Research Projects

Why is the diseased human brain able to produce false beliefs that persist despite evidence to the contrary? Unawareness of neurological disturbances (anosognosia) and Delusions are examples of such false beliefs. Both have productive, narrative features. Both have been independently linked to processes involved in self-reflection, metamemory, and...

Supramolecular polymers are of major interest in the field of self assembly with a promising outlook in areas of viscosity modification, compartmentalized architectures, bio-conjugates and drug-delivery applications. They are dynamic macromolecular materials prepared by simple mixing of relatively small components bearing complementary or self...

Dementia is caused by a range of illnesses and disorders that damage the brain either directly or indirectly. With the rise of the ageing population in the EU, dementia is becoming a serious problem. Digital health interventions have the potential to improve the accessibility and effectiveness of palliative care. Palliative care is an area where...

NeuroPsyCAD is a cloud-based reporting service that provides an accurate and early diagnosis of neuropsychiatric disorders. To achieve high accuracies, NeuroPsyCAD statistically compares a brain scan of a patient with a normative, human, and population representative database using machine-learning algorithms. It also analyses the brain as a whole...

Glaucoma is the world's leading cause of irreverisble blindness, affecting 20 million people in Europe and the US. Known as the Alzheimer’s of the eye, glaucoma is a neurodegenerative disorder that causes deterioration in peripheral vision. Affected patients report ‘seeing through a black tunnel’. Treatments to halt vision loss are available...

I am a stem cell biologist specialized on modeling human neurodegenerative diseases. During my PhD with Dr. O. Brüstle (University of Bonn), I was trained in human stem cell and reprogramming technologies working on human models for Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). As a postdoc at the Salk Institute with Dr. F. H. Gage, I acquired and strong foundation in...

Air pollution (AP) remains prevalent globally. Its impact on dementia risk is unclear. We propose to investigate the association of dementia with AP and explore mediation effects on the association from other factors. We will examine data of 2776 participants aged >=60 years who were randomly recruited from urban and rural of China. Their baseline...

In dementia at the end of life, cognitive and physical decline imply that control is typically lost. CONT-END will examine control in the context of three emerging interventions which contain a controversial element of striving for control in the process of dying with dementia: advance care planning of the end of life, use of new technology to...

The BEDMOND project aims at developing an ICT-based system for an early detection of  Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases, based on a behavioural change to approach and focused in elderly people while living at home in an Ambient Assisted Living  environment. With such an early detection health professionals can later on apply...

With western countries aging faster, the neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s etc. pose serious threat to quality of life, especially for people over 65 years[1]. In Europe, number of people suffering with dementia, which results from neuronal degeneration, is on the rise it is expected to be double in the next 20...

More than 1 billion people worldwide suffer from compromised mental health due to a brain disorder, such as depression, addiction, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) or dementia. While already accounting for 19% of all years lived with disability, the relative share of these disorders is further increasing. Currently, due to the complexity of the...

The emergence of a new era in neuromodulation is led by the intriguing potential of functional materials to replace or control neural activity. The ability to simultaneously analyse neural activity offers the potential to translate signals into a feedback loop for intuitive therapy or even to replace lost neurological functions. However...