Esa Räsänen, Head of the Computational Physics Laboratory and Vice Dean for Education in the Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences at Tampere University (TAU), invites Elaine Chew to speak on “How Music Can Literally Heal the Heart” at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Technology (MET) International Seminar Series on Thursday, 19 Jan 2023, and to serve as “opponent” for his doctoral student Jiyeong Kim’s PhD on computational analysis of complex beat-to-beat dynamics in heart cells on Friday, 20 Jan 2023. Esa has also researched beat-to-beat dynamics in musical drumming.
Elaine was invited for a tour of the labs at the Kauppi Campus of the Heart Group of their collaborator Katriina Aalto-Setälä, Professor of Physiology in the Faculty of Medicine and Life Sciences and a Cardiologist with the Heart Hospital, Tampere University Hospital. Katriina’s postdoctoral research fellow Chandra Prajapati showed Elaine, Esa, and Jiyeong how they collect the beating behaviour data from the cardiomyocytes made from induced pluripotent stem cells.
Jiyeong’s doctoral research with Esa showed that the cardiomyocytes’ and the heart’s beating behaviours did not exhibit different statistical properties, demonstrating the potential for using cardiomyocytes to study heart rhythm. Furthermore, the cardiomyocytes’ inter-beat intervals and field potential durations were not statistically different from RR intervals and QT intervals in electrograms recorded from surface electrodes. The thesis looked at cells of asymptomatic and symptomatic LQT1 patients, also when given a high dose of bisoprolol (beta blocker), and explored heart cell behaviour under extreme states of hypoxia and reperfusion.
The defense was followed by dinner over the waters.
