Research Projects

Controlling the precise balance between excitation and inhibition (E/I balance) is critical for information processing in the brain. A perturbed E/I balance has been implicated in the etiology of a wide range of neuropsychiatric disorders. The factors that dictate the balance between excitatory and inhibitory synaptic transmission are still poorly...

The research area of this proposal is Life Science at the intersection of neuroscience, pharmacology and physiology. In the central nervous system (CNS), astrocytes are both numerous and complex. They contact most other cell types in the CNS, and the processes of a single astrocyte can envelop as many as 140,000 synapses. Thus, these cells are...

The objective of ROSETTA is to help community dwelling people with progressive chronic disabilities, such as Alzheimer’s Disease, to retain their autonomy and quality of life as much as possible and to support their (in)formal carers by developing and providing an ICT system that offers activity guidance and awareness services for independent...

Regenerating tissues by reprogramming cells has the potential to become a therapeutic approach for replacing lost tissues in patients suffering from injury or degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s or Muscular Dystrophy. Strategies to generate required tissues using embryonic stem cells or induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are associated...

“SAVE” is dedicated to the elderly persons, suffering (or at risk of) age-related chronic illnesses and/or mild cognitive issues/disabilities. For these, and a range of “not-so-fit” persons, “SAVE” aims to avoid psychosocial exclusion by “restoring the referential”. The unique goal of “orientation” in a supportive environment – in terms of position...

We will develop and validate an intervention (SHAPE) in 330 people with mild dementia; combining self-management, health promotion, and e-learning. The study is a multi-site, randomised, controlled, single-blinded trial with parallel groups. The intervention group is compared with treatment as usual (TAU). The primary outcome is to evaluate the...

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO, ADI), 44 million people around the world have some form of dementia, for which there is no effective intervention, to halt or reverse the progressive cognitive impairment. As Europe’s population is ageing, long-term care for elderly citizens will become an increasing cost for society. To manage this...

This project brings together a diverse group of subject matter experts from industry and academia under one umbrella, with the main aim of enhancing and advancing future healthcare processes and systems using sensory and machine learning technologies to provide emotional (affective) and cognitive insights into patients well-being so as to provide...

Direct quantification of dopamine neurotransmission is one of the unsolved problems that engaged scientific minds for the last fifty years. Such quantification is an extremely important tool to understand the underlying pathways that promote neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and depression. Since dopamine is secreted only in micro-molar...

The incidence and prevalence of dementia is rising as the world-wide population ages. Determining biomarkers for the early detection of underlying biology that will predict dementia progression reliably or, the monitoring of biological processes once present to track progression and treatment is necessary. Furthermore, these biomarkers will aid in...

Amyloid diseases are of increasing concern in our aging society. These diseases all involve the aggregation of misfolded proteins, called amyloid, which are specific for each disease (PrP for Prion, Abeta for Alzheimer's). When misfolded these proteins propagate the abnormal configuration and aggregate to others, forming very long polymers also...

The resolution limit of about 250 nm in conventional optical microscopes is problematic in the study of structural biology, since proteins, macromolecules and nuclear acids are typically much smaller than 100 nm. Single-molecule localization microscopy is able to circumvent this limit by sequentially and stochastically switching on/activating...