COVER STORY • 封面專題 2022 UMAGAZINE 26 • 澳大新語 9 CCBS members to publish more than 250 articles in academic journals over the past two years, including leading titles such as Cerebral Cortex, Neuroimage, Cortex, Cognitive Neurodynamics, Materials Today Bio, and Clinical and Translational Medicine. Research Aligned with Macao’s Priorities Many CCBS projects are closely aligned with Macao’s priorities. For example, to study how gaming and gambling alter brain structures and functions, CCBS members have produced numerous brain scans of addicts to inspire new approaches for the prevention and treatment of behavioural addiction. The research project titled ‘The Neurocognitive Mechanisms of Gaming and Gambling Addiction’ is led by Anise Wu, associate dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and professor in the Department of Psychology. All project participants have their brains scanned multiple times over a period of two years for data collection, so that researchers can understand how gaming and gambling addiction evolve over time and identify biomarkers that can be used to treat or determine the level of addiction. In another key project, researchers are analysing multilingualism in Macao to reveal brain network activity associated with language use. They have recruited residents to speak, read, listen, and write in Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin), English and Portuguese, as well as to perform cross-linguistic tasks such as interpreting. The project’s principal investigator is Prof Li Defeng, associate dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities and director of the Centre for Translation, Interpretation and Cognition. According to Prof Li, the project aims to discover how the use of different languages affects executive functions and to build a surface-based brain atlas database that will be open to researchers around the world. The relationship between language and the brain is another key area of research. By comparing the brains of humans and macaques, Prof Yuan’s team discovered over 20 sites at the voxel level that are likely to have a common evolutionary origin in Broca’s area, which plays an essential role in human language production. ‘This discovery is an important step towards creating a cross-species map of brain networks,’ says Prof Yuan. Many CCBS projects focus on neurocognitive disorders. For instance, Zhao Yonghua, interim associate head of the Macau Institute for Translational Medicine and Innovation and assistant professor in the Institute of Chinese Medical Sciences, together with Prof Yuan, analysed the negative impact of the increase in Ruminococcus gnavus, Lachnospira eligens, Escherichia coli, and Desulfovibrio piger in the gut microbiota on cognitive functions of the elderly. ‘This can help us evaluate the risk of neurocognitive disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease, in the elderly,’ says Prof Zhao. Meanwhile, a CCBS research team has developed various brain-computer interfaces. Members of the team have won championships in international and national brain-controlled typing competitions and have even set a world record. The team is led by Wan Feng, associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. For more than a decade, Prof Wan has developed BCIs based on different types of visually evoked potential (VEPs) and designed new algorithms to accelerate the connection between humans and computers. For instance, his team is currently developing more efficient ‘plug-and-play’ BCIs. On the other hand, Zhang Juan, interim director 一名研究參加者在澳大接受腦部掃描 The brain of a research participant is being scanned at UM
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