News from the DRCMR

Mark Lyksborg successfully defended his PhD thesis on diffusion weighted imaging of multiple sclerosis

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 09:38:10 GMT

June 2013, Mark Lyksborg succesfully defended his PhD thesis entitled "Determination of magnetic resonance imaging biomarkers for multiple sclerosis treatment effects". Congratulations to Mark.

Examiners: Associate Professor Carl-Fredrik Westin, Harvard University
Professor Derek Jones, Cardiff University
Associate Professor Rasmus Paulsen, DTU Compute (chair)

Supervisors:
Professor Rasmus Larsen, DTU Compute
Professor Hartwig Siebner, Hvidovre Hospital
Senior Scientist Tim Dyrby, Hvidovre Hospital

DRCMR co-organizes international workshop and ESMRMB summer school on hyperpolarization

Sun, 02 Jun 2013 17:33:41 GMT

Together with an international team, the DRCMR organizes an ESMRMB summer school entitled Acquisition Strategies for Hyperpolarised Spin Systems late August 2013. It will be held at the Technical University of Denmark, north of Copenhagen.

It is followed by the 4th International Symposium on Dynamic Nuclear Polarization which is locally organized and takes place in Helsinore further north of Copenhagen. This is a major event in the hyperpolarization community and it will attract hundreds of participants.

The attendance is high for both events, but registration will be left open as long as practically possible. When space is no longer available, it will close without further notice, likely before the announced deadlines.

Research on consciousness with local contributions is published in the prestigious journal Science

Wed, 08 May 2013 23:05:37 GMT

Remarkable research involving collaborators and an employee of the DRCMR has been published in the very prestigious journal Science. Sid Kouider(1,2), Carsten Stahlhut(2) and Sofie Gelskov(1,3) has in collaboration with French scientists studied the development of consciousness in babies.

This is obviously a challenging feat. From studies of blindsight patients, for example, it is known that complex responses to stimuli can happen without the patients being aware of these. Infants exhibit complex behaviour, but at which age do they become consciously aware?

This question may not be answerable, but the recent study represents a large step in that direction. Sid Kouider and co-workers used electrodes attached to the skin to record brain activity of 5 to 15 month old infants subject to brief presentation of photos with faces at various levels of (in)visibility. The children were found to have brain activity similar to that of adults although with a significant delay. Importantly, such stimuli give very different electrode responses for adults, depending on whether they are consciously perceived or not. The same detailed patterns of response were found for the children, which is a strong indication that also children may become consciously aware if the stimuli are sufficiently clear (unlike blindsight patients, for example, who see and respond, but do not become aware).

Congratulations to Sid, Carsten, Sofie and the other co-authors on a very interesting and well-conducted study.

Affiliations:

Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, Paris, France.
Section for Cognitive Systems, Department of Informatics and Mathematical Modeling, Technical University of Denmark.
Danish Research Center for Magnetic Resonance (DRCMR), Copenhagen University Hospital, Hvidovre, Denmark.

The DRCMR staff - now in colour

Wed, 08 May 2013 22:46:38 GMT

Magnetic resonance images are typically shown in shades of gray, but a coloured photo of the DRCMR staff now exist. It was one of many results of the recent 2013 DRCMR retreat held at the remarkably nice Helene Elsass Centre founded to help (other) disabled youngsters. After all, MRI is not good for group photos.

Educational videos on MRI: 50.000 YouTube views

Wed, 08 May 2013 22:25:47 GMT

In two years since 2011, more than 500 persons per week have watched educational YouTube videos on MRI techniques made by Lars G. Hanson from the DRCMR and DTU Elektro. The total viewing time amounts to two full months (time well spent, of course...).

We are pretty excited about that, and would like to thank numerous people who have promoted the written material, videos and freely available software demonstrated in the videos. This has helped making the DRCMR site an established resource for education in NMR and MRI.

There are more resources worth being aware of, of course. Some of these are referenced at the links above, e.g. the impressive JEMRIS simulator that will play a main role in an upcoming ESMRMB course on MRI simulation going far beyond education (Bonn, December 2013, Lars co-organizes).

Study of brain responses to gambling in patients with Parkinson's disease is published in high-impact journal

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 00:08:33 GMT

MD Joyce P. M. van der Vegt has together with colleagues and collaborators at the DRCMR, in Holland, and in Germany reported remarkable brain responses in patients with Parkinson's disease during a gambling task. In this study of newly diagnosed and untreated patients, attenuated brain activation compared to normal volunteers, was measured with functional MRI during reward processing. This effect likely influences the behavior of patients, and their well-known tendency to develop gambling addictions.

The scientific paper is published in the high-impact journal Brain, February 2013. It was conducted in the context of the ContAct research project.

Full reference and link to the published article:

Attenuated neural response to gamble outcomes in drug-naive patients with Parkinson's disease
Joyce P. M. van der Vegt; Oliver J. Hulme; Simone Zittel; Kristoffer H. Madsen; Michael M. Weiss; Carsten Buhmann; Bastiaan R. Bloem; Alexander Munchau; Hartwig R. Siebner
Brain 2013; doi: 10.1093/brain/awt027. PDF