Imaging: A Window into the Brain
A Window into the Brain
Brain illness, comprising neurological disorders, mental illness and addiction, is considered the major health challenge in the 21st century with a socio-economic cost greater than cancer and cardiovascular disease combined. There are at least three unique challenges hampering brain disease management: relative inaccessibility, disease onset often preceding the onset of clinical symptoms by many years and overlap between clinical and pathological symptoms that makes accurate disease identification often difficult. This talk will give examples of how positron emission tomography (PET) imaging has contributed to better understanding of the brain function and disease with particular focus on Parkinson’s disease. Emphasis will be placed on the interplay between scientific discoveries and instrumentation and data analysis development as exemplified by the current understanding of the brain function as comprised by interactions between connectivity networks and neurochemistry and advancement in multi-modal imaging such as simultaneous PET and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
Vesna Sossi is a Professor in the University of British Columbia (UBC) Physics and Astronomy Department and at the UBC Djavad Mowafaghian Center for Brain Health. She directs the UBC Positron Emission Tomography (PET) imaging centre, which is known for its use of imaging as applied to neurodegeneration with emphasis on Parkinson’s disease. Her main areas of interest comprise development of imaging methods to enhance the investigation of neurochemical mechanisms that lead to an increased risk of Parkinson’s disease (PD) and mechanisms that contribute to treatment-related complications. She uses PET imaging to explore how alterations of the different neurotransmitter systems contribute to different trajectories of disease progression. Her other areas of interest are PET image analysis, instrumentation and multi-modal, multi-parameter data analysis. She published more than 180 peer review papers, is funded by several granting agencies, including the Michael J Fox Foundation, and sits on several national and international review panels.
This event is organized in collaboration with the Consulate General of Italy in Vancouver to celebrate the newly instituted Italian Research in the World Day, as part of the Piano Straordinario "Vivere all'Italiana" - Giornata della ricerca Italiana nel mondo.
The establishment of an Italian Research Day in the World was announced by the Italian Minister of Education, University and Research, Valeria Fedeli, during a visit to the CERN Laboratories in Geneva. The celebration day was chosen by government decree to be every year on April 15 on the anniversary of the birth of Leonardo da Vinci.
The main objective of the Italian Research Day in the World is to value the quality and competencies of Italian researchers abroad, but also to promote concrete actions and investments to allow Italian researchers to continue pursuing their careers in their homeland. Italy wishes to enable Italian talents to return from abroad as well as to become an attractive environment for foreign researchers.
Please RSVP by end of day April 9th, 2018 to info@arpico.ca or preferably EventBrite.
April 11, 2018 at 7:00pm
Roundhouse Community Centre - Room B - (181 Roundhouse Mews, Vancouver, B.C.)
Doors open at 6:30pm
Click to View Photos
Event Follow-up
Torrential rain and heavy downtown traffic are not the two best ingredients for making a successful evening out of a lecture on a nuclear medicine topic. So, it was with even greater pleasure that ARPICO welcomed more than 50 people in room B of the Roundhouse Community Centre to listen to Professor Vesna Sossi from UBC's Department of Physics and Astronomy. She masterfully lead her lecture's attendees through the intricacies of using subatomic physics principles and particles as tools to image our brain and understand what's behind diseases like Parkinson's, personality traits, the placebo effect, to name a few of the topics her research is linked to. Also fascinating is learning how the positron-emission tomography (PET) imaging technique she employs is based on the physical properties of a subatomic particle, the positron (essentially an electron with positive charge), which in only about 50 years after its conceptualization and subsequent discovery, went from being an exotic newcomer to particle physics to a fundamental tool for brain imaging, disease diagnostics and, possibly, therapy. I'm sure that when confronted with the notion of anti-matter (the positron is the anti-matter counterpart to the electron) prior to this talk, most audience members' minds would have wandered each to their own sci-fi memory bank to imagine some otherworldly phenomenon. Yet, attendees of Professor Sossi's lecture took home the message that matter-antimatter encounters are not only very much "this-worldly", but are also at the heart of the PET imaging technique, which truly opens a novel window of knowledge into our brain physiology and pathology.
ARPICO was fortunate to receive partial sponsorship of the event by the Consulate General of Italy on the occasion of the first Italian Research in the World Day, which was instituted by the Italian government last year as a way to celebrate the work of Italian researchers abroad. I think all in the audience last Wednesday night would concur that Professor Sossi is a prime representative for the occasion and did great honour to this celebration.
ARPICO and PROF. DOUW STEYN PRESENT:
ARPICO and PHILIPPE TORTELL PRESENT:
ARPICO and The Consulate General of Italy PRESENT:
ARPICO and Andrea Calì PRESENT:
ARPICO and The Consulate General of Italy PRESENT:
ARPICO and The Consulate General of Italy PRESENT:
Since antiquity, people have been trying to answer why Rome succeeded in creating the ancient world’s largest empire. In this talk, Prof. De Angelis argues that current approaches to this question have limitations, and that room for new research exists. His approach considers the crucial eight centuries in Italy and the western Mediterranean before the Roman Empire’s creation. These centuries witnessed migrant Greeks and Phoenicians settling alongside Romans, Etruscans, and other existing populations and led to an immensely competitive environment. Societies were forced either to innovate and out-perform their competitors or to succumb to them.…
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ARPICO presents:
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ARPICO presents:
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ARPICO presents:
Please join us in celebrating the holidays and another wonderful year at our annual Christmas Dinner at Marcello's Pizzeria.
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Prof. Fabio Rossi & Video Interview with Rita Levi-Montalcini
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Particle Physicist "Nephew of Emilio Segre, winner of the 1959 Nobel Prize for the discovery of the antiproton". Born in Florence, Italy in 1938, Gino Segre grew up in New York and Italy. He graduated from Harvard University (A.B., 1959) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Ph.D., 1963). He is now a professor emeritus in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania. He has been a visiting professor at M.I.T and at Oxford University as well as a visiting Fellow at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) and the University of California,…
Alberto Angela is a paleontologist, science writer, author, and italian journalist.
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Prof. Luciana Duranti, Chair and Professor School of Library, Archivial and Information Studies, University of British Columbia Trust has been defined in many ways, but, at its core, it involves acting without the knowledge needed to act. It consists of substituting the information that one does not have with other information. For example, a person who does not have the knowledge necessary to assess the authenticity of a record relies on the credentials of the expert who authenticates it. Individuals and organizations are increasingly saving and accessing records in the highly networked, easily hacked environment of the Internet.…
A former Pisa scholar, Sergio Bertolucci has worked at DESY, Fermilab and Frascati. He was appointed head of the Frascati National Laboratories accelerator division becoming Director in 2002. Before taking over the Directorate for Research at CERN, Bertolucci was already chairing the LHC committee and was a member of DESY's physics research committee. He was also vice-president and a member of the Board of the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics.
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Dr. John Robinson, executive Director of the UBC Sustainability Initiative Professor with the Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability, and the Department of Geography, at the University of British Columbia.
The Greenest City Conservations (GCC) project is aimed at testing multiple channels for public engagement on sustainability policies. Its two main goals are (1) to facilitate discussion, solicit and analyze public attitudes and opinions on, and support for, a variety of sustainability policies; and (2) to provide a comprehensive understanding of the content and impacts (both qualitative and quantitative) of six different modes of public engagement ("channels"):…
Dr. Fabio Rossi, tenured associate professor in Medical Genetics at the University of British Columbia, member of the board of directors of the National Centres of Excellency - Stem Cell Network, and scientific advisor of Muscular Dystrophy Canada. More information about Dr. Rossi are available here: