Chee, Michael

Research Interests:

My lab studies cognition in the context of sleep deprivation and healthy cognitive aging. The common thread linking these seemingly unrelated themes is the goal of furthering human cognitive performance through an understanding of the mechanisms that underlie performance degradation in these settings. 

Sleep Deprivation

My lab has contributed to a better understanding of the neural correlates of cognitive alterations associated with short-term total sleep deprivation (TSD) on healthy young adults Using a combination of behavioral tests, EEG and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we have probed the mechanisms underlying reduced attention and processing capacity as well as changes to decision making and valuation. We have probed the imaging correlates of inter-individual variation in performance when volunteers are under sleep deprived. We seek to extend this work to partial sleep deprivation and to evaluate the benefits of sleep extension on cognition and human health.

Healthy Brain Aging

The goal of studying the healthy aging brain is to characterize the extent to which modifiable risk factors result in either positive or deleterious effects on brain morphology and function.

The lab has a cohort of around 350 healthy elderly (age 55-85 years) of Chinese ethnicity who have been followed up for 4 years. We are currently into wave 3 of a longitudinal study and are collecting structural MR, DTI and resting state data.

In wave 4 we will examine sleep structure, quality and how this affects cognition and brain structure. Additionally, we will evaluate risky decision-making in elderly persons and how this compares with young adults in the local cultural milieu. 

Selected Publications:

Sleep Deprivation

Chee MW, Goh CS, Namburi P, Parimal S, Seidl KN, Kastner S Effects of sleep deprivation on cortical activation during directed attention in the absence and presence of visual stimuli. Neuroimage 2011 58:595–604.

Venkatraman V, Huettel SA, Chuah LY, Payne JW, Chee MW  Sleep deprivation biases the neural mechanisms underlying economic preferences. J Neurosci 2011; 31:3712-3718.

Chuah LYM and Chee MWL. Cholinergic augmentation modulates visual task performance in sleep-deprived young adults. 2008 J Neurosci. 28(44):11369 -11377.

Chee MW, Tan JC, Zheng H, Parimal S, Weissman DH, Zagorodnov V, and Dinges,  DF. Lapsing during sleep deprivation is associated with distributed changes in brain activation. J Neurosci. 2008 May 21;28(21):5519-28.

Chee MWL, Chuah YML. Functional neuroimaging and behavioral correlates of capacity decline in visual short-term memory after sleep deprivation. Proc Natl Acad Sci (USA) 2007; 104(22), 9487-9492.

Chuah LY, Venkatraman V, Dinges DF, Chee MWL. The neural basis of inter-individual variability in inhibitory efficiency following sleep deprivation. J Neurosci 2006; 26:7156-62.

Chee MWL, Choo WC Functional imaging of working memory following 24 hours of total sleep deprivation. J Neurosci 2004 24(19) 4560-4567.

Cognitive Aging

Chee MW, Zheng H, Goh JO, Park D, Sutton BP.  Brain Structure in Young and old East Asians and westerners:  Comparisons of structural volume and cortical thickness.  J Cogn Neurosci. 2010; 21:1907-1919.

Chee MWL, Chen KHM, Zheng H, Chan KPL, Isaac V, Sim SKY, Chuah LYM, Schuchinsky M, Fischl B and Ng TP. Cognitive function and brain structure correlations in healthy elderly East Asians. Neuroimage, 2009. 46(1):257-69.

Chee MWL, Goh JOS, Venkatraman V, Tan JC, Gutchess A, Sutton B, Hebrank A, Leshikar E, Park DC. Age related changes in object processing and contextual binding revealed using fMR-Adaptation. J Cog Neurosci 2006; 18:4: 495-507.

Goh, JOS, Soon CS, Park D, Gutchess A, Hebrank A, Chee MW. Cortical areas involved in object, background and object-background processing revealed with fMR-A. J Neurosci 2004; 24(45): 10223-28