Linda Douw's talk in The Dutch Distinguished Lecture Series in Philosophy and Neuroscience
Daniel Kostic
Dear all,
The next session of The Dutch Distinguished Lecture Series in Philosophy and Neuroscience, will take place on:
24 February 2022 at 15:00-17:00h (Central European Time, i.e. Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris)
The talk will be given via Zoom and is open to all. The talk will also be recorded and posted on our webpage in due course.
Please join via the following Zoom Link: https://radbouduniversity.zoom.us/j/85871317439?pwd=NWQ0VncvdzFwT05RVEJrTU1WK0VEQT09
Our guest speaker is:
Prof. Douw’s talk is entitled:
The abstract:
“Most brain diseases and disorders are characterized by alterations in functioning at multiple scales and in various modalities: cells, networks and behavior all become disorganized. So far, dysfunction has predominantly been investigated within a particular scale or modality of measurement. In for example glioma, the most commonly occurring type of primary brain tumor, microscale research has indicated that higher levels of excitatory neurotransmitter are present around the tumor. When focusing on mesoscale circuit data, there is hyperexcitability of larger neuronal populations, which may be found both close to the tumor as well as at some distance. At the large-scale network level, patients often display increased local connectivity and loss of integrative connectivity. Finally, patients' symptoms range from cognitive deficits and seizures to fatigue and depression, which are all interrelated. Up to now, there has been only limited success in tying insights from these different scales together, although intuitively, approaches that take multiple scales into account may ultimately allow for better understanding of the multidimensional nature of brain disease. This example concerning glioma underscores the relevance of the foundational question of the ‘tyranny of scales’, which asks whether and how we can link up our knowledge of micro, meso and macroscale behaviors in order to better understand a system as a whole, which in this case is the patient with a particular disease, or the general pathophysiology of this disease. In this talk, I will discuss recent multiscale experimental studies in different brain diseases (e.g. glioma, multiple sclerosis, temporal lobe epilepsy, Alzheimer's disease) and hope to exchange thoughts on the conceptual issues associated with such multiscale endeavors and how they can advance neuroscience.”
Linda Douw as an Associate Professor at the Department of Anatomy and Neurosciences of Amsterdam UMC. She did her PhD at the Department of Neurology of the VU University Medical Center and did her postdoc at the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging (Harvard Medical School / Massachusetts General Hospital). She currently leads the research section Multiscale Network Neuroscience, which aims to improve glioma patient outcomes by understanding and manipulating personalized multiscale network data. She is intrigued by network science as a translational methodology, and uses it to explore the interdisciplinary crossroads between medicine, neuroscience and philosophy. For example, Linda has recently written about this exciting apex in the opinion paper “The road ahead in clinical network neuroscience” (Douw et al, 2019).
For more information about The Dutch Distinguished Lecture Series in Philosophy and Neuroscience and the program of talks for this semester, please click here.
Daniel Kostic
Dr Daniel Kostic
Radboud Excellence Initiative Fellow
Institute for Science in Society (ISiS)
Radboud University, Huygens Building
Heyendaalseweg 135 6525 AJ, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Web: https://daniel-kostic.weebly.com
Guest editor in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, theme issue: "Unifying the essential concepts of biological networks”.
E-mail: daniel (dot) kostic (at) gmail (dot) com