About

Dr. Suzie Chen is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Chemical Biology. She has been recognized with the 2026 Seiji Memorial Lectureship Award from the International Federation of Pigment Cell Societies, an honor that acknowledges her distinguished and enduring contributions to the pigment cell field. As part of this recognition, Dr. Chen will deliver a lecture at the 26th International Pigment Cell Conference – 7th Pigmentarycon 2026, held in New Delhi, India, from April 30 to May 3, 2026.

Research topics

• Medicine
• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Internal medicine
• Psychology
• Pediatrics
• Neuroscience
• Biomedical engineering
• Psychiatry
• Nursing
• Intensive care medicine
• Emergency medicine
• Surgery
• Cognitive psychology
• Clinical psychology
• Physical therapy
• Anesthesia

Selected publications

• Altered cerebrovascular response to breath holding in thoracolumbar spinal cord injury measured using functional near-infrared spectroscopy

  medRxiv · 2026-03-13

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Spinal cord injury (SCI) is associated with cardiovascular deficits that affect cerebral blood flow, cerebral perfusion, and cerebrovascular control. While several studies use neuroimaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to understand neuroplasticity following SCI, more work needs to be done to evaluate the cerebrovascular changes following SCI. Understanding these effects using neuroimaging is essential as these deficits also affect neurovascular coupling and how we interpret neuroplasticity measured based on neuroimaging. Hence, we conducted a pilot study in twelve healthy males and thirteen males with thoracolumbar SCI using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to understand the effects of breath-holding induced hypercapnia on the hemodynamics of the sensorimotor cortex and prefrontal cortex (PFC) after SCI. Participants performed 30 seconds of regular breathing alternated by 15 seconds of breath-holding for 5 minutes. Compared to controls, the SCI group presented with a greater initial decrease in oxy-hemoglobin concentration change and a delayed subsequent increase in oxy-hemoglobin concentration change in response to hypercapnia at p<. Additionally, the net increase in oxy-hemoglobin concentration change following BH in the PFC was negatively correlated with the level of injury at p=0.005, where higher levels of injury were associated with a smaller increase in oxy-hemoglobin concentration following hypercapnia. These findings confirm that a) SCI, including lower levels of injury (below T6) are associated with cerebrovascular changes that are quantifiable using fNIRS, and b) fNIRS could be a robust tool to understand the neuroplastic and cerebrovascular changes in people with SCI.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Contributors

  Elsevier eBooks · 2025-10-10

  book-chapter
  PublisherDOI

• Functional connectivity: Definition and signal origins

  Elsevier eBooks · 2025-10-10

  book-chapter
  PublisherDOI

• The significance and limited influence of cerebrovascular reactivity on age and sex effects in task- and resting-state brain activity

  Cerebral Cortex · 2024-01-11 · 7 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Functional MRI measures the blood-oxygen-level dependent signals, which provide an indirect measure of neural activity mediated by neurovascular responses. Cerebrovascular reactivity affects both task-induced and resting-state blood-oxygen-level dependent activity and may confound inter-individual effects, such as those related to aging and biological sex. We examined a large dataset containing breath-holding, checkerboard, and resting-state tasks. We used the breath-holding task to measure cerebrovascular reactivity, used the checkerboard task to obtain task-based activations, and quantified resting-state activity with amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations and regional homogeneity. We hypothesized that cerebrovascular reactivity would be correlated with blood-oxygen-level dependent measures and that accounting for these correlations would result in better estimates of age and sex effects. We found that cerebrovascular reactivity was correlated with checkerboard task activations in the visual cortex and with amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations and regional homogeneity in widespread fronto-parietal regions, as well as regions with large vessels. We also found significant age and sex effects in cerebrovascular reactivity, some of which overlapped with those observed in amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations and regional homogeneity. However, correcting for the effects of cerebrovascular reactivity had very limited influence on the estimates of age and sex. Our results highlight the limitations of accounting for cerebrovascular reactivity with the current breath-holding task.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Brain activation during the N-back working memory task in individuals with spinal cord injury: a functional near-infrared spectroscopy study

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2024-02-12 · 4 citations

  preprintOpen access1st author

  Cognitive impairments have frequently been reported in individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI) across different domains such as working memory, attention, and executive function. The mechanism of cognitive impairment after SCI is not well understood due to the heterogeneity of SCI sample populations, and may possibly be due to factors such as cardiovascular dysfunction, concomitant traumatic brain injury (TBI), hypoxia, sleep disorders, and body temperature dysregulation. In this study, we implement the Neuropsychiatric Unit Cognitive Assessment Tool (NUCOG) to assess cognitive differences between individuals with SCI and age-matched able-bodied (AB) controls. We then use an N-back working memory task and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to elucidate the neurovascular correlates of cognitive function in individuals with SCI. We observed significant differences between the SCI and AB groups on measures of executive function on the NUCOG test. On the N-back task, across the three levels of difficulty: 0-back, 2-back, and 3-back, no significant differences were observed between the SCI and AB group; however, both groups performed worse as the level of difficulty increased. Although there were no significant differences in N-back performance scores between the two groups, functional brain hemodynamic activity differences were observed between the SCI and AB groups, with the SCI group exhibiting higher maximum oxygenated hemoglobin concentration in the right inferior parietal lobe. These findings support the use of fNIRS to study cognitive function in individuals with SCI and may provide a useful tool during rehabilitation to obtain quantitative functional brain activity metrics.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Delayed cerebrovascular reactivity in individuals with spinal cord injury in the right inferior parietal lobe: a breath-hold functional near-infrared spectroscopy study

  medRxiv · 2024-06-04

  preprintOpen access1st author

  Cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR) reflects the ability of blood vessels to dilate or constrict in response to a vasoactive stimulus, and allows researchers to assess the brain's vascular health. Individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI) are at an increased risk for autonomic dysfunction in addition to cognitive impairments, which have been linked to a decline in CVR; however, there is currently a lack of brain-imaging studies that investigate how CVR is altered after SCI. In this study, we used a breath-holding hypercapnic stimulus and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to investigate CVR alterations in individuals with SCI (n = 20, 14M, 6F, mean age = 46.3 ± 10.2 years) as compared to age- and sex-matched able-bodied (AB) controls (n = 25, 19M, 6F, mean age = 43.2 ± 12.28 years). CVR was evaluated by its amplitude and delay components separately by using principal component analysis and cross-correlation analysis, respectively. We observed significantly delayed CVR in the right inferior parietal lobe in individuals with SCI compared to AB controls (linear mixed-effects model, fixed-effects estimate = 6.565, Satterthwaite's t-test, t = 2.663, p = 0.008), while the amplitude of CVR was not significantly different. The average CVR delay in the SCI group in the right inferior parietal lobe was 14.21 s (sd: 6.60 s), and for the AB group, the average delay in the right inferior parietal lobe was 7.08 s (sd: 7.39 s). CVR delays were also associated with the duration since injury in individuals with SCI, in which a longer duration since injury was associated with a shortened delay in CVR in the right inferior parietal region (Pearson's r-correlation, r = -0.59, p = 0.04). This study shows that fNIRS can be used to quantify changes in CVR in individuals with SCI, and may be further used in rehabilitative settings to monitor the cerebrovascular health of individuals with SCI.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Measuring Entropy in Sleep EEG to Examine Complexity and Level of Biological Activity in Different Sleep Stages

  2024-02-08

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Sleep scoring is performed to help diagnose sleep disorders. It is a difficult and tedious process, usually taking several hours. However, by identifying characteristics that can be fed into a computer to identify sleep stages, it is possible to automate the process. Sleep scoring is performed using an electroencephalogram (EEG) to measure a person's brain waves during sleep. The data obtained from this reading can help split a person's sleep into different sleep stages. One of the characteristics that can be used to classify sleep stages is entropy. Entropy in biological systems can be thought of as a measure of disorder. It is often correlated with complexity in biological systems, in which higher entropy often means a higher level of complexity. We examine this phenomenon regarding sleep stage wakefulness, N1, N2, N3, N4, and REM, to identify whether a deeper level of sleep correlates with a lower level of entropy. A large publicly available EEG database of sleep datasets was used for this study. For each dataset, we calculated the approximate entropy and multiscale entropy. Results show a decrease in entropy as subjects fall further into a deeper sleep. For approximate entropy, entropy decreases from N1 to N4. A similar trend exists in MSE at lower time scales, but this trend is reversed at higher time scales. This may hint at a hidden complexity within deeper stages of sleep that may be related to unseen biological activity. Understanding the entropy traits inherent in sleep stages makes it possible to automate the process of sleep scoring, allowing for fast, accurate sleep scoring for patients at home.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Cerebrovascular reactivity increases across development in multiple networks as revealed by a breath‐holding task: A longitudinal <scp>fMRI</scp> study

  Human Brain Mapping · 2024-01-01 · 7 citations

  articleOpen access1st author

  Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been widely used to understand the neurodevelopmental changes that occur in cognition and behavior across childhood. The blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) signal obtained from fMRI is understood to be comprised of both neuronal and vascular information. However, it is unclear whether the vascular response is altered across age in studies investigating development in children. Since the breath-hold (BH) task is commonly used to understand cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR) in fMRI studies, it can be used to account for developmental differences in vascular response. This study examines how the cerebrovascular response changes over age in a longitudinal children's BH data set from the Nathan Kline Institute (NKI) Rockland Sample (aged 6-18 years old at enrollment). A general linear model approach was applied to derive CVR from BH data. To model both the longitudinal and cross-sectional effects of age on BH response, we used mixed-effects modeling with the following terms: linear, quadratic, logarithmic, and quadratic-logarithmic, to find the best-fitting model. We observed increased BH BOLD signals in multiple networks across age, in which linear and logarithmic mixed-effects models provided the best fit with the lowest Akaike information criterion scores. This shows that the cerebrovascular response increases across development in a brain network-specific manner. Therefore, fMRI studies investigating the developmental period should account for cerebrovascular changes that occur with age.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Introduction to resting-state fMRI

  Elsevier eBooks · 2023-01-01 · 3 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Significance and Limited Influence of Cerebrovascular Reactivity on Age and Sex Effects in Task- and Resting-State Brain Activity

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2023-08-21 · 2 citations

  preprintOpen access1st author

  Functional MRI (fMRI) measures the blood-oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) signals, which provide an indirect measure of neural activity mediated by neurovascular responses. Cerebrovascular reactivity affects both task-induced and resting-state BOLD activity and may confound inter-individual effects observed in BOLD-based measures, such as those related to aging and biological sex. To investigate this, we examined a large open-access fMRI dataset containing a breath-holding task, checkerboard task, and resting-state scans. We used the breath-holding task to measure cerebrovascular reactivity, used the checkerboard task to obtain task-based activations, and from the resting-state data, we quantified the resting-state amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (ALFF), and resting-state regional homogeneity (ReHo). We hypothesized that cerebrovascular reactivity would be correlated with BOLD measures and that accounting for these correlations would result in better estimates of age and sex effects. Our analysis showed that cerebrovascular reactivity was correlated with checkerboard task activations in the visual cortex and with ALFF and ReHo in widespread fronto-parietal regions, as well as regions with large vessels. We also found significant age and sex effects in cerebrovascular reactivity, some of which overlapped with those observed in ALFF and ReHo scores. Finally, we demonstrated that correcting for the effects of cerebrovascular reactivity had very limited influence on the estimates of age and sex. Our results highlight the limitations of accounting for cerebrovascular reactivity with the current breath-holding task.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Bharat B. Biswal

  New Jersey Institute of Technology

  35 shared

• Xin Yu

  21 shared

• Xin Di

  New Jersey Institute of Technology

  16 shared

• Keerthana Deepti Karunakaran

  Massachusetts General Hospital

  13 shared

• Rakibul Hafiz

  National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering

  9 shared

• Katherine Ji

  New Jersey Institute of Technology

  9 shared

• Hai Sun

  Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

  9 shared

• Nancy D. Chiaravalloti

  Rutgers New Jersey Medical School

  7 shared

Awards & honors

• 2026 Seiji Memorial Lectureship Award from the International…