Research Projects

Luminescent conjugated oligothiophenes are highly promising candidates for biomarkers for amyloid misfolds and thereby for early-stage detection of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson's disease. The elucidation of the microscopic mechanism and design principles behind these biomarkers requires theoretical assistance...

Major objective: It is our aim to develop a lipid based diet that is able to delay or prevent onset of Alzheimer’s disease and related diseases and has a stabilizing effect on cognitive performance in aging. Multiple lines of evidence suggest that there is a large overlap between risk factor of these three diseases. Importantly, there is equally...

Following initial learning, information stored in memory undergoes a time- and experience-dependent evolution. Currently, the nature of this evolution at the neuronal ensemble level remains largely unknown. To obtain insight into this dynamic process there is a need to follow memory-associated neuronal representations in large populations of single...

Every day we need to remember whether we have seen people before and adjust our decisions accordingly. The goal of the proposed research is to further our understanding of decisions based on remembered information by following those as they happen in the brain. To be able to study neural decision dynamics, we use computational models of recognition...

Current knowledge of neurodegenerative diseases is limited by poor understanding of how they progress through the central nervous system (CNS). It has recently been hypothesized that clinical progression in these conditions involves the systematic spreading of protein misfolding along neuronal pathways. Protein aggregates would trigger misfolding...

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a tremendous burden and there are still no therapies available. Most clinical trials have focused on the late disease stages where neuronal damage is already severe and irreversible. To intervene in earlier stages, it is essential to understand how AD pathology affects brain systems early in the disease. Beyond that, we...

There are an increasing number of people across Europe with debilitating speech pathologies (e.g., due to stroke, Parkinson's, etc). These groups face communication problems that can lead to social exclusion. They are now being further marginalised by a new wave of speech technology that is increasingly woven into everyday life but which is not...

Neurodegenerative diseases (NDs), such as Dementia, Parkinson’s and motor neuron diseases, are a major and continuously growing worldwide health issue, particularly devastating for patients and their families. Yet, no cures are available, largely due to the lack of knowledge of ND pathogenic mechanisms. Strikingly, co-occurrence of several NDs in...

Our memories are arguably what make us who we are, making dementia a particularly cruel disease. Decades of research have revealed that two interconnected brain regions, the medial entorhinal cortex (MEC) and hippocampus (HP), are required for successful spatial memory formation in mammals. Each region contains specialized neurons that fire...

Socio-economic needs for advances in the treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) are more pressing than ever. Lessons learned from clinical trial failures have led to important conceptual advances. The field notably shifted away from a purely neurocentric view, largely since Genome-Wide Association Studies identified several risk genes that are...

In 2010, 800 billion Euros was spent on brain diseases in Europe and the cost is expected to increase due to the aging population. – Here I propose to exploit our new discovery for research to alleviate this disease burden. In work selected by Nature Medicine among the top 10 ”Notable Advances” and by Science as one of the 10 ”Breakthroughs of the...

Despite enormous research efforts across academia and pharmaceutical industry, all clinical trials over the last decade have failed in finding a treatment for Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) which remains one of the greatest challenges in drug discovery. Taking consideration all together three prevailing AD hypotheses: Amyloid Cascade, Metal Ions and...