TCCI 2023 Fall Newsletter



	中文

Dear Friends,

As we shift into Autumn, we’re excited to tell you about two free meetings we’ve organized in November. We’ve scheduled them to be extremely convenient for those who are attending the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting in Washington DC in November of this year.

The first is the latest in the annual meeting series we created with Science Magazine. “AI & Mental Health” will take place on Thursday, November 9th as a hybrid meeting with options to attend in-person or online. This meeting will highlight where AI can be used to the benefit of individuals and society. Experts will first discuss the astonishing progress of AI and they will then review promising applications of AI in mental health therapy.

The second meeting is an SfN Satellite meeting on Friday, November 10th entitled “Beyond The Lab: Developing Neurotechnology Solutions For Mass Populations.” This meeting convenes a group of experts who have a strong overview of academic and industry aspects of neurotechnologies. During this meeting, presenters will talk about the lack of neurotechnologies in our daily life, some of the scientific, regulatory and financial challenges scientists face when developing solutions that are more cost-effective and less complex, as well as practical ways each of them are making progress in this regard.

We hope to see you there!

Warmly,

Tianqiao Chen Chrissy Luo

AI And Mental Health

Beyond The Laboratory: Developing Neurotechnology Solutions For Mass Populations

NEWS

SfN Announces Partnership With the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute to Support Early Career Scientists

The Society for Neuroscience (SfN) and the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute announced a new partnership to support promising early career neuroscientists in their professional development and publishing trajectories. In 2023, SfN and the Chen Institute will jointly support a cohort of undergraduate students, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows with a Trainee Professional Development Award (TPDA) and the Chen Institute Science Writer Fellowship program.

TCCI Hosts Global Competition Tour for Universities to Promote “AI for Brain Science” – The First Stop at Tongji University Kicks Off Today

On July 18, TCCI officially launched an “AI for Brain Science” themed competition in China with Tongji University as the first stop. Focusing on AI-empowered brain science innovations, computer vision, and BCI-related contests, the two-month competition targets undergraduate and post graduate students. Prizes worth ¥300,000 (about US $45,000) will reward outstanding individuals or teams in addition to the opportunity to attend domestic and overseas “AI for Brain Science” summer schools organized by TCCI.

New FENS-Chen Institute NeuroLéman Summer School Series On Brain Dynamics In Health And Disease

In July this year, TCCI, FENS and the NeuroLéman Network held “Motor control: from thought to action,” the first of its Summer School Series on Brain Dynamics in Health and Disease. The Series explores cutting-edge technologies for basic and clinical neuroscience in order to develop novel concepts and new research techniques to address the challenges of investigating brain function and dysfunction. This year’s summer school was held at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland.

SUPPORTING THE COMMUNITY

We support and create scientific meetings around the world. Listed below are meetings we supported over the last few months. You can learn more about past and future meetings here.

July 25th - 27th

ICML | 2023. Fortieth International Conference On Machine Learning

August 1st - 4th

The 46th Annual Meeting Of The Japanese Neuroscience Society

August 29th - 30th

Neuroscience Of The Everyday World

September 10th - 13th

ACII 2023 Meeting

MEETING REPORTS

The Chen Science Writer Fellowship aims to extend the value of science meetings and conferences by summarizing the conversation, highlighting key themes and promoting innovative research presentations in meeting reports. You can see all meeting reports here.

BACLIF Meeting

BCI Society Annual Meeting

Neurotechnologies for Mass Populations – BCI Society Satellite Meeting

TCCI Hosts Third AI for Brain Science Meeting Themed AI, Brain, and Music

NanoNeuro 2023 TCCI Report

RESEARCH

Scientists Create Embryo-Like Model that Mimics Post-Implantation Stage of Human Development

Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, Bren Professor of Biology and Biological Engineering at Caltech and TCCI-affiliated faculty member, has generated a human embryo–like model that mimics aspects of the second week of human development, a time after embryos become implanted in the womb.

Unexpected sound omissions are signaled in human posterior superior temporal gyrus: an intracranial study

Our brains excel at predicting upcoming sounds based on context, such as anticipating the next note in a melody. To explore the brain's response when an expected sound is missing, Dr. Gerwin Schalk, Director of the Chen Frontier Lab for Applied Neurotechnology, and his colleagues employed electrocorticography to record brain activity directly from the surface of the brain, focusing specifically on the superior temporal gyrus (STG) region.

Spatio-temporal evolution of human neural activity during visually cued hand movements

Dr. Gerwin Schalk and his team conducted a study using iEEG recordings to investigate the neural activation associated with hand movements in response to visual cues. The study found that the neural activation was widely distributed across various brain regions, including the parietal, frontal, and occipital lobes. The study also revealed temporal differences in activation across these regions. The findings contribute to our understanding of task-related neural processing and have potential translational applications.

Huashan Hospital Maps Dementia Risk Factors; Active Interventions can Prevent 47%-73% of Dementia Cases

A study by the clinical research team of Prof. Yu Jintai from the Department of Neurology at Huashan Hospital, comprehensively mapped the modifiable risk factors for dementia for the first time. The research explored their joint effect on dementia and predicted that 47% to 72.6% of dementia cases could be prevented through active interventions. It also suggests that a favorable living environment, lifestyle, physical indicators, reduction of co-morbidities and improvement of socio-economic status can mitigate the genetic risk.

Reconstructing Music from Human Auditory Cortex Activity Using Nonlinear Decoding Models

Music is core to the human experience, yet the precise neural dynamics underlying music perception remain unknown. Dr. Gerwin Schalk, Director of the Chen Frontier Lab for Neurotechnology, was part of a team of researchers who analyzed a unique iEEG dataset of 29 patients who listened to a Pink Floyd song and applied a stimulus reconstruction approach previously used in the speech domain. They were able to successfully reconstruct a recognizable song from direct neural recordings.

“Invisible” Cell Types and Gene Expression Revealed with Sequencing Data Analysis Improvement

Identifying different cell types is critical to understanding the vast number of functions performed by our bodies. For example, many researchers are currently looking for cell types that may be linked to specific diseases, such as Parkinson's Disease. Determining the precise cell types involved in such processes is critical for all of these studies. Now, a collaboration between the Oka laboratory at Caltech and the laboratory of Allan-Hermann Pool at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center has demonstrated how to optimize a key step in scRNA-seq analysis to recover missing cell types and gene expression data that usually gets discarded.