Research Projects

An expanded GGGGCC repeat in a non-coding region of the C9orf72 gene is the most common known cause of frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The repeat RNA is transcribed and accumulates in neuronal RNA aggregates, implicating RNA toxicity as a key pathogenic mechanism. However, the pathways that lead to...

The calcium sensing receptor (CaSR) is a class C Gprotein-coupled receptor that plays a pivotal role in systemic calcium metabolism by regulating parathyroid hormone secretion and urinary Ca excretion. Abnormal CaSR function is implicated in calciotropic disorders, and in non-calciotropic disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD), cardiovascular...

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a major contributor to disease burden and healthcare costs worldwide. AD is usually diagnosed once symptoms like memory impairment become evident. However, at this point typical AD pathology such as Aβ plaques and cell death is already widespread, suggesting that molecular changes have occurred decades before symptom...

Neuroinformatics (NI) is now an essential approach in brain research, to organise, analyse, integrate and interpret an increasing volume of diverse, multi-dimensional, fine-grain neuroscience data. University of Ljubljana's (UL's) challenges in this field are suboptimal research management & open innovation (OI), slow pace of structural changes...

Small soluble protein aggregates play a key role in the onset and spreading of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. However, which oligomers are present in human disease and which are toxic remains unknown because ultrasensitive methods do not exist to detect and characterise the low concentration of oligomers, which are highly heterogeneous in...

Small soluble protein aggregates play a key role in the onset and spreading of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. However, which oligomers are present in human disease and which are toxic remains unknown because ultrasensitive methods do not exist to detect and characterise the low concentration of oligomers, which are highly heterogeneous...

One of the main socioeconomics challenges to be faced in the next decades will be the prevalence of neurodegenerative diseases (such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s) due to population ageing. Today, diagnosis, treatment and monitoring of such illness is complex, a laborious process completed by a limited set of Neurologist experts who need to...

Older adults show difficulties with bilingual language processing and switching compared to younger adults. For example, they need more time to switch between languages and show more cross-language intrusions. Language problems have not only been found for healthy older adults, but also in patients with dementia and Parkinson’s disease. Language...

Cognitive impairment and dementia have dramatic individual and social consequences, and create high economic costs for societies. In order to delay cognitive aging of future generations as long as possible, we need evidence about which contextual factors are most supportive for individuals to reach highest cognitive levels relative to their...

The cDAC ERC Advanced project develops and validates a theory of consciousness and its application to the understanding and alleviation of its deficits. cDAC proposes that consciousness is a virtualization memory system that monitors and optimizes the real-time control of perception, cognition and action realized in a multi-layered architecture...

Common mechanisms and pathways in Stroke and Alzheimer's disease. It has long been recognized that stroke and (Alzheimer’s Disease) AD often co-occur and have an overlapping pathogenesis. As such, these two diseases are not considered fellow travelers, but rather partners in crime. This multidisciplinary consortium includes epidemiologists...

Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is the second most common form of dementia. A pathological hallmark is the formation of protein aggregates that consist mainly of Tau or TDP43. Patients suffer from the degeneration of the frontal and temporal lobes with no effective treatments being available. The recent advancement of 3D brain organoid cultures grown...