Dr. Zahra Moussavi: “Application of Engineering into Alzheimer’s Disease Management: Diagnosis and Non-Pharmaceutical Treatments”

Abstract: Memory and cognitive declines are associated with normal brain aging but are also precursors to dementia, in particular Alzheimer’s disease. While currently there is no cure or “vaccine” against dementia, based on brain’s plasticity, there are hopes to delay the onset or to slow the progression of <a href="http://disease.

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Alzheimer’s disease is multi-facet condition; thus, the key to its management is in multi-disciplinary approaches. The clinical treatment of Alzheimer’s is basically a family of cholinesterase inhibitors like Aricept that the majority have a very low response rate. In this talk, I will review and discuss engineering-driven solutions as non-pharmaceutical treatments such as repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) and transcranial alternative/direct current stimulation (tACS/tDCS) with Cognitive Exercises. The results of our recent longitudinal clinical trials will be <a href="http://presented.

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Speaker Bio: Zahra Moussavi is a professor, a Canada Research Chair Tier I, and the founder and former director of Biomedical Engineering Graduate Program at the University of Manitoba. Her current research focuses on a few major areas: 1) respiratory acoustics signal processing and its application on Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) detection as well as application on swallowing silent aspiration detection and predicting swallowing disorders’ severity; the series of publications and patents in that area has resulted in several national and international research collaborations; 2) the design of innovative immersive virtual reality navigational environments for Alzheimer’s diagnosis as well as neuro-rehabilitation, and 3) Alzheimer’s and dementia treatment by non-pharmaceutical means; this line of research has resulted in two international collaborations and funding. She is the recipient of several awards including the “2018 Technical Excellence Award,” Engineers Geoscientist Manitoba, “Canada’s Most Powerful Women (Top 100)”, “Manitoba Distinguished Women” and IEEE EMBS Distinguished Lecturer. She has published more than 350 peer-reviewed papers in journals and conferences and has given >137 invited talks/seminars including 2 TEDx Talks and 21 keynote speaker seminars at national and international conferences. Aside from academic work, on her spare time, she writes science articles for public. She has also developed and offered cognitive training programs for aging population along with a free app for memory exercises in dementia population, called Mind Triggers, which is available on any platform such as iPads, Tablets, iPhone, and <a href="http://others.

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Bldg: ICT 516, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, T2N 1N4