Jia Ryu is interested in occupational and environmental medicine, especially work-related stress and work-related psychiatric disorder. So, she is major in occupational and environmental medicine and she is a third years of resident in hospital. She is trying to prevent work-related psychiatric disorder.

Occupational hazards of firefighters include frequent exposure to toxic substances in fire events and the development of traumatic stress in life-threatening situations. These factors put them at higher risk of developing neuropsychiatric diseases. However, studies on developing preventive guidelines for firefighters’ neuropsychiatric problems are insufficient in South Korea. Therefore, we aimed to create a guideline for improving brain resilience to protect firefighters’ neuropsychiatric health. An internal expert group was established for the development of a guideline for preventing firefighters’ neuropsychiatric diseases. The group consisted of five people who were specialists in the fields of occupational and environmental medicine, neuroscience, and psychiatry. The following concrete steps were taken to develop the guideline for firefighters. Firstly, specific topics and directions were set up for the preparation of the guideline. Secondly, major health outcomes and exposures with a focus on neuropsychiatric diseases in firefighters were selected after a literature review. Finally, the structure and organization of the contents to be included in the guideline were discussed. A thorough review of the literature indicates that firefighters are most commonly exposed to organic compounds (carbon monoxide, benzene, toluene, poly aromatic hydrocarbon), heavy metals (lead, manganese), and dusts (fine particles). Furthermore, depressive disorder, sleep disorder, dementia and Parkinson’s disease were included as main outcomes. The guideline describes the occupational factors that may affect the selected disease and explains the mechanism underlying disease progression or occurrence for each occupational factor. Finally, methods for preventing the selected diseases are described in detail, based on first, second and tertiary prevention strategies. This newly developed guideline will be produced in a simple and easy-to-understand method for firefighters who are at the forefront of emergency and fire services. Additionally, we made it possible to revise the guideline according to direct feedback from firefighters. This will help to improve brain resilience and to protect firefighters’ neuropsychiatric health in South Korea. Recent Publications (minimum 5) 1. Jia Ryu (2016) Two cases of methyl alcohol intoxication by sub-chronic inhalation and dermal exposure during aluminum CNC cutting in a small-sized subcontracted factory. Ann Occup Environ Med. 2016;28:65. 2. Jia Ryu (2017) Firefighters and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Korean J Biol Psychiatry. 2017;24(1):10-18.

Soyong Eom received the B.S. degree in Biology and B.A. degree in Psychology from Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea, and the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Clinical Psychology from the Yonsei University. She worked as a residency and research fellow in Department of Psychiatry and Neurology from Severance Hospital, Yonsei University College of Medicine. She studied as a research scholar at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago in the Northwestern University Department of Pediatrics. Her primary research interests are neurocognitive function and psychological profile of pediatric patients with chronic illness. She has expertise in evaluation and therapeutic interventions for pediatric patients and their caregivers. Her systematic intervention based on cognitive remediation therapy (CRT) creates new pathways for improving psychological healthcare. Recently, she undertook research on factors and their impact on human adaptive function in Neurobehaviors and Brain Connectivity, and Development of ICT-based neurocognitive intervention program.

Cognitive control functions are associated with a wide range of psychological processes, including but not limited to attention, memory, emotional and social processes. Deficits in such functions in children and adolescents are likely to cause problems such as learning disorder (LD) and attention deficient hyper-activity disorder (ADHD). It also may lead to poor social relationships and affect quality of life in the long run. Aim of the current study is to develop and validate a new treatment paradigm that considers both cognitive and non-cognitive functions such as social and communication skills as well as emotional control. In order to improve the accessibility of pre-existing treatment strategies, current study will develop a new form of computerized remediation therapy (CRT) program by implementing mobile-based virtual reality (VR) technology. This new method will open new possibilities in diagnosing and treating cognitive control deficiency by 1) acquiring natural response data (opposed to the types of data that are collected in more controlled settings, such as clinics or laboratories), 2) enabling treatment in an interactive and naturalistic environment, 3) employing artificial intelligence technology to extract principal index from complex multi-dimensional data, 4) strengthening personalized side in executing treatment programs. To achieve those objectives, this study will take an interdisciplinary approach among experts in cognitive and clinical psychology, brain science, artificial intelligence, and information and communication technology (ICT).

Amal Alawi Bin Alawi – Administrative Officer- Student Counseling Center: Amal Alawi has been appointed Administrative Officer-Student Counseling Center effective 17th November 2016. She is a Zayed University alumni and completed her Bachelor of Science (B.S) degree in Psychology / Human Services in 2016. Amal is currently is studying Master of Science in Clinical Psychology at United Arab Emirates University. She was the president of Loqya Club in Zayed University from 2015-2016, and she was a volunteer in the Accessibility Center at ZU from 2014-2015. She was also the President of Child Smile project at ZU and she organized several workshops in Juvenile Mafraq center.

Research has now clearly demonstrated the interrelation between biological, physical and socio-cultural aspects of illness and well-being, and the bio-psychosocial model of health, illness, healing and well-being has been thoroughly validated and accepted. This model requires medical, counseling and wellness professionals to work together in an integrated manner with clients on their issues so as to enable best outcomes. The bio-psychosocial model has led to significant changes in clinical practice worldwide and has led to a push for integrated healthcare across all levels of care. At the level of higher education too there has been a push for integrated healthcare, and this has led to integration of counseling, health and wellness centers across major accredited US universities. Counseling services and health centers, which previously may have been independent separate units, have been integrated into one organic unit along with wellness services and programs, so as to enable best practices and outcomes. The American College Health Association (ACHA) has been a strong advocate of it and has come out with clear guidelines for it. However, integration of health and counseling services in the Middle East in general and UAE in particular is in its infancy. Zayed University was the first to implement this integration successfully in 2016. This entailed extensive planning and preparation in light of it being a pioneering venture and a unique cultural context. The challenges and rewards of this are analyzed and discussed. Issues in presenting and educating University administrators, getting buy in from all stakeholders, the unique cultural aspects impacting the transition, are all highlighted and discussed. Recommendations are made to enable effective integration in culturally diverse contexts.

Jiyeong Ha is currently a graduate student in Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at Yonsei University, South Korea. Her research focuses on viewpoint-invariant object recognition. Specifically, her work aims to explore the mid-level process between perception and cognition and to find what perceptual features are mostly used to form abstract representations of objects.

The visual system has little trouble recognizing a person even though the retinal image of that person’s face keeps changing due to expression, illumination, distance, etc. One of the strategies to maintain such stable object representations is considering spatiotemporal continuity of the object with its visual properties. Spatiotemporally connected objects are likely to be considered as the same object despite having different physical appearances. Conversely, if one perceives spatiotemporally separated objects, it is natural to infer them as two different objects even if they look identical. We sought to investigate the effects of spatiotemporal continuity on facial perception. In each trial, participants were instructed to observe two objects moving in opposite directions across the screen. The objects started as scrambled faces and turned into intact faces when they reached a fixation. The two faces appeared sequentially. They were the same or different (repeated vs. unrepeated), and they appeared within a single stream or across two different streams (continuous vs. discontinuous). Once the movement ended, participants determined whether the two faces were the same or different. To investigate the effects of spatiotemporal continuity on face perception, we calculated hit and false alarm rates from the repeated and unrepeated conditions, respectively. The results showed that the sensitivity (d’) of the continuous condition was significantly lower than that of the discontinuous condition, but the response criteria (k) for the two conditions were not different. Also, hit rate for repeated faces were lower in the continuous condition than in the discontinuous condition, indicating that repeated faces were more difficult to detect in the same stream than in different streams. Such impaired face identification might be attributed to the failure of token separation under the influence of spatiotemporal continuity. The current findings suggest that spatiotemporal continuity might be utilized as a cue for stable face representations by modulating the process in which perceptual evidence is extracted.