About
Current Projects
About
NeuroComputational Engineering research focuses primarily on the structure and function of the central and peripheral nervous systems and their relationship to health and disease. Three key topics are addressed:
- Effectiveness of clinical and home-based mobile neurobiofeedback in reducing stress, anxiety and depression through development of novel neurocomputational models.
- Analysis of multimodal biosignals from the brain and body to understand their interactions in health and disease and develop novel biosignal analysis methods for clinical practice.
- Diabetes and its complications are a major health concern and understanding the role and involvement of the central and peripheral nervous systems in disease development and progression through applying neuroengineering principles is crucial for early identification and better treatment outcomes.
Current Projects
Comparison of the effectiveness of biofeedback or neurofeedback on stress reduction
Stress is a major risk component associated with both mental and physical disease including cardiovascular (Coronary Artery Disease) and cerebrovascular (Stroke) disease. The relationship between psychosocial stressors and disease is affected by the nature, number, and persistence of the stressors as well as by the individual’s biological vulnerability (i.e., genetics, constitutional factors), psychosocial resources, and learned patterns of coping. Psychosocial interventions have proven useful for treating stress-related disorders and may influence the course of chronic diseases. Specifically, stress and anxiety may be modified by biofeedback or neurofeedback, which improves the copying mechanism and functionality by improving resilience. A Smartphone can provide simple to use mindfulness training either dependent on biofeedback or neurofeedback principles based on serious games and biosignal processing.
Use of multisensor software in detecting improvements in 24 hours heart-brain interaction following a mindfulness/neurofeedback task
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the major cause of death in the UAE/Korea, causing one in every five deaths. Mental health issues present often as comorbidities with CVD and include depression and anxiety as well as more serious post-traumatic stress disorders especially for post-operative patients and those with severe heart failure. MindMyHeart aims to provide a personalized home-based rehabilitation program. The current project will utilise the Nexus-10 mobile EEG/ECG Suite to record pulse rate, respiration, temperature and skin conductance as well as EMG as an indicator of psychophysiological self-regulation capacity over a 24-hour period. The overall concept of the MindMyHeart platform and the use of multisensory technology to determine heart-brain interactions is easily transferable to address other diseases providing market opportunities for the commercialization. MindMyHeart will be realized in collaboration with the KAIST, Korean Hospitals and Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi through research visits.
Funding:
May 2019-December 2020 CovidShield: Portable Biofeedback-based Shielding of Immune System against Covid-19 AED CPRA KU Award 406,000
Lead Investigator: Herbert Jelinek
July 2018- June 2021 Healthcare Engineering Innovation Center. Khalifa University Type 2 Research Center. AED5,500,000
Theme leader: Ahsan Khandoker; Project leaders: Leontios Hadjileontiadis, Herbert Jelinek
July 2018- June 2020 Care4MyHeart: Personalized management of Cardiovascular Diseases via technology-enabled behavioral change. Department of Education and Knowledge (ADEK) award for Research Excellence. AED 300,000.
Lead Principal Investigator: Leontios Hadjileontiadis
