Two multidisciplinary teams from the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig and the Dementia Research Centre in London, will be working together on this study. See below for more information on the study leads, Prof. Nikolaus Weiskopf and Prof. Nick Fox, as well as Dilek Ocal and Tom Veale who will be running the visits and accompanying the participants throughout the duration of the study.
Prof. Nikolaus Weiskopf is the Director of the Neurophysics Department at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany. Nikolaus Weiskopf is a world expert in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) methods and their application to neuroimaging. He pioneered real-time functional MRI (fMRI) based neurofeedback that advanced from first experiments to clinical trials within less than 15 years. His main current research focus is the imaging of functional and anatomical microstructure using MRI, in order to study structure-function relationships and plasticity at the microstructural level. One of the primary projects, funded by the ERC, targets the development of in-vivo histology using MRI, i.e., extracting information similar to post-mortem histology from non-invasive MRI. Professor Nick Fox is the director of the Dementia Research Centre, his research interests are focussed on the early detection, differential diagnosis and monitoring of progression in cognitive disorders and neurodegenerative dementias. His particular interest within this broad grouping has been in the use of MRI to improve diagnosis and to measure progression in Alzheimer's disease and related disorders. He has been involved in the use of automated measures of cerebral atrophy derived from serial MRI to assess treatment efficacy and disease-modifying potential of novel therapies. He also has a particular interest in the familial dementias and the use of biomarkers and clinical and cognitive measures to assess the earliest manifestations of autosomal dominant dementias.Dilek Ocal, PhD student and study coordinator, has been involved in dementia research for the past 5 years. Her work combines cognitive assessments with novel and conventional neuroimaging methods to study how different forms of dementia affect the brain differently and how this leads to diverse behavioural and cognitive presentations within the dementia syndrome. Increasing our understanding of this relationship may give us greater insights into disease prognosis.Tom Veale, PhD student who assists in study coordination and data collection. He joined the Dementia Research Centre as a research assistant in 2016 and started a PhD in 2018. Tom uses new MRI methodology to determine if understudied forms of white matter in the brain are susceptible to dementia. If there are disease related changes in these overlooked areas of the brain, they may be useful in clinical trials of the future.
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