield's 2003 prize. "Without it, diagnosis worldwide would be much less efficient."
April 28 to May 4 During the Japanese colonial era, a city’s “first” high school typically served Japanese students, while Taiwanese attended the “second” high school. Only in Taichung was this reversed. That’s because when Taichung First High School opened its doors on May 1, 1915 to serve Taiwanese students who were previously barred from secondary education, it was the only high school in town. Former principal Hideo Azukisawa threatened to quit when the government in 1922 attempted to transfer the “first” designation to a new local high school for Japanese students, leading to this unusual situation. Prior to the Taichung First
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) hatched a bold plan to charge forward and seize the initiative when he held a protest in front of the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office. Though risky, because illegal, its success would help tackle at least six problems facing both himself and the KMT. What he did not see coming was Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (將萬安) tripping him up out of the gate. In spite of Chu being the most consequential and successful KMT chairman since the early 2010s — arguably saving the party from financial ruin and restoring its electoral viability —
The Ministry of Education last month proposed a nationwide ban on mobile devices in schools, aiming to curb concerns over student phone addiction. Under the revised regulation, which will take effect in August, teachers and schools will be required to collect mobile devices — including phones, laptops and wearables devices — for safekeeping during school hours, unless they are being used for educational purposes. For Chang Fong-ching (張鳳琴), the ban will have a positive impact. “It’s a good move,” says the professor in the department of
Toward the outside edge of Taichung City, in Wufeng District (霧峰去), sits a sprawling collection of single-story buildings with tiled roofs belonging to the Wufeng Lin (霧峰林家) family, who rose to prominence through success in military, commercial, and artistic endeavors in the 19th century. Most of these buildings have brick walls and tiled roofs in the traditional reddish-brown color, but in the middle is one incongruous property with bright white walls and a black tiled roof: Yipu Garden (頤圃). Purists may scoff at the Japanese-style exterior and its radical departure from the Fujianese architectural style of the surrounding buildings. However, the property
RSS