Dr. Nicole C. Keong

Senior Consultant, Neurosurgery, National Neuroscience Institute
Assistant Professor, Duke-NUS medical school, Singapore

Lecture Title: Reversibility of brain function alterations: insights from NPH

As an academic neurosurgeon, I specialize in vascular neurosurgery, complex hydrocephalus and brain injury. My research examines the continuum between reversible and irreversible brain injury across acute-to-chronic subtypes, to advance clinical care through stratification of patient responsiveness to treatments. Using Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus (NPH) as a model, my team developed a taxonomy using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) that maps brain ultrastructural adaptations under stress, revealing patterns of neural resilience versus degeneration. Inspired by principles of “material-product-performance” in biodigital design, we proposed a “Periodic Table of DTI Elements”.

Our taxonomy reconceptualizes brain matter as a dynamic “biomaterial” whose microstructural behaviors can be algorithmically modeled, akin to the periodic law predicting properties of chemical elements. We have expanded our work to cohorts of mild-to-moderate traumatic brain injury (TBI), intracranial hemorrhage, neurodegenerative diseases and long COVID. The “product” is the Order of the Periodic Table, a hierarchical notation describing shapes of DTI profiles in differing degrees of injury, by which our approach supports transparency and consistency in reporting of structural changes of brain matter. By operating in the intersection of computational neuroimaging and biological responsiveness, we aim to model the material “performance” of brain matter across physical disease states, reorganization, adaptation and intervention.