News of 2024

​
  • January 2024: Happy New Year!!  ​The blue spotters took a well deserved week off in the last week of December and are now ready for action!
  • January 2024: Many Blue spotters attended the Human Amyloid Imaging Conference in Miami! : Elouise presented her work on FDG-locus coeruleus signal in Alzheimer's disease, Emma and Truley presented their work on cognition and locus coeruleus structure/function. Maxime presented his work on AD-related sleep differences in sleep-wake regulation. Prokopis presented data on arousal-related locus coeruleus activity and plasma markers of AD. Marion presented her latest findings on hypothalamus atrophy in Alzheimer's disease.. And Lukas had an oral presentation during which he presented his work on locus coeruleus integrity and cognitive reserve. Lukas also received the Human Amyloid Imaging Travel fellowship, congrats Lukas!! 
  • February 2024: Two new manuscripts were published: Heidi worked with the lab of Nancy Donovan on Social activity and locus coeruleus tangles using the ROSMAP dataset (published in Molecular Psychiatry), and Maxime published his work on 24-hour rest-activity rhythm fragmentation, cognitive decline and the locus coeruleus in Annals of Neurology (see also the cover image)!! & Joost was promoted to instructor!! Congrats!
  • ​March 2024: The blue spotters have moved and are now part of the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging!
  • ​April 2024: This has been an amazing month for our lab, as all the hard work of the last months/years is seeing the daylight: Elise published her work on asymmetry of locus coeruleus pathology in the Journal of Alzheimer's disease. Eli published her work on longitudinal locus coeruleus changes versus longitudinal tau pathology and the correlation with transcriptomics in Nature Aging! Chris and Prokopis published their work on the relationship between locus coeruleus function, atrophy and cognition in Alzheimer's & Dementia. Congratulations!!!
  • May - June 2024: We welcome Haley Fenlon as our new clinical research coordinator on our clinical trial WALLe! Welcome to our team!! Heidi presented an overview of the work of the lab at the Australian Dementia Research Forum at the Gold Coast in Australia. 
  • June - July 2024: Our graduate students are rocking it: Elise published her work on GFAP-moderated microstructural relationships between the LC and (sub)cortex in Cerebral Cortex. Nina published her work on the LC and cortical thickness in Alzheimer's Research and Therapy. Nina also showed that LC integrity is a better predictor of tau than amyloid or hippocampal volume in Annals of Neurology. Jennifer Pahl (now at the University of Aachen) published her work on locus coeruleus integrity and frontoparietal network connectivity as resilience mechanisms in preclinical AD in Alzheimer's Research and Therapy!! CONGRATS!!!!
  • ​July 2024:  The Blue spotters attended the Alzheimer's Association International Conference 2024 in Philadelphia with poster presentations by Marion, Prokopis, Tim, Nina, Lukas and Elouise, and podium presentations by Heidi and Maxime!! Congrats to all!!
  • August-September 2024: CONGRATULATIONS to Nina and Elise!!!  Their PhD-dissertation got approved without any revisions. Defenses will take place in February 2025. We are so proud of both them! And we welcome two new lab members:  Lukas will stay in our lab as PhD-student working on the neuromodulatory subcortical systems in AD! Nick Vogt just started his postdoctoral position with us (funded by T32) to work on advanced diffusion models in AD. Welcome!!
  • September - October 2024:  Heidi presented work of the lab at the Locus Coeruleus Imaging Meeting (Innsbruck, Austria), the EU-MIND meeting (Caen, France) and at the 2024 Alzheimer Fast Track of BrightFocus (Chicago)! 
  • November - December 2024: Congratulations to Elouise for the publication of her work on locus coeruleus metabolism in Alzheimer's & Dementia, and to Maxime for publication of his work on sex-differences in rest-activity patterns in Alzheimer Research and Therapy! Heidi presented the lab's work at the MINC conference in Cologne (Germany). We wish everyone happy Holidays!!
​