Symposiums

Organisers: Ioanna Dratsiou, Annita Varella,
Evangelia Romanopoulou, Panagiotis Bamidis,
Malcolm MacLachlan, Oindrila Dutta, Michael Cooke

The European population is ageing fast. The ageing population will translate into different demands for health-related products and services and requiring an overall reorganization of leisure. The promotion of healthy ageing is thus a growing policy priority.

SHAPES aims to create the first European open Ecosystem enabling the large-scale deployment of a broad range of digital solutions for supporting and extending healthy and independent living for older individuals who are facing permanently or temporarily reduced functionality and capabilities. SHAPES Large-scale Piloting campaign engages +2k older individuals in 15 pilot sites in 10 EU Member States, including 6 EIP on AHA Reference Sites, and involves hundreds of key stakeholders to bring forth solutions to improve the health, wellbeing, independence, and autonomy of older individuals, while enhancing the long-term sustainability of health and care systems in Europe. Being an integral part of the Health and Care Cluster Projects, a cluster among the main Horizon2020-financed research projects established by the European Commission, SHAPES working groups leads the Working Group on dissemination.

1. Christos Kefalas,
1. Maria Pitsikali,
1,2. Konstantinos Kasimis
1. Association of Manual Physiotherapists of Greece
2. Department of Physiotherapy, School of Health Sciences, International Hellenic University

Despite the large number of techniques used in the rehabilitation of neuromusculoskeletal disorders, a lot of questions remain unanswered.

However, the development of the science of neurophysiology in recent years seems to pose a new perspective in the understanding, evaluation, and treatment of neuromusculoskeletal disorders. Recent research evidence regarding the control of the motor system by the brain, provided important information on how the brain integrates sensory-motor information (visualvestibular system, somatosensory stimuli) and renders them as a kinetic result.

In addition, advances in neuroimaging helped in the identification of neural areas related to chronic pain. Structural and functional changes in brain structures accompany chronic pain. It is believed that such changes may be reversible because of neuroplasticity. It is essential to develop therapeutic approaches utilizing neuroplasticity that could be used in the management of chronic pain.

Organizers: Prof. Nikolaos Foroglou, Prof. Vassilis Kimiskidis
School of Medicine, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

Brain mapping generally involves the study of function correlated with anatomy and incorporates different modalities ranging from imaging, neurophysiology,  immunohistochemistry, molecular and ontogenetic studies, stem cell, cellular biology and engineering disciplines. Few of these modalities reach the clinical settings.

The symposium will focus on modalities used in daily clinical practice for neurological disorders. Starting from basic concepts, applications, limitations and different combinations the panel will present updated data for clinicians and researchers interested in neurological diseases.

A final discussion on lateralization techniques will compare different available modalities.

Assessment of safety and tolerability (e.g., cardiovascular effects, changes in liver enzymes, neurological events, etc.) is a crucial component of early-phase clinical studies. Many central nervous system (CNS) and non-CNS compounds have the potential to affect cognitive ability. Any drug that is CNS penetrant (i.e., crosses the blood–brain barrier) can influence cognition through effects on neurotransmitter systems.

Cognitive safety is defined as the impact of clinical treatments on the ability to perceive, process, understand, and store information, make decisions and produce appropriate responses.

Currently, the majority of CNS drug clinical trials rely on neuropsychological endpoints for establishing efficacy, safety, and tolerability. Neuropsychological testing is the current standard for measuring the effect of drugs clinical trials on cognitive, motor, behavioral, linguistic and executive functioning. Furthermore, regulatory authorities’ expectations warrant the use of specific, targeted, and sensitive cognitive safety assessments. According to the FDA ‘all drugs, including drugs intended for non-CNS indications, should be evaluated for adverse effects on the CNS. The occurrence of adverse CNS events in even a small number of phase 1 subjects can indicate the need for more focused studies of CNS effects. Measures of reaction time, divided attention, selective attention, and memory may be appropriate’.

Dr. Alkinoos Athanasiou,
Dr. Alexander Astaras,
Assoc. Prof. Markos Tsipouras,
Prof. Panagiotis D. Bamidis

Precision robotics for accurate reproduction of natural motor output of human upper extremities have been developed for use in assistive medicine and rehabilitation, in industry and in communication and media sections. The rapid expansion of wearable technologies, facilitated by the boom and popularization of rapid prototyping techniques has led to the conception and creation of novel wearable robotic gloves for rehabilitation applications.

While the field features many challenges due to, in part, the particularities and complexity of human hand function, more often than not research teams work in parallel but not in communication, running into similar neurophysiological R&D challenges. This symposium proposal aims to bring together research teams that work in similar wearable robotic glove and hand technologies in the wider Thessaloniki and Northern Greece area in order to facilitate knowledge exchange and promote cooperation.

Speakers:
1. Prof. Dr. Shulan Hsieh: Fm theta neurofeedback in elderly
2. Dr. Kathrin Eschmann: Fm theta neurofeedback in healthy controls
3. Dr. Stefanie Enriquez-Geppert: Fm theta neurofeedback in pilots
4. Diede Smit: Fm theta neurofeedback in a subclinical group

In the first talk, Shulan Hsieh (National Cheng Kung University Tainan, Taiwan) will present the efficacy of a 12-session Fmθ training for improving attention and working memory performance in healthy older people. Her research thus replicates the findings of Wang and Hsieh (2013) and provides more solid evidence for the effectiveness of this protocol. In the second presentation, Kathrin Eschmann (Cardiff University Brain Research, UK) will talk about a 7-session Fmθ training with healthy students.

This study investigated whether the protocol improves proactive rather than reactive processes of cognitive control, as previous research had suggested. In contrast to the sham group, Fmθ increased during NF in the experimental group, with transferred to performance on the proactive task rather than the reactive task evident after almost two weeks and correlated with Fmθ increase during NF.

In the third talk, Stefanie Enriquez-Geppert (University of Groningen, the Netherlands) presents the collaboration with Prof. Frédéric Dehais (ISAE-SUPAERO, Toulous) on a study investigating a 8-session Fmθ training to improve executive functions (EF) and flight performance in pilots. A hybrid test of EF and the multi-attribute task battery were studied before and after NF. Furthermore, flight performance under increased cognitive demand (operationalized by an additional task) was assessed (only) after training in a flight simulator.