Young Amsterdam Neuroscience
Our Annual Meeting 2023 proudly presents ‘Research Reports’, where our members of Young Amsterdam Neuroscience (YAN) will share fresh findings and thought-provoking studies. Join us in celebrating the contributions of these young researchers. But first let us take a moment to introduce them to you.
Sylvie Lesuis & Hein van Marle: Targeting traumatic memories during sleep across species
Sylvie Lesuis (University of Amsterdam) focuses on understanding the neurobiological underpinning of traumatic memories, ranging from synaptic, to cellular and systems levels.
Hein van Marle works as a trauma-focused psychiatrist at ARQ and GGZ inGeest. He holds a research position as principal investigator at the department of Psychiatry of Amsterdam UMC location VUmc. His work focuses on translating neuroscientific findings on memory manipulation during sleep into novel treatment strategies for patients with PTSD.
Sleep offers a unique time window to manipulate traumatic memories. Specifically,
through a new technique known as targeted memory reactivation (TMR), memory
consolidation processes can be strengthened by presenting reminder cues (e.g.
sounds associated to a new memory) during sleep. In this combined presentation,
Sylvie Lesuis and Hein van Marle will discuss their recent and ongoing research
efforts to fundamentally understand this technique across species and find
clinical applications.
Amélie Freal & Laura Jonkman: Axonal change across scales: from MRI to nanoscale dynamics
Amélie Freal is an assistant professor in the department of Human Genetics, Amsterdam UMC – location VUmc, Center for Neurogenomics and Cognitive Research. She holds a PhD in Neuroscience. Her research aims at unravelling the molecular mechanisms controlling the plasticity of the axon initial segment. She uses live- and super-resolution imaging, in combination with genome engineering to resolve the dynamics of axonal building blocks at the nanoscale.
Laura Jonkman is an assistant professor in the department of Anatomy and Neurosciences, Amsterdam UMC – location VUmc. She is in the Amsterdam Neuroscience Brain Imaging and Neurodegeneration research programs. She holds a PhD in Neuroscience. Her research focus is to define the pathological sensitivity of clinical MRI outcome measures in neurodegenerative diseases. For this she utilizes a unique post-mortem in-situ MRI and immunohistochemistry approach.
In this presentation, they will take the audience on a journey from the macroscale to nanoscale along the axon, as a red line connecting their research activities. From the representation of axons by diffusion MRI, to the nanoscale organization of axonal building blocks by super-resolution microscopy, they will illustrate how the use of multi-scale advanced imaging techniques leads to a better understanding of axonal plasticity and (dys)function in neurological disorders.
Consortia speakers
The Amsterdam Neuroscience Annual Meeting would not be the same without its consortia speakers. Let us introduce them to you.
Huib Mansvelder & Boudewijn Lelieveldt: Brain Initiative
Huib Mansvelder received his PhD in Neurophysiology from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in 1999. He became full professor in 2008 and heads the department of Integrative Neurophysiology since. His research focuses on how the prefrontal cortex orchestrates attention behaviour in rodents, in particular in interaction with subcortical brain areas, such as the basal forebrain. In addition, his lab investigates how neuronal microcircuits in the human neocortex are organized, both anatomically as well as functionally, and how properties of human neurons relate to human cognition.
Boudewijn Lelieveldt is a professor of Biomedical Imaging at the Department of Radiology, Leiden University Medical Center. Here he heads the Division of Image Processing. He is also appointed at the Department of Intelligent Systems, Delft University of Technology, in the context of a faculty exchange in the Medical Delta consortium. His main research interest is the integration of a-priori knowledge into segmentation and registration algorithms, with main applications to cardiac imaging, multi-modal pre-clinical imaging and fluorescence-guided surgery.
Their presentation will elaborate on the Brain Initiative.
Umberto Olcese & Jorge Mejias: The Human Brain Project: A journey into the brain… and back
Umberto Olcese is an associate professor at Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences, University of Amsterdam. He holds a PhD in Biomedical Engineering. He investigates neuron-level mechanisms of perception and neuronal circuitry using cutting-edge neurotechnological approaches.
Jorge Mejias is an assistant professor at Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences, University of Amsterdam. He holds a PhD in Physics and Mathematics. His focus lies on developing brain simulation software and exploring large-scale brain dynamics to unravel cognitive functions.
In this talk they will discuss the research activities that they performed over the past 10 years in the context of the Human Brain Project, one of the largest neuroscientific projects ever. They will focus on modeling activities performed in the context of the main project, and on experimental studies done in several smaller “partnering” projects that complemented the main project. They will focus not only on the scientific results that they obtained, but also on their relevance towards reaching the higher-levels objectives of the whole consortium.
Chris Vriend & Niels de Joode: OCD consortia research – The good, the bad and the ENIGMA
Chris Vriend, PhD, is a PI and assistant professor at Amsterdam UMC, location VUmc, in the department of Anatomy & Neurosciences and the department of Psychiatry. Chris works on various neuroimaging projects and clinical trials with pre/post neuroimaging for conditions such as OCD, Parkinson’s disease and other neuropsychiatric disorders. He plays a significant role in both the ENIGMA OCD workgroup and OCD global consortium.
Niels de Joode, MSc, is a postdoctoral researcher at Amsterdam UMC, location VUmc in the department of Anatomy & Neurosciences. During his PhD, Niels has participated in two neuroimaging projects focusing on Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). His research centers on functional Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (fMRS) with 7 Tesla imaging, specifically targeting an improved understanding of the glutamate system in OCD. Additionally, he has contributed to the Global OCD Consortium, particularly in areas of data collection, data harmonization, and analysis.
In the past 10 years, the ENIGMA OCD workgroup has made important contributions to our understanding of the structural and functional brain alterations associated with OCD. Nevertheless, the ENIGMA OCD workgroup is not without its limitations, particularly related to a lack of cross-site harmonization of clinical measures or imaging acquisition parameters, preventing more fine-grained analyses. To address some of these limitations, five sites across five continents joined forces in 2017 to establish the OCD global consortium and prospectively collect harmonized clinical, neurocognitive and neuroimaging data from a large group of medication-free individuals with OCD and controls. Data collection was completed earlier this year and the first results are now emerging. During the annual meeting Chris and Niels will talk about the successes and challenges of (big) data harmonization, some of the key findings and the joys of collaborative team science.
Bernardo Maciel & Anna van Regteren Altena: Building a multiscale brainscape of the human VTA
Anna van Regteren Altena is a PhD candidate in Molecular & Cellular Neurobiology at the department of Translational Neuroscience at University Medical Center Utrecht Brain Center, Utrecht University. Her research focuses on the molecular identification of cell types of the human Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA), a region in the midbrain containing dopaminergic neurons that project to various brain areas that together make the reward system. She uses single nucleus RNA sequencing (snRNAseq) and advanced 3D microscopy to create a cellular landscape of the human VTA, which can help to better understand their implication in reward system-related brain disorders such as addiction and depression.
Bernardo Maciel is a PhD candidate in Complex Trait & Imaging Genetics at the Complex Trait Genetics Department at the CNCR (Center for Neurogenomics and Cognitive Research), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. The focus of his research is the relationship between brain activity patterns and their underlying genetic effects. He is interested in how these two wildly different scales of biological organisation influence each other and contribute to differences in behaviour. During his PhD, he is looking at different types of MRI brain connectivity with the end goal of leveraging these data to inform subsequent neuroscientific functional studies and, ultimately, say something about disease.
In a collaborative effort within the BRAINSCAPES consortium, they address the question of how the spatial organization of neuronal cell types in the human ventral tegmental area (VTA) is correlated to the functional connectivity of the reward system. They mapped regional cell type composition and connectivity of the human VTA using single nucleus RNA sequencing and functional MRI. Their findings show that subregions of the VTA have specific neuronal cell types and connectivity profiles, indicating that the human VTA has subregional functional specificity. Building upon complementary knowledge from different neuroscientific fields, this project highlights the complexity of the human VTA and its role in the reward system circuitry as well as the associated disease and behavioural traits.
Betty Tijms & Pieter Jelle Visser: NCDC
Betty Tijms is an associate professor of Neurology at the Alzheimer Center, Amsterdam UMC, location VUmc. She is fascinated by the brain’s capability to learn and adjust itself in health and disease. In the past years she has focused on studying the relationship of changes in brain networks and cognitive decline in Alzheimer's Disease.
Pieter Jelle Visser, MD, PhD, is a clinical epidemiologist at Maastricht University and Amsterdam University Medical Center in the Netherlands and is visiting professor at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. His research focuses on the pathophysiology, diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of predementia Alzheimer’s disease by combining different modalities such as imaging, proteomics, genetics and digital markers.
During their presentation, they will tell us more about the Netherlands Consortium of Dementia Cohorts (NCDC). NCDC conducts research into the prevention of dementia by combining, harmonizing and jointly studying data from nine ongoing Dutch cohorts on cognitive ageing.