Verena Dzialas is interested in reserve mechanisms in Parkinson’s disease patients. While the concept of reserve mechanisms is already well-established in Alzheimer’s disease, not much is known about factors mitigating the association between neurodegeneration and motor disability in Parkinson’s disease. Therefore, Verena Dzialas focuses on the investigation of neurobiological (e.g. gray matter volume (GMV) differences) and lifetime factors (e.g. physical activity) contributing to motor reserve capacity in Parkinson’s disease using multimodal imaging, voxel-vise GMV comparison and graph theoretical analysis. Moreover, she is interested in disease progression depending on the level of motor reserve, which is investigated with multilevel models.