Gitte Moos Knudsen has received 750.000 DKK from the Lundbeck Foundation for a visiting professorship for Professor Adriaan Lammertsma from Department of Nuclear Medicine and PET Research, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Professor Lammertsma is world-wide recognized as one of the leading figures within development of PET methodology and its applications for translational experimental medicine across a range of clinical disciplines, but particularly for brain disorders. He has imposed internationally a culture of rigor for the quantification of regional tissue function using PET.
The Lundbeck Foundation has granted three travel stipends to NRU: Martin Korsbak Madsen received 25.410 DKK for the course 'Learning the Conn Toolbox' which he attended in Boston in April, Martin Nørgaard 8.003 DKK for the PRNI 2018 that took place in Singapore in June and finally, Hanne D Hansen 9.695 DKK for the NRM2018 taking place in London this July.
Congratulations to Vibe Frøkjær for receiving not only one but two Lundbeck Foundation scholarships from the Danish Society of Psychiatry, one for Asbjørn Poulsen for the project 'Depression and the brain's reward system: Does serotonin play a role?' and the other for Maja Marstrand-Jørgensen for 'Neural correlates of the personality dimension Openness to experience: a resting state fMRI study'.
Niki Stypidou, bachelor student in Neuroscience at the University of Edinburgh. She will join NRU in June and July, primarily assisting the Sleep project.
Sara Bakalchuk, a rising senior and neuroscience major from Wesleyan University in USA where she has shadowed in a research lab studying obesity and addiction in rats. Her main scientific interests include neuroanatomy, neuroimaging and clinical neuroscience. Sara will be at NRU until mid August.
Congratulations to Gitte Moos for receiving 1.855.308 kr for the project 'Neuroimaging of synaptic density' from the Independent Research Fund Denmark.
Project summary: Synapses are the points of communication between brain cells and they are subject to adaptations, known as synaptic plasticity. Recently, it has become possible to assess presynaptic density in the living human brain with the synaptic vesicle glycoprotein 2A (SV2A) radioligand, 11C-UCB-J and positron emission tomography (PET). We here propose a project with three aims: 1) to determine if cerebral SV2A density is preserved in healthy ageing across. 2) to investigate if short-term sensory deprivation is associated with a compensatory increase in cerebral SV2A density, and if the ability to induce synaptic plasticity is related to APOE/BDNF genotypes. 3) to uncover if cerebral SV2A density is decreased in hippocampus/entorhinal cortex in elderly people at risk for Alzheimer’s Disease. Knowledge about development of synaptic plasticity in human brain will critically inform us about not only about neurorehabilitation potential, but also about how and when neurodegeneration emerges.
Olaf Paulson has recently been elected as honorary member of The Danish Neurological Society (DNS). Congratulations! Olaf got his honorary diploma handed over by Jesper Erdal, who is the president of the DNS.
Congratulations to NRU postdoc Melanie Ganz for receiving nearly 3.9 mio DKK from Elsass Foundation for her new 3-year project "How can you avoid to put children with cerebral palsy in general anesthesia while they are in a brain scanner?" which will be hosted at NRU starting in April 2019.
We are very delighted that the Lundbeck Foundation has decided to support both professor Trevor Robbins and professor Barbara Sahakian from University of Cambridge, UK, with a substantial international neuroscience programme grant that each will cover a joint research project with NRU. Professors Robbins and Sahakian will during a planned research sabbatical in Copenhagen be visiting NRU for an extended period from May to September 2018, and the two grants, that total more than 5.3 mio DKK, enable an optimal initiation and implementation of both projects. We look very much forward to welcoming both of them at NRU and are thrilled to be able to host the joint cutting edge research projects. More information about the two projects below.
Congratulations to Vibe Frøkjær for receiving 879.700 DKK from the Research Council of Rigshospitalet for the 3-year project "Brain architecture of risk and resilience in the context of steroid hormone dynamics and inflammation; window of opportunity for protecting mental health".
