History and Present state of the Chair of neurology
The foundation of the chair of neurology at our university dates way back to 1973. It was first filled by the late Professor emeritus Masao Kase and Professor emeritus Soichi Katayama succeeded him after a while. The chair had a skeleton staff of 3 when it started. In its early days, there were challenging times, but as the staff grew, the track record of clinical practice, research, and education increased to a notable extent and the chair became better organized, staffed, and equipped. Its staff achieved such brilliant results mainly in the field of clinical neurophysiology, including polysomnography, electroencephalography and event-related potentials that the chair has promoted the annual meetings of the Japanese Society of Sleep Research and the Japanese Society of Neurological Therapeutics. It also plays a role as a regional core institution in clinical practice. Both out- and in-patient throughput has been increasing from year to year. As one of the results of education in neurology, freshman and women have been recruited every year. The chair has been managed by Professor Koichi Hirata since April 1996 and has been growing while abiding by its tradition. In addition to event-related potential, behavioral science, rhythm, sleep, headache, stroke, a neuroimmunology research group has been established. At present, the number of daily average patient is 130 outpatients and 60 inpatients.The annual meeting of Japanese clinical neurophysiology meeting was held at Utsunomiya in 2007 by our department.
Staff
Professor and Chairman
Keisuke Suzuki
Professor
Masayuki Miyamoto, Norito Kokubun, Hidehiro Takekawa
Associate Professor
Yuka Watanabe, Kei Funakoshi, Eisei Hoshiyama
Assistant Professor
Hiroaki Fujita, Takahito Nishihira
Assistant
Shiho Suzuki, Masatsugu Takano, Yuko Ishii, Tomoko Komagamine, Hiroki Onuma, Haruki Igarashi, Kentaro Iiduka, Hirotaka Sakuramoto, Saro Kobayashi, Narihiro Nozawa, Mai Hamaguchi, Daisuke Tsukui, Keitaro Ogaki, Mukuto Shioda
Resident
Tomohiro Tsuchiya, Shun Tsuboyama, Kensho Matsubayashi, Shinsuke Omata, Kazushi Kato, Mayuka Kimura, Ryotaro Hida, Noriaki Morito
After graduate student
Daisuke Tsukui
Research assistant
Tomoji Saito, Nobuhiro Mochizuki, Kazuteru Ukita, Masahito Katsuki
Secretary
Kaori Soma, Sanae Tani
Technical assistant
Chiaki Yanaka, Noriko Shiota
Our major research
1) Event-related potential (ERP)
The study for evaluation of the mental state, testing of intellectual performance and efficacy of the drugs in patients with dementia (vascular dementia, Alzheimer's disease and other type of dementia like as Parkinson's disease) and Vascular depression.
2)Neuroimmunology
We are investigating the pathogenesis of Guillain-Barre syndrome and the related disorders. They have shown that patients with Guillain-Barre syndrome often have anti-ganglioside antibody and that molecular mimicry exists between gangliosides and Campylobacter jejuni. Their aim is to develop more effective treatments for the autoimmune-mediated necrologic diseases.
3)Sleep medicine
[1] Clinical studies using polysomnography and neuroimaging in patients with primary sleep disorders (e.g. sleep apnea syndrome and REM sleep behavior disorder).
[2] Clinical studies about sleep problems in patients with stroke, neurodegenerative diseases (e.g. Parkinson's disease and its related disorders) and primary headache.
4)Behavioral science
The study of alteration in the circadian, ultradian activity or rhythm in patients with dementia and degenerative disorder using ambulatory blood pressure monitoring and actigraph.
5)Stroke
Clinical study in stroke patients using MRI and MRA. A lot of study about Post-stroke depression has been published.
6)Headache
Physiological and epidemiological study for headache.