Neural Network Development in Late Adolescents during Observation of Risk-Taking Action

Emotional maturity and social awareness are important for adolescents, particularly college students beginning to face the challenges and risks of the adult world. However, there has been relatively little research into personality maturation and psychological development during late adolescence and the neural changes underlying this development. We investigated the correlation between psychological properties (neuroticism, extraversion, anxiety, and depression) and age among late adolescents (n = 25, from 18 years and 1 month to 22 years and 8 months). The results revealed that late adolescents became less neurotic, less anxious, less depressive and more extraverted as they aged. Participants then observed video clips depicting hand movements with and without a risk of harm (risk-taking or safe actions) during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The results revealed that risk-taking actions elicited significantly stronger activation in the bilateral inferior parietal lobule, temporal visual regions (superior/middle temporal areas), and parieto-occipital visual areas (cuneus, middle occipital gyri, precuneus). We found positive correlations of age and extraversion with neural activation in the insula, middle temporal gyrus, lingual gyrus, and precuneus. We also found a negative correlation of age and anxiety with activation in the angular gyrus, precentral gyrus, and red nucleus/substantia nigra. Moreover, we found that insula activation mediated the relationship between age and extraversion. Overall, our results indicate that late adolescents become less anxious and more extraverted with age, a process involving functional neural changes in brain networks related to social cognition and emotional processing. The possible neural mechanisms of psychological and social maturation during late adolescence are discussed

FNCA FY2011 Workshop on Radiation Oncology

FNCA FY2011 Workshop on Radiation Oncolog

International Collaboration on Medical Physics in NIRS

NIRS has conducted various HRD (human resource developments) utilizing the heavy ion radiotherapy facility of HIMAC. It is characterized by being a clinical center with a hospital, by the fact that many different kinds of ions with wide range of energies are available, and by reason that users can collaborate with researchers in different kinds of fields in NIRS.The particle therapy personnel development including medical physicists is the most important mission among the broad spectrum of HRD performed in NIRS. For domestic particle therapy facilities, we performed the program, “Development of Human Resources for Particle Therapy”, commissioned by MEXT from 2007 to 2012. On the base of experience of this program, we have provided training and educational courses for foreigners since 2012. Many countries are working positively to introduce particle therapy facilities. Because the situation of each country and each facility ranges widely from planning phase to operation one, we have offered the following 4 courses.(a) Short-term (one week) training course of classroom-lecture education program for beginners, (b) mid-term (two weeks) training course including OJT and facility tours corresponding to the process of particle therapy, (c) long-term (over one year) training course including advanced research activities, (d) irregularly symposiums for experts to update their knowledge. The number of participants in these training courses was 108 from 2012 to 2014. We are improving the course materials and curriculum to accept more trainees.We have also contributed to standardization of particle therapy; especially dispatched medical physicists to the technical committee for radiotherapy of IEC. As one of achievements, IEC 60601-2-64 (Particular requirements for the basic safety and essential performance of light ion beam medical electrical equipment) was published in 2014. Furthermore, we have collaborated with medical physicists in Asia through FNCA. Other activities with IAEA will be presented.15th Asia-Oceania congress of medical physics (AOCMP2015

Development of Treatment Management System for Heavy Ion Therapy

The development project for the advanced irradiation system of HIMAC has aimed at further clinical results by interoperating with the existing HIMAC treatment system by which about 750 patients were treated per year. In order to deliver routinely carbon-ion treatment to the large number of patients suffering from cancer with a variety of irradiation conditions, it is essential to manage the relevant data systematically and share the data among medical staffs from the point of view of prevention of irradiation accidents and quality assurances/controls. We have developed Treatment Management System (TMS) for the advanced irradiation system to create medical work schedules relevant to treatment, manage their progress and support smooth proceed of medical staffs’ works. This system can perform ordering to subsystems and recording results from subsystems according to the treatment schedule of each patient, and manage and control the progress situation of the treatment. In the development of TMS, we made forward-looking design for standardization adopting such standard protocols as IHE and HL7, to enable the TMS to connect to the existing systems of CPOE/EMR, CT and other modalities and, furthermore to be applicable generally to the radiation therapy systems including particle therapy. In this presentation, we report the design concept of TMS and the details of functions such as ordering, recording and scheduling.PTCOG4

World Congress on Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering (WC2012)

World Congress on Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering (WC2012

-アジア原子力協力フォーラム（ＦＮＣA）放射線治療プロジェクト2012年度ワークショップ（タイ、バンコク）

etcFNCA FY2012　Workshop on Radication Oncolog