Missed the Fall 2022 bulletin? Read it here.

A message from David:

We’re pleased to share the Krembil Centre for Neuroinformatics Spring Bulletin for 2023. We have seen immense growth since our last bulletin and are excited to share the collaborations, awards and accomplishments of our world-leading scientists. 

The Krembil Centre is thrilled to welcome the Digital Mental Health Lab, led by Dr Gillian Strudwick as a key pillar in our mission to translate computational neuroscience into clinical operations. The Digital Health Team will further advance the integration of brain-health innovations to routine practice, through implementation science and knowledge translation methods.

The Krembil Centre is also pleased to celebrate the latest accomplishments from Dr Etay Hay and his lab, including successful awards from the Labatt Catalyst Fund and Miner’s Lamp in support of in-silico biomarkers.

As our scientific teams' impact on the field continues to grow and be recognized we are looking to new ways to expand our reach through collaborations and knowledge sharing.

The KCNI Wearable Operations team, one of our newest teams, has made significant progress supporting the launch of new studies at CAMH and enabling remote data collection across a set of fit-for-purpose wearable devices.

The Krembil Centre is leading the development of the Cardio-Neuro-Mind Data Platform (CNMDP), in partnership with the University of Ottawa, Ottawa Heart Institute, Bruyere Research Institute and the Royal Ottawa Hospital.  Building from the Neuroinformatics Platform and BrainHealth Databank (BHDB) the CNMDP will see additional expansion to incorporate further measures of physical health, including cardiac imaging, and establish cross-organizational data teams.

With this year’s KCNI Summer School and Annual Open House around the corner, our teams have a lot to celebrate and share. Keep up-to-date with the research being done at the Centre through www.krembilneuroinformatics.ca updated website.

We are thrilled to announce that as of April 1st the Digital Mental Health lab, lead by Dr. Gillian Strudwick, has officially joined the KCNI.

In addition to her role leading the Digital Mental Health Lab Dr. Gillian Strudwick is also Chief Clinical Informatics Officer at CAMH. She is an Associate Professor (Status) at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto. She holds academic appointments at Western University and the University of Victoria, and is currently the President of the Ontario Nursing Informatics Group.

As the need for mental health services continues to rise, the opportunity to utilize digital technologies to support care has never been greater. The digital mental health lab works with patients, health professionals, and caregivers to ensure that digital mental health innovations are best utilized to benefit those who can use them the most. To achieve this, they use implementation science and knowledge translation methods to ensure seamless integration of innovations into routine practice. The composition of the lab is 10-15 individuals who are scientists, post-doctoral fellows, research staff and trainees (doctoral and masters students).

To learn more about the Mental Health Lab - click here 

Introducing WearOps

Helping researchers and clinicians capture remote multimodal data

image courtesy of Oura Ring

Wearables Operations, or WearOps, is a relatively new project here at the KCNI that focuses on delivering wearable devices, such as Fitbits, to researchers and eventually, clinicians across CAMH. 

Wearables were named the top fitness trend of 2022 and continue to grow in popularity, with over 250 million smart watches estimated to be shipped by 2025. While their sensors’ capabilities are not yet medical-grade, they offer a very popular benefit in that their form factors are quite compact: the most popular are watch-like devices (e.g., Apple Watch, Fitbits), with even more compact form factors such as rings and even clothing, such as vests, shoes and socks! In addition, some of these devices have Bluetooth capabilities so that makes it possible for researchers to collect data remotely, something that has become more and more important since the COVID-19 pandemic.

The KCNI WearOps team assists in getting these devices deployed to studies, managing the data being collected from them and making them easily available for analysis. They focus on making using wearables in research studies as seamless as possible so that researchers and clinicians can do what they do best without having to worry about the logistical issues that can come up when distributing tens to hundreds of these  devices. The team's overall goal is to enable efficient, transparent deployment of wearables as digital companions in clinical research and care, collecting end-points related to clinical outcomes of interest. 

In addition to making devices available to researchers the WearOps team conducts their own research on the utility and ethics surrounding using wearables as a research tool. You can find their most recent publication "Association of Demographic and Socioeconomic Indicators With the Use of Wearable Devices Among Children" in JAMA Network Open. 

Highlighting the accomplishments of Dr. Etay Hay 

Labatt Catalyst Fund: In collaboration with Dr. Tarek Rajji and Dr. Heather Brookes, Dr. Etay Hay will apply in-silico EEG biomarkers of cell-specific (SST interneuron) inhibition to link depression with cognitive impairment in aging. The new biomarkers have been published in a recent paper from Dr. Hay’s lab (Mazza et al, PLoS Comput Biol, 2023), and will be applied on the PACt-MD dataset of patients with depression history and/or aging impairments.

Labatt Postdoctoral Fellowship: In collaboration with Dr. Etienne Sibille and Dr. Thomas Prevot, Dr. Alexandre Guet-McCreight (a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Etay Hay’s lab) will use detailed simulations of human cortical microcircuits and new compounds for treating depression developed at camh, to predict dose and efficacy given EEG biomarkers of depression severity. The project will pioneer in-silico drug testing and will support a recent patent that aims to facilitate translation of the new compound to clinical use.

Miner’s Lamp Fund: In collaboration with Dr. Andreea Diaconescu and Dr. Michael Kiang, Dr. Etay Hay will apply in-silico EEG biomarkers of cell-specific (Parvalbumin interneuron) inhibition changes in schizophrenia to improve stratification of risk for schizophrenia in young at-risk population.

To learn more about the Hay Lab - Click here 

Principal Investigators' Block       

Dr. Laura Sikstom and Dr. Marta Maslej

Team members Wang, Reslan, Maslej and Sikstrom present at FaCCT'22

Dr. Laura Sikstrom and Dr. Marta Maslej lead the Predictive Care team at KCNI, which draws on their award-winning computational-ethnographic framework to explore and assess AI applications in mental health care. Dr. Sikstrom applies ethnographic approaches to critically examine the human dynamics behind every algorithmic system. This approach provides valuable empirical data on how underlying social and political realities are embedded into machine learning models and the critical context for understanding how a model might be successfully integrated into clinical workflows. Dr. Maslej uses experimental and computational methods to derive insights from clinical data, including psychiatric notes, with the aim of improving assessment, informing treatment decisions, as well as identifying and mitigating bias. She is interested in the ways AI can supplement limitations in human cognition and prognostication to enhance psychiatric care. A key goal of the Predictive Care team is to leverage the largely untapped potential of AI applications to enhance compassionate and equitable care in mental health.

The Predictive Care team participates in a 'mock triage' in the Emergency Department at CAMH with team alumni nurse Z. Findlay

TRAINEE HIGHLIGHT 

Davide Momi

Davide completed his Ph.D. at the Department of Neuroscience, Imaging and Clinical Sciences at the University G. d’Annunzio of Chieti. As part of his PhD, Davide attended a period abroad as a visiting PhD student at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging in Boston. Prior to his doctoral studies, he obtained a Master’s degree in Neurosciences and Neuro-Psychological Rehabilitation from the University of Bologna and a Bachelor’s in psychology from the University of Perugia.

Davide's main academic interest is predicting the TMS signal propagation at the network-level, based on neuroimaging and electrophysiological data. At the WBMG, Davide will be working on several projects which will involve multimodal neuroimaging, non-invasive brain stimulation (TMS, TES) and whole-brain modelling. The primary aim of his project is to predict TMS outcomes by combining computational, neuroimaging and electrophysiological approaches.

As a proud Italian, Davide never forgets to renew his membership for the “fighting against pineapple on pizza” (a.k.a. Hawaiian pizza) movement. Davide is an enthusiastic basketball fan and he used to play semi-pro in the past. He is 6 ft 6 in. tall and is gradually getting used to his height. Davide is also a coordinator and volunteer at the “Rafiki Orphanage & Children's Home” in Arusha Tanzania. You can support the “Rafiki Orphanage & Children's Home” through their ongoing GoFundMe campaign. 

To learn more about the Griffith's Lab - Click here