From a February 8, 2018 Café Scientifique notice (received via email),
Our next café will happen on TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 27TH at 7:30PM in the
back room at YAGGER'S DOWNTOWN (433 W Pender). Our speaker for the
evening will be DR. ROBERT TARZWELL, from the Department of Psychiatry
at UBC [University of British Columbia].FUNCTIONAL BRAIN IMAGING IN PSYCHIATRIC DISORDERS – CURRENT USES AND
FUTURE DIRECTIONSFunctional brain imaging seeks to detect and map specific activity
happening within the brain, such as changes in blood flow, metabolic
activity, or neurotransmitter levels within the whole brain or specific
areas of interest. Currently, functional imaging has a role in the
diagnosis of dementia, and localizing the focus of seizures. Emerging
roles with good evidence include traumatic brain injury. On the wild
frontier, Robert’s work includes the use of deep learning models to
analyze large datasets of brain images in the hunt for biomarkers of
psychiatric disorders.
I got more detail from Tarzwell’s UBC faculty page,
Dr. Tarzwell has dual certification in psychiatry and nuclear medicine, and he has a cross-appointment in the Department of Radiology. His main clinical and research interest is the use of functional brain imaging, particularly brain perfusion SPECT (single-photon emission computed tomography) and metabolic PET (positron emission tomography) in the diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric disorders. He has published work in the use of SPECT to diagnose TBI (traumatic brain injury) and to separate TBI from PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder). His current work involves the use of neural networks to discover brain activity biomarkers in major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder. He also regularly consults in complex injury cases where there are psychiatric consequences or head injury. His research appeared 19th on the 2015 list of Top 100 Science Stories of the Year in Discover Magazine (http://discovermagazine.com/2016/janfeb/19-brain-scans-may-lead-to-better-diagnoses). He is the content creator for the YouTube medical educational channel One Minute Medical School (https://www.youtube.com/user/OneMinuteMedSchool).
I found this One Minute Medical School video about fibromyalgia on Tarzwell’s YouTube channel,
Given the Café Scientifique description I would have expected Tarzwell’s talk to cover the topic of fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) but I see from his faculty page that he uses other imaging techniques. I wonder what he’ll address some of the controversies surrounding fMRI. In any event, I’d expect at least one or two questions about it. (For more about fMRI controversies see: David Biello’s August 30, 2016 article on ideas.TED.com; Cyril Pernet’s and Tom Nichols’ Sept. 30, 2016 article about the research on the Guardian newspaper website; and/or this June 27, 2016 news release with a link to Anders Eklund’s, Thomas Nichols’, and Hans Knutsson’s research paper titled: “Softwares for fMRI yield erroneous results .”