Dear IEEE Member

You are invited to attend the following IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology (EMB) Society Distinguished Lecturer (DL) talk.

 Presenter: Professor Zahra Moussavi (University of Manitoba, Canada)

Topic: Application of Novel Virtual Reality Technologies in Neuroscience and Diagnosis of Neurodegenerative diseases

 Date: Wednesday 10 December 2014

Time: 4 pm (Refreshments from 3.30 pm)

Venue: Room WE230, Level 2, Art & Design School (WE),

AUT University 27 St Paul Street, Auckland City

Contact: A/Professor Hamid GholamHosseini (hgholamh@aut.ac.nz) for more details

Abstract:

In the past decade, due to advancement of computing power, Virtual Reality (VR) experiments have gained much more popularity. A VR environment allows natural world emulation for different purposes by replicating real world tasks, such as navigation. Application of VR technologies has opened a new paradigm to test several theories on brain function.

As an example, an interesting and challenging brain function is our spatial ability and the strategies used in navigation. Despite the magnitude of effort in the field, the nature of spatial models depicting what strategies healthy humans use is poorly understood, let alone the way these strategies deteriorate with aging and Alzheimer’s. The majority of studies examining human spatial memory have utilized non-navigable tasks, typically table-top tasks using standardized paper-and-pencil tests (i.e. MMSE, ADAS-cog, route learning). These have been shown to be inadequate to discover spatial processing to navigate through real world environments; they are also insensitive for detection of Alzheimer’s at the early stages of the disease because they do not test dynamic sensory input to the brain. Modifying natural environment platforms for spatial cognition assessment is costly, time consuming and in many cases not feasible. In contrast, experiments in VR environment offer repeatability and flexibility to modify the testing environment. Moreover, monitoring movement parameters such as position and trajectories of a participant in a natural environment is fairly sophisticated, whereas in a VR environment it is relatively simple; for instance, participants’ movements in VR can easily be logged directly by the VR software. However, research on using VR for the elderly either as diagnostic tool for any neurological disorder or neuro-rehabilitation has been very limited. The current VR environments, on the other hand, still are not natural enough to be used by people, who are not familiar with computer games; also they commonly cause kinetosis (motion sickness) in adults.

We know that our cognition of the world is embodied; in other words, the way we perceive the world, controls our actions and vice versa. This implies that to mimic the brain’s perception of the natural world in a VR environment, we need to make the VR environment naturalistic by integrating all the sensory inputs (i.e. auditory, visual, proprioceptive, vestibular) that the brain receives in a real environment. Therefore, in our pilot study, we have developed a virtual reality navigational (VRN) environment to test our hypothesis on spatial ability and its relationship with aging.

In this talk, an overview of the VR state of art and its applications will be presented followed by our pilot study as a particular example; the challenges and future directions will also be discussed.

Short Bio

Dr. Zahra Moussavi received her B.Sc. from Sharif University of Technology, Iran, M.Sc. from the University of Calgary, and Ph.D. from University of Manitoba, Canada in 1997, all in Electrical Engineering. She then joined the respiratory research group of the Winnipeg Children’s Hospital and worked as a research associate for 1.5 years. In 1999, she did her postdoctoral fellowship at the Biomedical Engineering Department of Johns Hopkins University. Following that, she joined the University of Manitoba, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering as a faculty member, where she is currently a full professor, a Canada Research Chair in Biomedical Engineering and also the director of Biomedical Engineering Graduate Program. She is also an adjunct scientist at the TRTech of Winnipeg, a research affiliate of Riverview Health Center and a distinguished Lecturer of IEEE-EMBS. She is a recipient of “Women of Distinction Award” in Science and Technology (2014) from the YWMCA and Manitoba Government as well as “Canada’s Most Powerful Women (Top 100) in Trailblazers and Trendsetters category (2014)”. With over 184 publications in prestigious journals and conferences, her current research includes acoustic sleep apnea detection, respiratory and swallowing sound analysis, and early diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer disease. She has given 48 invited talks/seminars (23 outside of Canada) including a recent Tedx Talk and 3 keynote speaker seminars at international conferences.