Research Projects

Understanding, and ultimately treating Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a major need in Western countries. Currently, there is no available treatment to modify the disease. Several pioneering discoveries made by my team, attributing a key role to systemic immunity in brain maintenance and repair, and identifying unique interface between the brain’s...

Neuroinflammatory disease, in particular multiple sclerosis affects more than 700.000 people within Europe alone. European countries are at the forefront of neuroimmunological research and students in medicine and biology are greatly attracted by the field. Neuroimmunology research further impacts our understanding of the ethiopathology of other...

The current research proposes new optical spectroscopic and interferometric microscopy and nanoscopy techniques for accurate measurements and visualization of biological cell structure, organization, stiffness and dynamics by recording the cell spatial, temporal, and refractive-index structure on sub-wavelength and sub-Hertz scales. The following...

In this project we seek to develop new smart imaging molecular tools for combating neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and prion diseases. Emphasis is put on translational applied research for the development and validation of novel properly functionalized luminescent conjugated polymers (LCP) that via modern imaging technology...

In M-GATE, ESRs will combine state-of-the art experimental neurophysiology, innovative technologies, and advanced theoretical approaches to unveil memory mechanisms, from single neurons to brain networks, to cognition and behaviour, addressing the healthy and diseased brain. Through research and training from top-class scientists and close...

Interictal epileptic discharges (IEDs) are pathological brain activities involving sharp spikes in electrical field potentials that occur preferentially during sleep. In epilepsy, IEDs occur between seizures, and often in deep brain regions such as the medial temporal lobe (MTL).IEDs during sleep disrupt memory and are associated with cognitive...

This IRG will support my return to the EU as a Senior Lecturer in Nutrition and Neuroscience at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, bringing state-of-the-art science and technology, collaborations, and excellent prospects for reintegration and the enhancement of European competitiveness. My research aims to elucidate the metabolic basis of brain...

Orientation in space, time, and person is the essence of the behaving self, and the bedrock of neurological and psychiatric mental status examination. States of disorientation may be the hallmark manifestation of several neuropsychiatric disorders. Despite orientation’s central role in health and disease, orientation has almost never been a subject...

The rules linking odor perception to odorant structure are unknown. No scientist nor perfumer can predict an odor based on its molecular structure, or decipher a molecular structure based on its smell. It is this puzzle we aim to solve. In vision and audition coding was probed by linking critical physical stimulus dimensions (wavelength/frequency)...

Neurodegenerative diseases all cause damage to the circuitry of the nervous system, with loss of connections, axons and neurons. The loss can be gradual, as in Alzheimer’s disease, rapid as in stroke, or intermediate as in the delayed neuronal loss after stroke. Following damage, the nervous system is able partially to compensate through the...

Episodic memory is a core element of the human mind, but how experiencing an episode consolidates into long-term memory remains a central unsolved question in cognitive science. We will test the hypothesis that hippocampal-cortical dialogue (HCD) during sleep promotes memory consolidation, a hypothesis that has been largely beyond direct testing in...

Despite impressive advances in almost every field of neuroscience, our insights into brain function remain largely confined to its building blocks at the microscopic level, and to phenomenological descriptions at the macroscopic level. Understanding how complex mental functions originate from electrical and chemical processes in brain cells...