Neurogastroenterology Group

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Susan Surguy

Susan Surguy
Research Scientist

email: s.surguy@qmul.ac.uk
Phone: +44 (0)20 7882 2645
Fax: +44 (0)20 7375 2103

Susan has a BSc in Psychology and PhD in Cognitive Neurophysiology. As a psychologist she has used psychological models to investigate how psychological factors impact on cognition and behaviour. Combining psychological and neurophysiological techniques to study complex interactions between physiological and psychological factors involved in processing visceral pain, ubiquitous in FGID, and their contribution to the development of visceral hypersensitivity.

Her previously research has involved studying factors affecting information processing and multiple task performance using behavioural and neurophysiological techniques. She has also used electrophysiological techniques at the cellular level as well as in human in vivo studies in basic and clinical research and clinical diagnoses. Ranging from single cell recordings to multi-channel human cortical responses and source localisation. In addition she has been involved in developing a long term, non-invasive, bi-directional means of electrophysiological recordings in cultured neurons. Susan has also worked in the medical devise industry developing clinical neurophysiological systems.

Research interests:

  • Understanding the neurophysiology of brain- gut interactions to gaining a better understanding of visceral hypersensitivity and pain in functional gastrointestinal disorders.
  • Developing new neurophysiological tools for assessment of gastrointestinal function.
  • How psychological factors such as cognition, affect and traits influence how we process information and ultimately how that affects behavour.

Effects of attentional modulation on cortical processing of oesophageal pain in healthy adults.

Susan’s work combines psychological profiling with evoked (EPs) and event related potentials (ERPs) recordings, thus studying the multi-factorial nature of visceral hypersensitivity, hence identifying specific phenotypes associated with visceral pain. EPs provide an objective measure of the integrity of afferent nerve pathways, whilst ERPs provide a means of studying perceptual processing of visceral pain. The aim of this work is to develop the neurophysiological characterisation of visceral pain perception in health and in patients with FGID and new neurophysiological tools for assessing gastrointestinal function.

Publications:

Key publications:

Graham, AHD., Surguy, SM., Langlois, P., Bowen, CR., Taylor, J. & Robbins, J. (2011). A Novel Modification of Standard CMOS Technology for Cell-Based Biosensors. Biosensors and Bioelectronics (In Press).

Carrington EV, Burgell R., Lelic D., Surgu, S., Drewes A., Aziz Q., Knowles CH. & Scott SM. (2011) Assessment of rectal afferent neuronal function using evoked potentials in patients with constipation and rectal hyposensitivity – a pilot study. British Journal of Surgery 98(2), 243-244.

Chua YC, Ng KS, Sharma A, Jafari J, Surguy S, Yazaki E, Julu P O, Knowles C H, Aziz. Acid-induced oesophageal hypersensitivity is inhibited by Pregabalin treatment. Gut 2010, 58: A38.

Surguy SM and Bond AJ. P300 to emotionally relevant stimuli as an indicator of aggression levels. Aggressive Behavior 2006; 32 (3): 253-260.

Zhang T, Surguy SM and Seeley J. Complexity measurements of event-related potential recordings for single and dual tasks in man. Proceedings of the British Physiological Society 2005.

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