A5069266239- Genetic Neurodegenerative Diseases
- Neurological disorders and treatments
- Functional Brain Connectivity Studies
- Dementia and Cognitive Impairment Research
- Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Studies
- Advanced Neuroimaging Techniques and Applications
- Mitochondrial Function and Pathology
- Parkinson's Disease Mechanisms and Treatments
- Memory and Neural Mechanisms
- Alzheimer's disease research and treatments
- Neurological Disorders and Treatments
- Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
- Mental Health Research Topics
- EEG and Brain-Computer Interfaces
- Spatial Cognition and Navigation
- Sleep and Wakefulness Research
- Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Research
- Intraoperative Neuromonitoring and Anesthetic Effects
- Cholinesterase and Neurodegenerative Diseases
- Cancer-related cognitive impairment studies
- Cognitive Functions and Memory
- Vestibular and auditory disorders
- Cognitive Abilities and Testing
- Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptors Study
- Neural dynamics and brain function
University of Bern
2019-2023
University of Freiburg
2014-2019
University Medical Center Freiburg
2014-2018
Medical University of Vienna
2017
Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Freiburg
2015-2017
University of Vienna
2013
Clinical Alzheimer's disease affects both cerebral hemispheres to a similar degree in clinically typical cases. However, atypical variants like logopenic progressive aphasia, neurodegeneration often presents asymmetrically. Yet, no vivo imaging study has investigated whether lateralized corresponds amyloid-β burden. Therefore, using combined (11)C-Pittsburgh compound B and (18)F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography, we explored asymmetric deposition is associated with...
Neuronal compensation is widely assumed to account for the dissociation between brain pathology and (absence of) behavioural change during prodromal early stages of neurodegenerative conditions such as Huntington’s disease Alzheimer’s (Barulli Stern, 2013; Dennis Cabeza, Scheller et al., 2014). Despite varying degrees structural loss, patients demonstrate a level performance many tasks that indistinguishable from their earlier performance, often similar normal population (Obeso 2004; Malejko...
The initial stages of neurodegeneration are commonly marked by normal levels cognitive and motor performance despite the presence structural brain pathology. Compensation is widely assumed to account for this preserved behaviour, but apparent simplicity such a concept, it has proven incredibly difficult demonstrate phenomenon distinguish from disease-related Recently, we developed model compensation whereby activation, behaviour pathology, components key understanding compensation, have...
Acetylcholine is critically involved in modulating learning and memory function, which both decline neurodegeneration.It remains unclear to what extent structural functional changes the cholinergic system contribute episodic dysfunction mild cognitive impairment (MCI), addition hippocampal degeneration.A better understanding critical, given that main target of current symptomatic treatment moderate Alzheimer's disease.We simultaneously assessed integrity 20 patients with MCI matched healthy...
Abstract Background Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a major public health issue. Cognitive interventions such as computerized cognitive trainings (CCT) are effective in attenuating decline AD. However, those at risk of dementia related to AD, results heterogeneous. Efficacy and feasibility CCT needs be explored depth. Moreover, underlying mechanisms effects on the three domains typically affected by AD (episodic memory, semantic memory spatial abilities) remain poorly understood. Methods In this...
LTP-like plasticity measured by visual evoked potentials (VEP) can be induced in the intact human brain presenting checkerboard reversals. Also associated with plasticity, around two third of participants respond to transcranial magnetic stimulation a paired-associate (PAS) protocol potentiation their motor potentials. processes are also required for verbal and learning tasks. We compared effect sizes, responder rates intercorrelations as well potential influence attention between these four...
Huntington's disease (HD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that can be genetically confirmed with certainty decades before clinical onset. This allows the investigation of functional and structural changes in HD many years prior to onset, which may reveal important mechanistic insights into brain function, structure organization general. While regional atrophy present at early stages HD, it still unclear if both hemispheres are equally affected by neurodegeneration how extent...
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a well-established tool in probing cortical plasticity vivo. Changes corticomotor excitability can be induced using paired associative (PAS) protocol, which TMS over the primary motor cortex conditioned with an electrical peripheral nerve of contralateral hand. PAS inter-stimulus interval 25 ms induces long-term potentiation (LTP)-like effects excitability. However, response to protocol tends vary substantially across individuals. In this study, we...
Abstract We assessed the structure–function relationship of human cholinergic system and hypothesized that structural measures are associated with short-latency sensory afferent inhibition (SAI), an electrophysiological measure central signal transmission. Healthy volunteers (n = 36) patients mild cognitive impairment (MCI, n 20) underwent median nerve SAI 3T MRI to determine volume basal forebrain thalamus. Patients MCI had smaller ( p < 0.001) or thalamus volumes than healthy...
Increased amygdala activation is consistently found in patients suffering from social anxiety disorder (SAD), a psychiatric condition characterized by an intense fear of situations and scrutiny. Disruptions the amygdalar-frontal network SAD may explain inability frontal regions to appropriately down-regulate amygdalar hyper-activation. In this study, we measured 15 healthy controls during affective counting Stroop task with emotional faces assess interaction stimuli cognitive SAD, as well...
While the HTT CAG-repeat expansion mutation causing Huntington's disease (HD) is highly correlated with rate of pathogenesis leading to onset, considerable variance in age-at-onset remains unexplained. Therefore, other factors must influence pathogenic process. We asked whether these were related natural biological variation sensory-motor system. In 243 participants (96 premanifest and 35 manifest HD; 112 controls), structural MRI, tractography, resting-state fMRI, electrophysiology...
Huntington's disease (HD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that can be diagnosed with certainty decades before symptom onset. Studies using structural MRI have identified grey matter (GM) loss predominantly in the striatum, but also involving various cortical areas. So far, voxel-based morphometric studies examined each brain region isolation and are thus unable to assess changes interrelation of regions. Here, we covariance GM volumes pre-specified motor, working memory,...
Huntington's disease (HD) is a genetically caused neurodegenerative disorder characterized by heterogeneous motor, psychiatric, and cognitive symptoms. Although motor symptoms may be the most prominent presentation, such as memory deficits executive dysfunction typically co-occur. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) task-fMRI based dynamic causal modeling (DCM) to evaluate HD-related changes in neural network underlying working (WM). Sixty-four pre-symptomatic HD gene...
Preclinical Alzheimer's disease (AD) is one possible cause of subjective cognitive decline (SCD). Normal task performance despite ongoing neurodegeneration typically considered as neuronal compensation, which reflected by greater activity. Compensatory brain activity has been observed in frontal well parietal regions SCD, but data are scarce, especially outside the memory domain.To investigate potential compensatory SCD. Such particularly expected participants where blood-based biomarkers...
Deficits in motor functioning are one of the hallmarks Huntington's disease (HD), a genetically caused neurodegenerative disorder. We applied functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and dynamic causal modeling (DCM) to assess changes that occur with progression neural circuitry key areas associated executive cognitive aspects control. Seventy-seven healthy controls, 62 pre-symptomatic HD gene carriers (preHD), 16 patients manifest symptoms (earlyHD) performed finger tapping fMRI task...
Alzheimer's disease is a neurodegenerative disorder that involves degeneration of the cholinergic system in basal forebrain (e.g. Grothe et al., 2010; Grothe, Heinsen, & Teipel, 2012; Kása, Rakonczay, Gulya, 1997). Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) protocols, like short latency afferent inhibition (SAI) motor cortex, can serve as useful tool to depict degeneration, SAI significantly reduced AD (Di Lazzaro 2002) well patients with amnestic MCI (Nardone 2012), which are at higher risk...
Neocortical LTP-like plasticity measured by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) using a paired associative (PAS) protocol was found to be significantly reduced in patients with Alzheimer's Disease (AD) (Battaglia et al., 2007). Episodic memory, usually assessed via verbal learning tasks, is the most common early cognitive sign of AD and less pronounced mild impairment (MCI). So far, very little research has focused on PAS subjects MCI. abilities are likely associated each other, as both...
<h3>Background</h3> Cognitive and motor task performance in premanifest Huntington’s disease (HD) gene-carriers is often within normal ranges prior to clinical diagnosis, despite loss of brain volume regions involved these tasks. This indicates ongoing compensation, with the maintaining function presence neuronal loss. However, thus far, compensatory processes HD have not been explicitly addressed statistical models. <h3>Aims</h3> Using a new model, which incorporates individual variability...
<h3>Background</h3> In premanifest Huntington’s disease (preHD), disease-related neuronal degeneration is dissociated from the capacity to maintain normal levels of performance during cognitive tasks, which could be explained by compensatory processes. Recently, we devised a novel model compensation examined relationship between progression, brain activity and task identified pattern consistent with asymmetrical in preHD. We now examine hypotheses that due changes pathology, such processes...