Projects
Characterization of short- and long-distance neuronal circuits in the enteric nervous system and their specific defects in Hirschsprung’s disease using advanced microscopy and stem cell technology KU Leuven
A distinguishing feature of the gastrointestinal (GI) system is the presence of the enteric nervous system (ENS), a mesh-like network of neurons and glia. The ENS mainly controls GI motility, secretion and local blood flow. During development, vagal neural crest cells enter and migrate down the gut to colonize the intestinal tube and form the ENS. As these neural progenitors have the daunting task of traveling long distances and bridging ...
Sentence construction in health and neurological disease: an individualized approach using magnetoencephalography and contextualized models of meaning KU Leuven
Language is capable of conveying a seemingly unlimited amount of ideas. The possibility to flexibly combine words into sentences underlies this power. Using recent advances in linguistics & neuroimaging, our goal is to elucidate the neural computations underpinning sentence construction in healthy controls and patients with aphasia.The brain can extract the meaning of a single word in 400 milliseconds. Which neural computations are ...
Selective vulnerability in Alzheimer’s disease and frontotemporal degeneration: integration of postmortem MRI, mass-spectrometry and histopathology KU Leuven
Understanding selective vulnerability is one of the most fundamental challenges in the field of neurodegenerative disease. While structural MRI is widely used in clinical diagnostic settings, it lacks more fine-grained information on the nature of the observed atrophy. The current proposal aims for a multidisciplinary integration of postmortem MRI with in-depth protein and cellular analyses using histopathology and mass-spectrometry. The ...
Clinical and genetic epidemiology of Parkinson's disease: focus on disease progression and non-motor symptoms. University of Antwerp
Clinical and genetic epidemiology of Parkinson's disease: focus on disease progression and non-motor symptoms. University of Antwerp
Noradrenergic modulation of seizures and epilepsy: the good, the bad and the ugly Ghent University
The locus coeruleus (LC) is a noradrenergic brainstem nucleus and the sole source of noradrenaline (NA) in the neocortex, hippocampus and cerebellum. NA exerts complex concentration dependent neuromodulatory effects, binding to a variety of different adrenoceptor subtypes with varying affinity. In this project we will investigate three hypothesized roles for the LC-NA system in seizures and epilepsy: 1) a ‘good’ role, where NA at low and ...
Studying axonal transport and neuronal function using NLO and superresolution microscopy KU Leuven
Neurons critically rely on active transport of mitochondria to match energy production and Ca2+ buffering to local demand. Their complex morphology renders them extremely sensitive even to subtle defects in axonal transport. Consequently, defective mitochondrial trafficking is involved in a number of neurological and neurodegenerative diseases. In this project we aim to advance our fundamental understanding of this transport using state of ...
Training postural and gait balance control in children with Cerebral Palsy: associations between brain structural metrics and motor behavior KU Leuven
When an injury occurs to the developing brain, as in Cerebral Palsy (CP), children experience deficits in motor control. Poor postural control is a primary deficit in CP with a large impact on a child’s daily life, since it is crucial for gait and, thus, greatly affects the risk of falls. To improve their quality of life, adequate treatment is essential. However, the success of treatment greatly depends on the knowledge of the underlying ...