Xuchu Weng, Ph.D.
Institute for Brain Research and Rehabilitation,
South China Normal University
Address: 55 Zhongshan Avenue West, Tianhe District,
Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China, 510631
Education and work experience
1992-1995 PhD, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
1985-1989 Resident in General Internal Medicine, Cixi People's Hospital, Zhejiang Province
1992-1999 Assistant Researcher and Associate Researcher, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
1996-2010 Director, Advanced Brain Function Research Laboratory, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
1999-2010 Researcher, Doctoral Supervisor, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (since 2000)
2004-2010 Member of Academic Committee and Degree Committee of Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
2006-2010 Deputy Director, Academic Committee, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
2008-2010 Director, Cognitive and Developmental Psychology Research Laboratory (Research Office of Cognitive and Experimental Psychology), Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
2012-2017 First Director of Zhejiang Provincial Key Laboratory of Cognitive Impairment Assessment Technology Research
2017-2019 Professor and Executive Vice Dean, the Institute for Brain Research and Rehabilitation, South China Normal University
2019-present Professor and Dean, the Institute for Brain Research and Rehabilitation, South China Normal University
Main academic part-time
Chairman of the Neuroimaging Branch of the Chinese Neuroscience Society
Vice Chairman of Physiologic Psychology Branch of Chinese Psychological Society
Deputy Head of the Neuropsychology and Behavioral Neurology Group, Chinese Medical Association
Editorial Board of Chinese Medical Imaging, Journal of Magnetic Resonance, Acta Biophysica Sinica, Acta Psychologica Sinica, Neuroscience Bulletin, PLoS One
Research interest
In his early years, he was a western medicine physician (cardiovascular and neurology), and later studied psychology and neurobiology systematically at the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and obtained a master's and doctoral degree. After graduation, he quickly established my country's first functional brain imaging research laboratory, and published my country's first brain functional imaging research papers in domestic and international journals. So far, it has trained more than 50 doctoral students and post-doctoral students (including doctoral students trained as part-time doctoral supervisors in Zhejiang University and Xiamen University), and personally trained and guided thousands of national psychology, medicine, neuroimaging and education And other training personnel in various fields. Early work mainly revealed the decisive evidence that the cerebellum is involved in advanced cognitive functions such as language, and identified several key brain imaging features such as depression, drug addiction, severe disturbance of consciousness, aphasia, and dyslexia. In the past ten years, research interests have gradually focused on "children's brain development and cognitive function development and related diseases", and a series of high-level research results have been achieved. For example, it systematically studied the patterns of EEG changes of Chinese children from kindergarten to grade 6 in elementary school, and took the lead in challenging viewpoints different from mainstream Western opinions in the development of children's reading ability. The negative component N170 related to Chinese character recognition was reported for the first time in the world, and it was discovered that the left side of N170 can appear in 6-year-old school-age children at the earliest, which has attracted widespread attention from international colleagues.
In the near future, another important direction is to use the intracranial electrodes of patients with refractory epilepsy to directly record the neural activity of the human brain and analyze the neural mechanism of cognitive activity. Multi-disciplinary comprehensive research is required, and students of applied mathematics and computer science are especially welcome to join this topic.
More than 160 research papers (121 SCI papers) have been published so far, and they have been cited more than 5000 times by him in the SCI core data set.
Several achievements in recent years
1. Zhao J, Maurer U, He S, Weng X. Development of neural specialization for print: Evidence for predictive coding in visual word recognition. PLoS Biology, 2019, 17(10): e3000474.
2. Shao H, Weng XC, He S. Functional organization of the face-sensitive areas in the human occipital-temporal cortex. NeuroImage, 2017, 157: 129-143.
3. Yang H, Zhao J, Gaspar C, Chen W, Tan Y, Weng XC. Selectivity of N170 for visual words in the right hemisphere: Evidence from single-trial analysis. Psychophysiology, 2017, 54: 1128-1137.
4. Zhao P, Li S, Zhao J, Gaspar CM, Weng XC. Training by visual identification and writing leads to different visual word expertise N170 effects in preliterate Chinese children. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 2015, 15: 106-116.
5. Yi W, Wu T, Chen W, Yuan TF, Luo B, Shan CL, Li JA, He S, Weng XC. Left hemiparalexia of Chinese characters：Neglect dyslexia or disruption of pathway of visual word form processing? Brain Structure and Function. 2014, 219: 283-292.
6. Li S, Lee K, Zhao J, Yang Z, He S, Weng XC. Neural competition as a developmental process: Early hemispheric specialization for word processing delays specialization for face processing. Neuropsychologia. 2013, 51: 950–959.
7. Liu HC, Jiang Y, Zhang B, Ma LF, He S, Weng XC. The orthographic sensitivity to written Chinese in the occipital-temporal cortex. Experimental Brain Research. 2013, 227: 387-396.
8. Xu GF, Jiang Y, Ma LF, Yang Z, Weng XC. Similar spatial patterns of neural coding of category selectivity in FFA and VWFA under different attention conditions. Neuropsychologia 2012, 50: 862– 868.
9. Zhang JX, Xiao Z, Weng XC. Neural evidence for direct meaning access from orthography in Chinese word reading. International Journal of Psychophysiology. 2012, 84: 240–245.
10. Zhao J, Li S, Lin SE, Cao XH, He S, Weng XC. Selectivity of N170 in the left hemisphere as an electrophysiological marker for expertise in reading Chinese. Neuroscience Bulletin. 2012, 28: 577-584.
11. Lin SE, Chen HC, Zhao J, Li S, He S, Weng XC. Left-lateralized N170 response to unpronounceable pseudo but not false Chinese characters – the key role of orthography Neuroscience. 2011, 190: 200-206.
The subjects hosted
1. National key basic research development plan (973 project, 2007CB512300) Research on the interaction mechanism between genes and environment of depression and schizophrenia (topic 6: advanced brain dysfunction of disease), 2007-2011 (3.6 million Yuan), Task leader
2. National Science Foundation of the United States (NSF BCS-0818588): Specialization and plasticity of the visual word form area in reading Chinese. 2007-2010. ($630,000), Chinese host (host: Sheng He, University of Minnesota)
3. The Hundred Talents Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences: The neural basis of word processing, 2008-2011 (1 million Yuan), host;
4. National Humanities and Social Sciences Key Project (Approval Number: 11AZD119): Multidisciplinary Comprehensive Research on Chinese Vocabulary Processing and Its Obstacles, 2011-2015 (250,000 Yuan), host;
5. National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant number: 31371134): MRI research on modular and distributed processing of human ventral occipitotemporal cortex, January 2014 to December 2017 (850,000 Yuan), host;
6. Zhejiang Province Key Research and Development Project (2015C03037): Research on new treatment technologies for major mental disorders, September 2016 - December 2019, (2 million Yuan), host;
7. China-Israel Bilateral Science and Technology Cooperation Project (2016YFE0130400): Research on the core mechanism of working memory bonding, starting and ending year and month: January 2017-December 2019, China funded 1.75 million Yuan and Israel funded 750,000 US dollars, second host.
8. Key thematic project of Guangzhou Science and Technology Plan (201804020085): Cognitive neuroscience research and intervention technology research and development for children with learning difficulties, start and end year and month: April 2018-March 2021, funding amount 2 million Yuan, host.
9. Guangdong Province Key Field Research and Development Project (2019B030335001): Basic and applied research on the diagnosis and treatment of autism, start and end year and month: September 2019 - August 2023, funding amount of 39.8 million Yuan, co-host.
Teaching situation
1. Progress in Cognitive Neuroscience, 40 class hours (for PhD students);
2. Psycholinguistics, 36 class hours (for doctoral students);
3. The principle, application and development of magnetic resonance imaging technology, 40 class hours (for master students);
4. New progress in psychology, 51 class hours (for master students);
5. Cognitive psychology, 48 class hours (undergraduates);
6. Introduction to Medical Imaging, 12 class hours (undergraduates).
Awards
1. The National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (2004)
2. The 9th China Youth Science and Technology Award (2006)
3. National Candidate for the New Century Hundred, Thousand, Ten Thousand Talents Project (2007)
4. Special government allowance (2007)
5. The Hundred Talents Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (2008)
6. Qianjiang Senior Talent (Distinguished Professor) in Zhejiang Province (2011)
7. The first prize of Fujian Science and Technology Award (2014) (ranked fifth), the name of the award-winning project: Clinical research of multimodal functional magnetic resonance imaging in brain injury and rehabilitation
8. Leading Medical Talents in Guangdong Province (2018)