Discovering what I don't know I don't know.
Dr. Zeman is an Entrepreneur and Scientist and has worked and studied in the fields of Engineering, Biology, and Psychology. He specializes in discovering how our brains function, how to build better brain-machine interfaces, and how we might detect brain diseases such as Alzheimer's and schizophrenia. You can arrange for him to be a keynote speaker at your event at SpeakWell.com
All four persons on our team are in good health after our Kilimanjero expedition. We will be disseminating information in the weeks to come.
This trip was a sucessful marriage of science, adventure, endurance, perseverance, decision making ability, self-preservation, preservation and care of others, and strength of character, while under the burden of both physical and emotional stress. I seem to be well-suited for this type of activity; I found this challenge very revealing of myself, to myself, and to those around me. I found that my activities of pressure-breathing and rest-stepping kept my hemoglobin saturation levels high and I retained my health and decision-making abilities. I will be posting some very informative data when I return to the office.
After a good number of days of preparation, I finally managed to fit all of the research equipment and my own clothing and survival gear into 3 sacs. The ferry for Seattle leaves in 1.5 hours and I'll be on it!
Our official sponsors for this project include: Johnson and Johnson, Stepforth Web Marketing, and the University of Victoria. Thank-you for your help towards making this project happen.
If you are interested in following various random blog posts throughout our trip or if you're interested in learning about or signing up for our research project, you can find information on our FaceBook page:
I just completed a quick and dirty video montage of our White Mountain Peak adventure and posted it on this site. Enjoy! (FYI: I'm not saying in the video that Coke is bad at altitude. I'm saying that I might get a sugar rush and start running around at 14,000 feet-- not good.)
A data processing methodology that is sensitive to detecting a trajectory of changed brain function (from a baseline) related to low oxygen at altitude on the side of a mountain could very likely be successful at detecting a trajectory of changed brain function related to a progression towards Alzheimer's.
I am looking for partners (private or university) to join me in a line of investigation towards doing very early detection of Alzheimer's and other age-related brain diseases.
Recently, there as been an increase in the number of publications describing research where the investigators show very promising success rates classifying the EEG of persons with Alzheimer's Dementia from matched controls. What is notable is that the groups examined are essentially persons characterized as having mid- to late-stage Alzheimer's Dementia. This means two things. First, we are getting to the point where we can have a tool that helps psychiatrists, and neuropsychologists help their patients and their patient's families figure out why the patients are having difficulties doing day-to-day activities. The second thing to note is that these investigators are only doing successful classification of mid- to late- stage Alzheimer Dementia; there are no successful investigations classifying early stage Alzheimer's Dementia from controls.(None that I have found as of this date.) The main problem is that it is next to impossible using our current behavioral and interview evaluation methods to determine who has early stage Alzheimer's dementia, or who as some kind of mild cognitive impairment, or a plethora of other things going on. Simply, we can not do a 'classification' of early stage Alzheimer's dementia.
In contrast to a classification of early stage Alzheimer's dementia, what we can do is attempt to predict who will develop mid stage or late stage Alzheimer's dementia. The idea is simple: for a given individual, we record their trajectory of brain function over time and then see if they are moving in the direction towards one of those unwanted brain function conditions.
To develop and demonstrate that such a system of prediction works would normally require a number of years as one measures the brain function (using EEG methods) of many people while they are healthy and then each year measures each person's brain function until a subset of those persons develops a classifiable dementia. (I'm generalizing now because what we are really interested in is identifying unhealthy changes in brain function, or identifying 'brain malfunction'.) There is an alternative to measuring brain function over many years that can jump-start the design and evaluation of the processing methods applied to an individual's EEG data. The trick is to measure the brain function of a large group of people while they are at their home altitude and then measure their brain function as then ascend to high altitude. We know that when persons are not properly acclimatized, altitude causes all sorts of malfunctions in brain function due to the reduce availability of oxygen at altitude. The area of the brain that is particularly susceptible to the effects of low oxygen is the hippocampus which is very important in memory. Interestingly, it is failing memory that is one of the key characteristics of Alzheimer's. Hence, a data processing methodology that is sensitive to detecting a trajectory of changed brain function (from a baseline) related to low oxygen at altitude on the side of a mountain could very likely be successful at detecting a trajectory of changed brain function related to a progression towards Alzheimer's. Hence, this analogy could be used to design a system that provides very early detection of Alzheimer's Disease.
Below is a short video clip that I put together while I was outside training for my ascent to altitude on Kilimanjaro. (The exercise if creating these clips and posting them to the web is an effort to improve my videography, editing, and extemporaneous communication skills. You should see a marked improvement over time.)
I have done quite a bit of reading on the topic of high altitude effects and injuries and it has been enough to put some fear into my bones. That said, I hear about many people (and have talked with some of them) that ascend to the summit and the descend successfully with no reported change in their ability to function in the world. My own understanding of anoxia is that is starves brain cells and even kills them depending on the severity and duration of the exposure. My colleagues recently published an article on the topic. The issues are, for a given person: (1) what oxygen levels are a problem (this is dependent on the person's activity level as physical movement descreases blood SPO2), (2) how long is too long to go without the 'home levels' of oxygen (again, this depends on many, many individual factors), (3) what recovery do we get after damaging some neurons, (4) how do we best promote recovery?
The hippocampus is an area of the brain that is particularly sensitive to anoxia, low glucose levels (the brain needs glucose to function), and glucose toxicity (too much glucose). One of the classic ways to investigate activation of the hippocampus and it's role in allocentric processing (spatial navigation) is by use of the Morris Water Task. This particular task dates back to Richard Morris who used the task to show that lesions of the hippocampus impair spatial learning. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_water_navigation_task
Since we will probably be affecting our hippocampal function when we ascend to altitude, I thought it would be useful to describe allocentric processing (or spatial navigation) and an example of when we use it. (Some of us actually use it quite often. And I'd swear that other people have no idea.)
In the video below, I describe how we use allocentric processing of the information around us to find the location of a hidden rock beneath the surface of a lake. Basically, we have to use our brains to triangulate where were remember the location of the rock to be based on distance from shore and the distance from various landmarks or features on shore.
The next video illustrates an eye tracking methodology that we use in the lab to help us identify where people look when they use allocentric processing while navigating a virtual 1st-person perspective environment (such as when they play a video game).
For information discussing the hippocampus, spatial navigation, and brain injury, see the following references:
Goodrich-Hunsaker, N.J., Livingstone, S.A.*(now Lee), Skelton, R.W.. Hopkins, R.O. (2010). Spatial deficits in a virtual water maze in amnesic participants with hippocampal damage. Hippocampus, 20, 481-491.
Livingstone, S.*(now Lee), Skelton, R.W. (2007). Virtual environment navigation tasks and the assessment of cognitive deficits in individuals with brain injury. Behavioural Brain Research, 185, 21-31.
Below is a small sample of some of the photos and video I recorded on White Mountain Peak and a very short account of our new found experience with altitude mountain sickness (AMS). I will be positing additional photos and video in the weeks to come as I find time to communicate our knowledge and wisdom around high-altitude climbing. I look forward to hearing any of your comments and critiques; I further invite you to add this site to your RSS feed, to your Chrome Gadget page, or to your iGoogle page so that you can stay on top of our adventures. To add us to your feed, click on the RSS icons under the "subscribe to" heading on the right-hand bar of this page.
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Right now my head is swimming with our experience on the mountain and the value I discovered in having a portable SP02 meter with us to measure our blood hemoglobin saturation to help us adapt our breathing style on the mountain and to forecast potential problems.
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We started from Victoria, British Columbia (sea level) on Tuesday evening and drove all night to finally arrive in Bishop, California at around 7pm the next day. Upon arrival in Bishop, we packed ourselves into a hotel room and got a good night's sleep. The next morning, we got up and drove to the parking lot on the mountain (approximately 12000 feet) and started hiking towards the top of the mountain. Four of us began the ascent. Two of us made it to the top. Two did not go to the top. One person became ill and was escorted down by one of the original four.
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At altitude, with slightly reduced O2 saturation, we experienced a bit of euphoria and subtle changes in our perception of our surroundings. While this was quite fun and interesting, this was also dangerous and we do not fully understand the long-term impact when O2 levels go "too low". In fact, I don't believe we really know what the SPO2 number is for "too low" or how long is "too long" for "too low". If there is one piece of wisdom to take from this blog, it is to purchase an oximeter that provides you with an indication of the percent oxygen saturation of your blood hemoglobin. You can use such a meter to learn how to breath "properly" to maximize your oxygen consumption and you can use it to decided if you are receiving enough oxygen, if you are exerting too much energy, or if you should perhaps get off the mountain.
(click playing video to watch enlarged on YouTube)
For reference, when I sit at my desk at my office in Victoria my SPO2 ranges between 96 and 99%. When I was at rest after driving to Bishop CA (roughly 18 hours later) my SP02 was approximately 92%. My perception is of course subjective but I believe I could notice differences in my clarity of thought even at 92% in Bishop. I could maintain a SP02 of between 86 and 92% on the mountain with the breathing technique I adopted and stuck with. The meter was instrumental in helping me develop my breathing style and keeping my SPO2 above 80%.
I found that each movement of my body and each force that I exerted would lower the SP02 if I wasn't focusing on deep breathing. I now have first-hand experience as to why they say "pole, pole" on Kilimanjaro (step slowly).
My primary purpose for ascending high altitude and measuring how our bodies respond is to investigate brain function changes related to low air pressure and the related hypobaric anoxia. Often people who ascend to high altitude perceive changes in their own brain function such as differences in the way things sound, a feeling of euphoria, a bit of a disconnection from our bodies, and subtle changes to our vision among other things. We noticed some of these experiences ourselves at only 12000 feet since we gave ourselves essentially no time to get used to altitude. Our plan is to investigate brain function using EEG equipment on our forthcoming trip up Mount Kilimanjaro.
I carried the equipment that I will be using on Kilimanjaro to assess brain function to the top of White Mountain Peak so that I could try out the weight and balance of a backpack full of equipment and warm clothes for mountain survival. However, I did not do any brain function measurements at the top of the mountain given the short time we had available and our recent encounter with AMS. As a team, all of us were not ready to climb to an altitude of 14000 feet because only 2 days before we were at sea level. I did however experiment with recording EEG data using the Emotiv EPOC on White Mountain peak at an altitude of 13000 feet. The video below shows me recording ambulatory EEG data using the Emotiv EPOC while my colleague participates in a computer-based cognitive assessment task.
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Before I scare too many people into staying inside their homes this summer, there is a simple concept to digest to make you feel at ease. This concept is acclimatization-- get used to the altitude slowly and let your body's physiology adjust to the change in air pressure. There are various stages to this change. The first stage I would call "conscious behavioral changes". This is when you decide you will take it easy, move slowly, and breath hard. The second change is a change to the characteristics of your blood (takes about a week). The third change is a change to the capillary proliferation in your body to reduce the distance between your blood supply and your cells (takes about a month). There is a research station on the mountain at about 12000 feet and another one at 14000 feet on this mountain and I assume that when people are properly acclimatized there is little problem. People actually work at this altitude!
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I titled the previous blog posting "AMS for fun?". The question mark was included in the blog title because I really had no first or second hand experience with AMS. I now say that it is "not fun". I didn't develop AMS but a friend of mine did. Having a friend develop AMS wasn't pleasant for anyone on the mountain, nor was it pleasant for the person who was sick. In a week or two I will post some more detail of our account at high altitude and the insights we had that will help us on our ascent to the top of Kilimanjaro.
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As an afterthought to this story, I've posted additional information for people interested in data collection at high altitude.
The photograph below depicts one of us wearing an Emotive EPOC that I plan to bring on our Kilimanjaro trip to record EEG data. For information on the Emotiv EPOC, go to the Emotiv website.
For more information about blood oxygen levels and what it might feel like to be at high altitude, see the website: http://www.anesthesiaweb.org/hypoxia.php. (I have not verified the information on the anesthesia website.)
I just found this video of John Severinghaus describing why the research stations were created on White Mountain Peak and gives some history of high altitude research.
