Staff and faculty

Chi-Ming Chen, Ph.D.

Dr. Chi-Ming Chen is a postdoctoral research scientist at Psychiatry Department of Columbia University and works under the mentorship of Drs. Sarah Lisanby and Charles Schroeder at the Division of Brain Stimulation and Therapeutic Modulation at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Dr. Chen earned his B.S. in Occupational Therapy at National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan and his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at Ferkauf Graduate School at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University. He was an adjunct lecturer in Statistical Methods in Psychology at Hunter College of the City University of New York and a senior honors thesis advisor in Yeshiva College. After graduating, he went to Yale University for his first postdoctoral training and then returned to New York City for the current position.

Research Experiences/Interests

Dr. Chen received his graduate training in the laboratory of Dr. Charles E. Schroeder, where he learned methods to analyze field potential and multiunit activity recorded intracranially from macaque monkeys using linear-array multicontact electrodes. He published results that confirmed a number of previous findings about sensory information processing (e.g., response latencies increase over levels in the visual processing hierarchy; dorsal stream activations are faster; MT activation is nearly as fast as V1). His results also provided valuable new information on the laminar patterns of activation, which divide into feedforward and non-feedforward patterns in cortical visual system (published in Cerebral Cortex). This work led him into the realm of neural oscillation, functional connectivity, and cortical interaction. Furthermore, Dr. Chen and his colleagues have described a mechanism by which “modulatory” inputs cause oscillatory phase re-set in cortical auditory system, an event critical for development of coherence (published in Neuron).

After graduating, Dr. Chen then went on to receive postdoctoral training at Yale University under the mentorship of Drs. Judith M. Ford and Daniel H. Mathalon where he applied the neurophysiological and analytic techniques to the clinical problem of schizophrenia. He and his colleagues were interested in testing the hypothesis that auditory hallucinations stem from the failure to generate an efference copy which prepares the auditory cortex to distinguish self-generated speech or thought from externally generated language. He was able to test this hypothesis by making intracortical recordings from presurgical epilepsy patients at Yale-New Haven Hospital. This project built upon his prior experience with intracortical recordings and auditory cortex physiology learned with Dr. Schroeder, and applied these skills in humans to test a clinically salient hypothesis about schizophrenia. The results provided evidence of what could be a manifestation of an efference copy; specifically, he and his colleagues found high frequency coherence between Broca’s and auditory cortical areas immediately before vocalization. He was excited to join Columbia as a postdoctoral research scientist in the Brain Stimulation and Therapeutic Modulation Division where, under the mentorship of Drs. Schroeder and Lisanby, he now have access to the stimulation tools and neurophysiology techniques necessary to test the forward model of auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia. Under their mentorship, he is leading a project supported by the Lieber Schizophrenia Research Center that tests a model positing causal relationships among prefrontal GABA/glutamate abnormalities (measured via magnetic resonance spectroscopy), disordered neural synchrony (measured via topographical EEG oscillatory power and phase synchrony), and impaired working memory (assessed via neurocognitive tasks). The goal of that project is to use this model to design and test interventions to restore working memory through the remediation of GABA/glutamate deficits and re-setting of oscillations through entrainment with TMS.

Dr. Chen also serves as a research consultant for multiple Small Business Innovation Research projects collaborating with Columbia University and Yale University. In one of the projects, they use scalp visual-evoked potentials to detect visual pathway malfunction for determining possible early glaucoma development. That project has entered SBIR phase II and phase I results has published in Documenta Ophthalmologica.

His training in the neurophysiology of human and non-human primates, sensory processing, and brain stimulation techniques sets the stage for his current works which are to investigate impacts of different patterns of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) on neural oscillations, behaviors, and neurotransmitters.

Publications

Lakatos, P., Chen, C.-M., O’Connell, M.N., Mills, A., & Schroeder, C.E. (2007). Neuronal mechanisms and functional significance of multisensory integration in primary auditory cortex. Neuron, 53:279-292
Chen, C.-M., Lakatos, P., Shah, A.S., Mehta, A.D., Givre, S.J., Javitt, D.C., & Schroeder, C.E. (2007). Functional anatomy and interaction of fast and slow visual pathways in macaque monkeys. Cerebral Cortex, 17: 1561-1569.
Rajkai, C., Lakatos, P., Chen, C.-M., Pincze, Z., Karmos, G., & Schroeder, C.E. (2008). Transient cortical excitation at the onset of visual fixation. Cerebral Cortex, 18: 200-209.
Zemon, V., Tsai, J.C., Al-Aswad, L.A., Chen, C.-M., Gordon, J., Greenstein, V., Hu, G., Strugstad, E.C., Dhrami-Gavazi, E., & Jindra, L.F. (2008). Novel electrophysiological instrument for rapid and objective assessment of magnocellular deficits associated with glaucoma. Documenta Ophthalmologica, 117: 233-243.

Presentations

Chen, C.-M. Neurophysiology of Intermodal Selective Attention in Macaque Auditory Cortex. Advances in Primate Auditory Neurophysiology II, San Diego Convention Center, Oct. 22, 2004.
Chen, C.-M., Kegeles, L.S., Kayser, J., Tenke, C.E., Stanford, A.D., Schroeder, C.E., Lisanby, S.H. Working memory deficits in schizophrenia: Neural oscillation and GABAergic dysfunctions in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Society for Neuroscience 38th Annual Meeting. Washington, DC., Nov. 17, 2008.