Fully funded PhD studentship - Somatosensory and thermoregulatory aspects of neurological diseases

Project Description

Applications are invited for a PhD studentship funded by the Graduate School to start in January 2017. The project will be based in the Design School at Loughborough University and will be performed under the supervision of Dr Davide Filingeri. 

PROJECT DETAILS 

The ability to experience skin sensations such as temperature, touch or wetness allows humans to interact effectively with their physical environment. It would be almost impossible to avoid getting dangerously hot on a warm-humid day or to hold and manipulate wet and slippery objects, if we had not evolved sensory systems that translate physical skin stimuli into conscious sensations. The role of skin sensations in normal body function and independent living is even more evident when their underlying neural mechanisms are disrupted. 

Numerous neurological diseases, amongst which Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and Parkinson’s Disease (PD), are accompanied by impairments in skin sensations. MS patients often present reductions in skin temperature sensitivity and this can impair their ability to behaviourally thermoregulate upon exposure to thermal challenges (heat and cold). Decreases in temperature and touch sensitivity are also common in PD patients and these sensory symptoms seem to play a role in the development of well-established motor symptoms (e.g. impairments in precision grip). As most somatosensory symptoms begins during the early development of MS and PD, understanding their physiological and pathological mechanisms is critical for early detection and for the design of assistive devices. 

Using a combination of physiological and psychophysical measurements, this project will explore physiological and pathological aspects of somatosensory dysfunction in neurological diseases (e.g. MS or PD) and their impact on individuals’ ability to interact with their physical environment. 

The studentship is for 3 years and is intended to start in January 2017. The studentship provides a stipend of £14,296.00 plus tuition fees at the UK/EU rate for up to three years. International (non EU) students may apply however the total value of the studentship will be used towards the cost of the International tuition fee. 

Students will normally need to hold, or expect to gain, at least a 2:1 degree (or equivalent) in Human Biology, Neuroscience, Psychology, Ergonomics or Exercise Science. A relevant Master’s degree and/or experience in one or more of the following will be an advantage: Human Physiology, Sensory Neuroscience, Human Factors and Ergonomics, research experience with clinical or non-clinical participants. 

General information about the Design School can be found at: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/design-school/ 

For informal enquiries about the project, please contact Dr Davide Filingeri - email: D.Filingeri3@lboro.ac.uk 

To apply, please complete the online application using the following link http://www.lboro.ac.uk/study/apply/research/ quoting the reference: LDS/DF/10/2016: 

The closing date for applications is November 10th, 2016 
Interviews will take place week commencing November 21st, 2016 

Original advert posted on: https://www.findaphd.com/search/ProjectDetails.aspx?PJID=78027&LID=2922

A moment or two with the scientist: video-interview with Vernon Mountcastle

Today I would like to introduce a new initiative of this blog: A moment or two with the scientist. 

Every few weeks, I will be sharing a video-interview of a particular scientist that is of interest to the field of physiology, neuroscience, temperature regulation and somatosensory neurophysiology. These video-interviews are publicly available because of initiatives from the Society of Neuroscience and the American Physiological Society.   

The Society for Neuroscience's autobiography series, "The History of Neuroscience in Autobiography," (https://www.sfn.org/about/history-of-neuroscience/autobiographical-videos-of-prominent-neuroscientists) details the lives and discoveries of eminent senior neuroscientists. The  American Physiological Society's "Living History Project" ( http://www.the-aps.org/mm/Membership/Living-History.aspx) was designed to create an archival video record of senior members of the APS who have made outstanding contributions to the science of physiology, as well as the profession.

Personally, I find these videos useful and inspiring for two main reasons. First, they allow junior scientists like myself to be “exposed” to scientists who I might have only read about and never meet because of either chronological or situational reasons. In my view, “seeing and hearing the mind behind the paper” allows for a more intimate understanding of these scientists’ work. Second, I find that what these interviews contain in terms of memories, recollection and views on science, is particularly inspiring for junior scientists like myself who are at the beginning of their academic careers. Seeing and hearing from the “human being” behind the eminent scientist helps putting things into perspective and understanding that things that are not clear now might make sense further down the line…

So today, the inaugural video of this series see a personal interview with Prof Vernon Mountcastle.

Mountcastle was Professor Emeritus of Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University and discovered and characterized the columnar organization of the cerebral cortex in the 1950s. His work has been instrumental for the understanding of somatosensory function in primates and humans. Furthermore, his invention of the “combined experiment”, where human psychophysics is performed along with neurophysiological recordings in primates, has been a paradigm shift in the exploration of the function of the nervous system in humans. A must see for all physiologists and neuroscientists and the ones interested in somatosensory neuroscience.

Enjoy!

Davide

Environmental and Thermal Neurophysiology blog: different name, same spirit

“Nomem est omen”

“The value is in the name”

Roman playwright Plautus in his play Persa

Here we are again, on the EEP blog. After a long silence (the last post dates back to last year!) I have finally decided it was about time to have a fresh start and bring things back to life in a new form and with a new approach. After all, my life is about to change substantially (again!) and it is probably time to get things moving. We say back home in Sicily that “chi si ferma e’ perduto”. Hence, let us keep moving!

Things have changed so much in the past 2 years that it is difficult to find somewhere to start from. Having been post-docching (is that a word?) in Australia first, and now in Berkeley, and having been exposed to different scientists with very different backgrounds, meant it was almost inevitable that my perspective and research interests would change dynamically. And as this blog has always reflected my passions and interests, it was unavoidable that the focus of the blog would change accordingly. So why not starting from the name? After all, as Plautus said, Nomem est omen…I therefore introduce you to the new Environmental and Thermal Neurophysiology blog. As the title of this post says, we have a different name, but we keep the same spirit.

A bit of background

After its foundations in 2012, the now ex-EEP blog grew rapidly and created a modest community of casual and more frequent readers interested in sharing information and research findings in environmental physiology. An average of 500 visits a month was soon the norm. The blog was born soon after the beginning of my PhD at the Environmental Ergonomics Research Center (Loughborough University, UK). Full of enthusiasms for this new adventure, and after an infatuation with outreach in research sparked by many years spent with my long-time mentor and friend Dr Antonino Bianco (see his historical fitnessa360 blog here: http://www.fitnessa360.com/), I decided to get my word out there about the sciency stuff I was interested in. The first post on The XV International Conference on Environmental Ergonomics (ICEE 2013) was out soon after. In the first few months of life of the EEP blog, I even managed to involve some colleagues that at the time agreed to collaborate an article (little note: one of them, Dr Victoria Kendrick, is now my wife J). Now the blog enjoys an average of 3000 visits a month and despite my "low productivity" visits keep going up.

A new start

While the initial enthusiasm for the blog was plenty and pointing upwards, after few years the time available to write posts started to go in the opposite direction. In no time, I indeed found myself juggling to finish a PhD and looking for post-doctoral opportunities. I was lucky enough to get 2 opportunities one after the other (a fellowship at the University of Sydney and post-doc position at UC Berkeley) and things have since moved on. In the meantime my work and interests have evolved and I am now stuck trying to bring together environmental physiology and somatosensory neuroscience into numerous clinical and no-clinical research projects :). Would this work? We shall see…in the meantime, as I think this area of research has the great potential to bring together scientists with multidisciplinary backgrounds, I thought I would re-launch this web-platform to spark some novel interest in the area of Environmental and Thermal Neurophysiology. A number of posts are now ready to go online and hopefully this new start will bring to the blog new readers, new contributors, and new ideas.

Stay tuned.

Davide

How do you feel? Lecture by Bud Craig

An inspiring overview of the neuroanatomy of interoception. Insights and implications for sensory integration, chronic pain, thermoregulation and neurological disease.



How do you feel? Lecture by Bud Craig. from Medicinska fakulteten vid LiU on Vimeo.

The determinants of thermal comfort in cool water

Hello everyone. My name is Julien Guéritée. I got my Ph.D. a couple of years ago from the University of Portsmouth (UK). The aim of my work was to understand some of the physiological mechanisms driving thermal comfort (and the loss of it!) around water sports. After some time as a post-doc researcher, and, later as a R&D engineer, I founded a consulting firm where I share what I have learned with sports clothing manufacturers.

Davide gave me the opportunity to write a few words about what I have discovered when I was at university. I would like to emphasize that nothing would have been possible without great support from the technical team and the experts in human and applied physiology who work there.

In water, before we started our studies at Portsmouth, research had focused on the safety aspects of cold water (below 15 °C) immersions [1]. Consequently, little was known about thermal comfort in cool water where water sports are undertaken and where maintaining thermal comfort becomes more critical as it affects both the behavioural and pleasure responses [2]. After some extensive literature review, we hypothesized that the hands and feet would be responsible for the loss of overall thermal comfort.

We thus decided to test this hypothesis. However, we could not immerse participants in cold water and expect them to give relevant, accurate and informative answers regarding their thermal comfort state. We all know it, when you jump in cold water, you just feel cold, uncomfortable, and miserable. At that stage, you don’t really care whether your hands or your abdomen is responsible. To avoid this, and get the most of our data, we immersed our participants in a comfortable water temperature of 34.5 °C. After a few minutes, the temperature was decreased to 19.5 °C over 20 min.

During this cooling phase, our resting or exercising volunteers (depending on the day) reported when they no longer felt comfortable and which region was responsible. In practice, they looked at the scale in front of them (going like this: very uncomfortable > uncomfortable > just uncomfortable > just comfortable > comfortable > very comfortable) and they just told me “Julien, I am now ‘just uncomfortable’, and this is because of my arms [they were allowed to give any body region]”.

To be able to explain this subjective event (the loss of overall thermal comfort) with physiological mechanisms, we had to record more “objective” data whilst water (and skin) temperatures were cooling. We know that thermal comfort is equally driven by core and skin temperature [3]. This is why we had decided to continuously collect core and local skin temperatures. By doing so, when participants lost their overall thermal comfort, we had a fairly accurate idea of their thermophysiological status.

First of all, when overall thermal comfort was lost, and in contrast with skin temperatures, core temperature had not changed. Although this was not surprising, it was good to verify it. Secondly, in most cases, when volunteers in swimming briefs became uncomfortable, water (and skin!) temperature was around 30°C.

Surprisingly, the hands and feet were not responsible for the loss of overall thermal comfort. Instead, the chest and the lower back were reported to cause this event. Now this was intriguing and we needed to understand why the extremities were not involved.

You may already know it: our body is not really good at sensing temperature. It is much more sensitive to temperature changes. This is due to the way our thermoreceptors work [see 4 for in-depth description]. When a dynamic thermal stimulus is applied to the skin, the frequency of discharge of the thermoreceptors (the signal our brain eventually receives) is increased and can reach maximum levels depending on the adapting temperature, which can be defined as the steady state discharge frequency observed at constant temperatures (what happens now, as you are reading, if you are thermally comfortable). The faster the rate of change of skin temperature for a given adapting temperature, the greater the dynamic response to cooling up to maximum levels.

The idea was thus to try to explain our findings in the light of our adapting temperatures, the thermal profile of our skin when nothing particular happens (when we are comfortable). We believed that the environmental conditions of a working office on a normal day are those under which many modern humans spend most of their time. The skin temperature distribution across the body in such conditions would therefore be the one the most frequently experienced. In addition, we knew that humans evolved in, and seek, “comfortable” thermoneutral air or microclimate temperatures of 26–28 °C [5].

Therefore, the skin temperature distribution of a resting human, in a thermoneutral environment (a mix of 26-28 °C in minimum clothing and 21 °C with office clothes on) could be the reference upon which subjective thermal responses are based. We thus expected that the influence of each body region on overall thermal comfort would be driven by local adapting temperatures in such environments.

An assessment of the “reference” skin temperature distribution in thermoneutral air indicated that the extremities (hands and feet) were warmer when the loss of overall thermal comfort was reported during immersion than when volunteers were in thermoneutral and comfortable air. We therefore suggested that the regions where temperature remained above the “reference” thermoneutral temperature in air would not determine the onset of overall thermal discomfort, mainly because the stimulation of these regions would not cause a sufficient increase in the frequency of discharge of the cold cutaneous thermoreceptors.

We concluded that in cooling water, or when the skin is more uniform in temperature and cools slowly from a warm stating point, the chest and the lower back rather than the extremities are responsible for the loss of overall thermal comfort. In these situations, hands and feet are already adapted to colder air temperatures while the chest and lower back cool by more than normal.

As I mentioned earlier, this occurred fairly early in the cooling phase of the water. However, we had decided to keep it cooling to be able to observe other responses. Once water temperature had reached 20 °C, it was maintained at that level until the end of the experiments. Only then the influence of the extremities on overall thermal comfort became important. At that point, local skin temperatures of around 21 °C on these regions may have constituted a more “specific” stimulus than that in the warmer temperature of the cooling phase. Hands and feet were colder than what they are “naturally” in air, and sent neurophysiological signals interpreted as very uncomfortable.

This work should have an impact on future research, as it may help understand variations in thermal comfort responses to stimuli across the body. What I report here is only a fraction of what has been investigated. If you want to read more about it, check out the original article “The determinants of thermal comfort in cool water” published in the Scandinavian journal of medicine and science in sports. If you have any questions, please get in touch!

The next topic should deal with the effect of swimming on thermal comfort, and the impact of evaporative cooling on thermal regulation, perception and comfort in air.

Julien Guéritée, PhD

References:

[1]: Golden F, Tipton M. Essentials of sea survival. Champaign, IL, USA: Human Kinetics, 2002: 120–139.

[2]: Chatonnet J, Cabanac M. The perception of thermal comfort. Int J Biometeorol 1965: 9: 183–193.

[3]: Frank MS, Raja SN, Bulcao CF, Goldstein DS. Relative contribution of core and cutaneous temperatures to thermal comfort and autonomic responses in humans. J Appl Physiol 1999: 86: 1588–1593.

[4]: Hensel H. Thermoreception and temperature regulation. London: Academic Press, 1981: 33–49. Monographs of the physiological society; nr. 38.

[5]: Lahr MM, Foley R. Multiple dispersals and modern human origins. Evol Anthropol 1994: 3: 48–60.

Sensory bases of how humans sense wetness and humidity: an overview of my PhD

It feels ages since my last post on this blog (last august!). However, I have a very good excuse for my lack of posting: I have been busy with the last stage of my PhD… and guess what? Finished! Job done! :) 

Now that I have had the time to cool down, to enjoy a bit of post-VIVA celebrations, it is time to get back to the keyboard.

What I'd like to share with you today is a presentation which is concerned with some of the work I have performed during my PhD.

As you might recall from some of the previous posts, I have been interested in the neurophysiology behind human's ability to sense skin wetness and humidity. Despite a lack of skin humidity receptors ("hygroreceptors"), we are indeed able to sense moisture/sweat on the skin, a fact which I personally find fascinating, to the point that investigating how such sensory process is performed by our brains has become the core of my PhD.

The research work has been quite effective in providing novel insights on how such perception is experienced in humans and you might find some of such findings in my papers:

Paper 1 (skin cooling) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23886487

Paper 2 (thermal & tactile interactions) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24269934

Paper 3 (body mapping) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25103965

Paper 4 (skin warming) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24612108

Paper 5 (neurophysiological model) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24944222

Paper 6 (hygroreceptor across species) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25318766

However, should you not fancy digging into some (boring?!) scientific jargon, the media attention that my work has attracted has resulted into some interesting summaries which you can enjoy here:

American Physiological Society: http://www.the-aps.org/mm/hp/Audiences/Public-Press/22.html

New Statesman: http://www.newstatesman.com/sci-tech/2014/10/our-nerves-what-makes-us-itch-or-feel-wet

THINK INC: http://thinkinc.org.au/its-all-in-your-mind-the-feeling-of-wetness-is-an-illusion/

THE BRAIN RACKER: https://brainracker.wordpress.com/2014/10/06/why-does-water-feel-wet/

I was kindly invited by Dr Samuele Marcora (http://goo.gl/N3NihI) to present my work at the University of Kent during one of the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences Research Seminars.

With my presentation I have tried to provide an overview of the concept of skin wetness and of its role in thermal discomfort and behavioural temperature regulation, as well as a summary of some of the results of the experimental work conducted during my PhD.

I hope you'll enjoy it and feel free to get in touch should you have any questions!

Davide Filingeri

Food for the brain: Nobel Prize-winning English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist Francis Crick