Sophia Rekers received Penny Standen Award – Congratulations!

Sophia received the Penny Standen Award for Early Career Multidisciplinary Research in Disability at the “13th International Conference on Disability, Virtual Reality & Associated Technologies” (ICDVRAT) for the development of a memory independent spatial navigation paradigm (VIENNA) in a virtual reality setting. Congratulations!

Read more about her amazing work here.

New preprint – A spatiotemporal complexity architecture of human brain activity

The human brain is a complex network. Ever since the first description of “functional connectivity” in the 1990s, network neuroscience has emerged as one of the leading approaches to study the brain, including unparalleled international collaborations like the Human Connectome Project (HCP).

While our understanding of the connectome is rapidly increasing, some fundamental questions about brain networks remain: How does a functional connection between two brain regions form? Why are some regions more functionally connected than others? And what determines the spatial and temporal organization of the network?

In our latest preprint, we shed some light on these questions through complexity analysis of resting-state data from the HCP. In this manuscript, we report a mechanism by which the brain’s network architecture arises from spontaneous episodes of neural regularity. These episodes become visible as “complexity drops” and provide a unifying explanation for many known properties of the human brain, including functional connectivity, brain states, structure-function relationships, and network hierarchies. For more on this human “complexome”, check out the preprint!

New study published in JAMA Oncology!

Our recent article shows that brain-targeting autoantibodies found in lung cancer patients may be responsible for cancer-related cognitive impairment.

In this prospective, cross-sectional study we included 167 patients with lung cancer. Brain-directed autoantibodies were found in 36.5% of all patients: 19.8% had known neuronal autoantibodies and 16.8% had autoantibodies against currently unknown antigens that were detected by immunohistochemistry. Cognitive impairment was found in as much as 67.0% of patients. Importantly, patients with neuronal autoantibodies had increased odds of cognitive impairment compared with patients without autoantibodies. Interestingly, autoantibodies against currently unknown neuronal antigens were also associated with higher odds of cognitive impairment.

Therefore, our study suggests that neuronal autoantibodies might represent a pathogenic factor in cancer-related cognitive impairment among patients with lung cancer.

There is a JAMA Oncology podcast interview with Frederik and Carsten at: https://edhub.ama-assn.org/jn-learning/audio-player/18621621 and an editorial about our study at: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaoncology/article-abstract/2781393

The full study can be found online here and downloaded as a pdf here!

Preprint – Fingerprinting and behavioural prediction rest on distinct functional systems of the human connectome

New preprint on the relation between functional connectome-based identification and behavioural prediction! Based on high-quality resting-state fMRI, we find a dichotomy of signatures underlying the identification of individuals and the prediction of behaviour. The dichotomy is apparent on all levels of analysis, looking at  individual connections, resting-state networks and topological distribution. Find the preprint here!

New article in NeuroImage: Clinical: Transdiagnostic analysis reveals a shared hippocampal damage pattern across neuroimmunological diseases

Our recent article shows that hippocampal surface deformations converge on the left anterior hippocampus in patients with multiple sclerosis, NMDA receptor encephalitis and LGI1 encephalitis. This surface area appears to be particularly vulnerable across diseases and is sensitive to cognitive alterations.

Discover the spatial patterns in our full-text here.

New members joining our lab!

We are happy to announce that four new members are joining our lab.

Katia Schwichtenberg will be working for her medical doctoral project in 2021! She will investigate long-term cognitive outcomes following COVID-19. Welcome, Katia!

Also, we are delighted that Marie Schweikard joins for her medical doctoral thesis. Marie is going to work with us on neuroimaging findings in patients with autoimmune encephalitis. Bienvenue, Marie!

We are also very happy to welcome Nina Stephan, who is joining in 2021 as a student assistant . Hello, Nina!

And last but not least, a warm welcome to Wei Zhao, who will join for his doctoral project in 2021. Hi, Wei!

Looking forward to working with you!

New review in Translational Psychiatry with colleagues from King’s College London – Cognitive impact of neuronal antibodies: encephalitis and beyond

The review describes the cognitive impairment associated with each antibody-mediated syndrome and discusses the potential role of autoantibodies on cognition.

Find the full publication here.

Preprint – State-dependent signatures of Anti-NMDA-Receptor Encephalitis

New preprint on temporal dynamics of functional connectivity in autoimmune encephalitis! State-wise group comparisons and supervised machine learning detect state-dependent alterations in patients that remain undetected in static analysis. Find the preprint here!