I was privileged enough to be asked to Ritsumeikan
University Shiga, Japan as an invited
lecturer asked to give a series of lectures during their concentrated summer
program. The theme of the lecture program was “brain pathologies and
therapies.” Yes that is a broad topic, but they wanted personal expert
presentations focusing on those areas to be given to their exercise and sports
science students as a one credit hour course to be given over 5 days with three
lectures per day. That means I’m giving three lectures a day over 5 days and
the students taking the course get one credit for their effort.
So I went through my scientific presentations and
publications and came up with a lecture series that covered what I think they
were talking about. I sent them the outline a few months in advance and got some
feedback and even some extra pointers on what could be added.
With the 15 lectures I divided it up into the following Classes
and Lectures
Theme: Brain Function, Dysfunction, Treatment, Prehab, Rehab
and Recovery
1)
Lecture 1. Mechanisms of injury
a.
Concussion and traumatic brain injury
b.
Stroke
i.
Ischemic
ii.
Hemorrhagic
c.
Others
i.
Arterial venous malformations
ii.
Tumors
2)
Lectures 2 and 3. Concussion Assessment Methods
(2 classes – one class lecture one class practical demonstration)
a.
Neuro Exam
b.
On field exam
c.
Pull from play
d.
Long term sequelae
e.
Return to play
f.
Devices
3)
Lectures 4 and 5. Stroke; Injury, Recovery and
complications (2 classes)
a.
Hemorrhagic Transformation
b.
Definition of a concussion – definitions.
c.
Signal Amplification
d.
Hemolysis and bilirubin oxidation products
e.
Immune system and brain injury
i.
Innate immune system
ii.
Inflammatory cells
4)
Lecture 6. Acute Stroke Treatment Strategies
a.
TPA and clot busting
b.
Manage hemorrhaging
c.
Brain rest
d.
Meds and supplements
5)
Lectures 7 and 8. Brain energy metabolism (2
classes)
a.
Glycolysis
b.
Oxidative phosphorylation
c.
No Fatty acid oxidation
d.
linking glycolysis and Ox Phos
e.
CK system
6)
Lectures 9 and 10. In born errors of metabolism
2 lectures
a.
Energy metabolism and cognitive function
b.
Creatine deficiency disorders
i.
Argninine glycine acyl transferase deficiency; AGAT
ii.
Guanidine acid methyl transferase deficiency; GAMT
iii.
Creatine transporter deficiency; CTD
c.
Knockout Mice and CTD
i.
Treatment of CTD with cCr
ii.
Reversal of cognitive deficits CTD (eventually)
GAMT and AGAT (now).
7)
Lecture 11. Prehab and sports medicine
a.
Neurovisual as well as neurocognitive training
i.
Methods
ii.
Position and sport specific training
Lectures 12 and 13. Neuro cognitive rehab
post-concussion. (2 classes) This will be 1 lecture and 1 practical
demonstration.
a.
bench paper and batting averages
b.
Injury prevention
c.
Long term memory improvement and changes.
d.
Habituation
e.
Optokinetic nystagmus
f.
Medications and supplements
9)
Lecture 14. Creatine supplementation in athletes
a.
Aerobic and burst exercise
10)
Lecture 15. Catch up on missed lecture subjects;
conclusions and synthesis of the overall theme from the lectures; as well as a
final exam. The final exam was 12 short answer questions; written in English,
and they could answer in Japanese 8 of the 12.
The lecture series was designed to have some practical
demonstrations to help break up the lectures. No one would want to sit through
4.5 hours of lectures for 5 days in a row. Also I thought it would be
beneficial to learn some practical skills along with the traditional theory
that makes up a majority of college lectures. Also to break up the lectures I
embedded some videos to demonstrate various aspects of the subject matter I was
teaching. I supplied the slides to the students a few days before the lectures
started, but I did not require any readings prior to or during the class.
Before starting the lectures I announced to the students
that the lectures were to be informal and as I described it, “American Style”
meaning that they were allowed and encouraged to interrupt the lecture to ask
questions (usually forbidden in Japanese college classes), they could eat and
drink in the lectures. They were also allowed to leave to use the rest room or
for personal reasons as needed. Also, anyone could skip classes if they had
work or other duties. Finally anyone
else who wanted to attend any one or more of the classes could sit in on the
classes too.
I made one major change in the lecture schedule above once
the series started, and that is it became very obvious that adding the
practicals was a good idea to break up the didactic lectures, so I added one to
the second day, as that was a very hard series of lectures. This was borrowed
from the practical in lecture 13. I can say if I were to do the lecture series
again I would do two lectures and a practical for each day because 3 lectures
at 1.5 hours each was just too much for the students as well as me. Obviously
this is a case of learning from the experience.
I did not know this before, but the University had not done
something like this before, I was the first professor to do this. They wanted a
native English speaker to lecture to the students in English so that they got
exposure to the language and learned specialized subject matter from an expert
in the field. I think that the indications are that the lecture series was a
success as the students and administration were making plans to find another
subject expert to be invited next summer. I offered to help counsel the next
invited lecturer if needed, but I think the people in the university were very
helpful and flexible in the program I was involved in and predict few problems
next year.
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