MMNI-News

Robert Lubomierski has joined the MMNI as a PhD candidate (April 2025), where he will support the ongoing DoMoCo study on Parkinson's disease. Welcome, Robert!

Dr. Hoenig and Dr. Doering’s works were selected among the five best abstracts at the European Conference for Clinical Neuroscience, held in Madrid (March 2025).

As part of the funding from the Brandau-Laibach Foundation (January 2025), the project to estimate different “Brain Age Gaps” (BAGs) will be supported with EUR 26,500 for the years 2025/26.

We were happy to host the third MINC symposium under the guiding theme “Uncharted Territories of Imaging in
Neurodegeneration” on Dec 12-13, 2024.

Find the program here.

At this year's Eibsee Meeting (November 2024), Elena Doering received the 2nd place of the Best Paper Award from the Hans-und-Ilse-Breuer Stiftung for her study on Brain Age and Alzheimer's disease progression.

Find the article here.

Elena Doering successfully defended her PhD thesis, entitled "Artificial Intelligence and Positron Emission Tomography for the Timely Diagnosis and Prognosis of Alzheimer’s Disease", with distinction (October 2024).

– Congratulations!

At the European Academy of Nuclear Medicine Conference, held in Hamburg (September 2024), Dr. Hoenig’s work was listed among the Top Abstracts of the Neuroimaging session.

To foster her work on artificial intelligence biomarkers in Parkinson’s disease, Verena Dzialas received a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) for a research visit to the University of Iceland (September 2024).

Dr. Bischof successfully completed the habilitation procedure (May 2024) and is now "PD Dr. Gérard Bischof".

– Congratulations!

During the SFB retreat 1451 (April 2024), Adrian Asendorf received an award for his poster on “The Link between Network Attack Tolerance and Motor Reserve Parkinson's disease”

At SPIE Medical Imaging 2024, held in San Diego, Elena Doering was awarded the Robert F. Wagner All Conference Best Student Paper Award.

At the European Academy of Nuclear Medicine Conference, held in Vienna (September 2023), Dr. Hoenig and Elena Doering’s work were listed among the Top Abstracts of the Neuroimaging session.

At the annual congress of the Movement Disorders Society, held in Coppenhagen, Verena Dzialas poster was recognized as one of the "Highlights in Artificial Intelligence".

Adrian Asendorf receives poster award at the SFB Retreat 1451
During the SFB retreat 2022, Adrian Asendorf received an award for his poster on “Are disruptions in dynamic functional connectivity caused by striatal dopamine deficiency in Parkinson’s disease?”

For her talk “Gray Matter Volume Loss in Proposed Brain-First and Body-First Parkinson’s Disease Subtypes” Magdalena Banwinkler received an award at the Jahrestagung der Österreichischen Parkinson Gesellschaft 2022.

Read the full article here.

To foster her work on artificial intelligence biomarkers in Alzheimer’s disease, Elena received a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) for a research visit to the University of Iceland.

During the IPMM days 2022, Verena received an award for 2nd best poster for her project on “Motor reserve as a modifier of long-term prognosis in Parkinson’s disease” Elena was awarded best presentation for her presentation on “How does brain age relate to the risk of developing dementia?”

Together with the company Dreem, the Sleep Research Society awarded Dr. Hoenig funds to study “Sleep as potential prognostic biomarker for longitudinal tau and amyloid burden in Alzheimer’s disease”. Dreem supported her project with the kind donation of 15 sleep monitoring headbands.

For his paper “One-Stop Shop: 18F-Flortaucipir PET Differentiates Amyloid-Positive and -Negative Forms of Neurodegenerative Diseases”, our alumni PD Dr. Jochen Hammes received the Alavi–Mandell Award 2022.

Dr. Gérard Bischof was honored by his hometown as ” Werdohler Kopf” (head/mind of Werdohl). This award is given to those who have made a name for themselves in their field. Very right, Werdohl, we could not agree more.

At this years Science Slam of the Medical School, University of Cologne, there were 8 great presentations by young researchers in the medical field. Verena Dzialas took 1st place (easily, we say) with her fantastic presentation on “Motor Reserve”. Julia Pfeil came in 3rd with a very impressive talk on “Amyloid, the protein that makes us forget”.

Kathrin Giehl received a PhD for her work entitled: Antagonizing Cognitive Impairment in Parkinson’s Disease: Neural & Behavioural Effects of Home-based Working Memory Training.

– Congratulations!

The work of Dr. Merle Hönig on “Resistance to Tau and Amyloid Pathology Facilitates Super-Aging” was selected as the Image of the Year 2020 by the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI).

Our group receives this prestigious international award for the second time after 2016, when the work of Dr. Gérard Bischof has been awarded.

Dr. Merle Hönig received the Brain Imaging Council Young Investigator Award 2020 at this year’s international conference of the Society for Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) for her presentation “Resistance to Tau and Amyloid Pathology Facilitates Super-Aging”.

As part of her presentation, Dr. Hoenig presented the results of a series of PET images that show that older adults who maintained peak cognitive skills exhibited greater resistance to build-up of Alzheimer’s disease-typical proteinopathies, namely tau and amyloid pathology.

Merle Hoenig received a PhD
Her thesis:
„The Spatial Evolution of Tau Pathology in Alzheimer’s Disease: Influence of Functional Connectivity and Education“
received the highest possible distinction!

At the 14th International Conference on Alzheimer’s & Parkinson’s Disease (ADPD) held in Lisbon, Portugal, March 26-31, 2019, Jochen Hammes is awarded a Junior Faculty Award for his work on PET in Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration and Alzheimer’s disease.

At the 14th International Conference on Alzheimer's & Parkinson's Disease (ADPD) held in Lisbon, Portugal, March 26-31, 2019, Merle Hönig is awarded a Junior Faculty Award for her work on tau and cognitive reserve in Alzheimer’s disease.

Dr. Gérard Bischof received the Kurt Kaufmann award of the German Alzheimer Forschung Initiative e.V. for research on gender effects on tau pathology in Alzheimer’s disease, which includes a prize money of €10.000.

for more information, see here

The work of cand. med. Hendrik Theis on how dopaminergic turnover in the ventral striatum is linked to impulse control disorders in PD patients was honored by one of the five ECCN 2018 awards for abstract submission at the 7th European Conference on Clinical Neuroimaging (ECCN) to be held in Brussels, Belgium, March 26-27, 2018.

See program here.

Dr. Gérard N. Bischof’s work on where amyloid deposition predicts progression in Alzheimer’s disease was honored by one of the five ECCN 2018 awards for abstract submission at the 7th European Conference on Clinical Neuroimaging (ECCN) to be held in Brussels, Belgium, March 26-27, 2018.

See program here

During the 1st international conference on cognitive reserve in dementias (ResDem) held in Munich, Merle Hönig is awarded the Best Poster Price for her work on tau and cognitive reserve in Alzheimer’s disease.

Read the full program here.

Merle Hönig, PhD student in our lab, was honored for the best poster in the category “Prognosis & Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease” during this year’s Alzheimer’s Association International Conference held between July 16-20, 2017 in London. She received the award endowed with US$ 250 for her poster entitled: “Tau Pathology Burden Associated with Level of Cognitive Reserve in Alzheimer’s Diesease.

Read the abstract here.

Dr. Jochen Hammes was honoured with a travel grant during the 21. International Congress of the Society for Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders held between June 4-8, 2017 in Vancouver, Canada. He gratefully received US$ 1000 for his work on predicting impulsive behaviour under dopaminergic therapy in Parkinson patients using F-18-DOPA-PET.

Read the abstract here.

Dr. Gérard N. Bischof receives a travel grant to present his work on the relationship between CSF markers of p-tau and t-tau to in vivo tau deposition as measured by PET in typical and atypical Alzheimer’s disease at the annual meeting of the Society for Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) in Denver, USA.

Read the abstract here.

The MMNI group is excited to participate in the very first Cologne Neuroscience Day (CNS) as a platform for young neuroscientists in Cologne to present their work. Talks will be given by Dr. Gérard N. Bischof and Dr. Jochen Hammes.

Read the full program here.

Every year, the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging chooses an image that exemplifies the most promising advances in the field in order to detect diseases, aid diagnosis or select appropriate treatment strategies for patients. For this year’s annual meeting held in San Diego, the reviewers had to vote from 2200 submitted abstracts. We are happy and proud to announce that this year’s Image of the Year award goes to our dear member Dr. Gérard Bischof for his work entitled: “Novel PET imaging demonstrates relationship between Tau bildup and neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s patients.”

Read the full article here. You can download the image here.

The medical faculty awards Kathrin Giehl an IPaK travel grant in the context of the ipid4all-application (DAAD) of the Albertus Magnus Graduate Center in order to present her work on T1-assisted tau-PET image preprocessing at the 22nd annual meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping in Geneva, Switzerland.

The Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM) honours Dr. Gérard N. Bischof’s work on the contribution of tau to neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s disease with a Merit Abstract Award during their 22nd annual meeting in Geneva, Switzerland.

Adrian Asendorf, M.Sc.

I joined the MMNI lab as a PhD candidate in January 2022. I am interested in resilience mechanisms in PD. For this purpose, I work a lot with resting state fMRI together with dopamine sensitive PET imaging. By using multimodal approaches I investigate the mechanistic link between dopaminergic degeneration and alterations in dynamics of large-scale functional networks. Furthermore, I am highly involved in the implementation of the currently ongoing DoMoCo study. Finally, I am committed to building and maintaining a reliable IT structure for the MMNI lab.

Ask me about: Coding in Pyhton and R. Resting state fMRI techniques, such as dynamic functional connectivity, graph therory and basically any IT related issues.

Hendrik Theis, M.D.

Hendrik Theis is a resident physician at the Department of Neurology at the University Hospital of Cologne and a researcher in the Multimodal Imaging Group. His research focus is the dopaminergic modulation of brain networks. He is investigating changes of fronto-striatal connectivity in Parkinson’s patients with impulse-control disorders and he is also interested in reward learning in obesity.

Download CV as PDF

Ask me about: Anything

Merle Hönig, PhD

MedizinFoto Köln

Merle Hönig’s research interest is focused on the investigation of resilience mechanisms in neurodegenerative diseases. As part of her work, she elucidates the role of lifetime factors such as education, occupation, nutrition and physical activity in regard to the occurrence and extent of neuropathology and changes in network function in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. In addition, she is interested in genetic and epigenetic changes and how these factors are, in turn, associated with resilience mechanisms.

Selected publications:

Hönig MC, Bischof GN, Hammes J, Faber J, Fliessbach K, van Eimeren T, et al. Tau pathology and cognitive reserve in Alzheimer’s disease. Neurobiol Aging. 2017 Sep;57:1–7.

Hönig MC, Bischof GN, Seemiller J, Hammes J, Kukolja J, Onur Ö, Jessen F, Fliessbach K, Neumaier B, Fink GR, van Eimeren T, Drzezga A. Networks of tau distribution in Alzheimer’s disease. Brain, 2018

Hönig MC, Bischof GN, Özgür OA, Kukolja J, Jessen F, Fliessbach K, Neumaier B, Fink GR, Kalbe E, Drzezga A, van Eimeren T: Level of education mitigates the impact of tau pathology on neuronal function. Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging.2019 Aug;46(9):1787-1795


Curriculum Vitae (Hoenig_CV)

Kathrin Giehl, PhD

MedizinFoto Köln

Kathrin Giehl’s primary research focus is to advance the understanding of underlying neural mechanisms involved in Parkinson’s disease. She is particularly interested in elucidating mechanism responsible for distinct cognitive impairments, which are frequently observed in this patient cohort, and to investigate the effects of cognitive training on a neural and behavioral level in order to ameliorate these difficulties. For her research, she utilizes behavioral paradigms and various neuroimaging methods, such as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and Positron Emission Tomography (PET). In addition, she organizes and coordinates a broad range of investigator-initiated and industry-sponsored trials with a focus on neuroimaging and neurodegenerative disorders, especially Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

Publications:

Giehl K, Ophey A, Hammes J, Rehberg S, Lichtenstein T, Reker P, Eggers C, Kalbe E & van Eimeren T. Working memory training increases neural efficiency in Parkinson’s disease: a randomized-controlled trial, Brain Communications, 2020.

Ophey A, Giehl K, Rehberg S, Eggers C, Reker P, van Eimeren T & Kalbe E. Effects of working memory training in patients with Parkinson’s disease without cognitive impairment: A randomized controlled trial. Parkinsonism & related disorders. 2020 Feb 11.

Giehl K, Ophey A, Reker P, Rehberg S, Hammes J, Barbe MT, Zokaei N, Eggers C, Husain M, Kalbe E, van Eimeren T. Effects of Home-Based Working Memory Training on Visuo-Spatial Working Memory in Parkinson’s Disease: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Journal of Central Nervous System Disease. 2020 Jan; 12:1179573519899469.

Hammes J, Theis H, Giehl K, Hoenig MC, Greuel A, Tittgemeyer M, Timmermann L, Fink GR, Drzezga A, Eggers C, van Eimeren T. Dopamine metabolism of the nucleus accumbens and fronto-striatal connectivity modulate impulse control. Brain. 2019 Mar 1;142(3):733-43.

Giehl K, Tahmasian M, Eickhoff SB, van Eimeren T. Imaging executive functions in Parkinson’s disease: An activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis. Parkinsonism & related disorders. 2019 Feb 20.

Baumann A, Nebel A, Granert O, Giehl K, Wolff S, Schmidt W, Baasch C, Schmidt G, Witt K, Deuschl G, Hartwigsen G. Neural Correlates of Hypokinetic Dysarthria and Mechanisms of Effective Voice Treatment in Parkinson Disease. Neurorehabilitation and neural repair. 2018 Dec;32(12):1055-66.

Chong TT, Apps MA, Giehl K, Hall S, Clifton CH, Husain M. Computational modelling reveals distinct patterns of cognitive and physical motivation in elite athletes. Scientific reports. 2018 Aug 8;8(1):11888.

Tahmasian M, Eickhoff SB, Giehl K, Schwartz F, Herz DM, Drzezga A, van Eimeren T, Laird AR, Fox PT, Khazaie H, Zarei M. Resting-state functional reorganization in Parkinson’s disease: an activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis. Cortex. 2017 Jul 1;92:119-38.

Zokaei N, Giehl K, Sillence A, Neville MJ, Karpe F, Nobre AC, Husain M. Sex and APOE: A memory advantage in male APOE ε4 carriers in midlife. cortex. 2017 Mar 1;88:98-105.

Chong TT, Apps M, Giehl K, Sillence A, Grima LL, Husain M. Neurocomputational mechanisms underlying subjective valuation of effort costs. PLoS biology. 2017 Feb 24;15(2):e1002598.

Hammes J, Bischof GN, Giehl K, Faber J, Drzezga A, Klockgether T, van Eimeren T. Elevated in vivo [18F]‐AV‐1451 uptake in a patient with progressive supranuclear palsy. Movement Disorders. 2017 Jan;32(1):170-1.

Rolinski M, Zokaei N, Baig F, Giehl K, Quinnell T, Zaiwalla Z, Mackay CE, Husain M, Hu MT. Visual short-term memory deficits in REM sleep behaviour disorder mirror those in Parkinson’s disease. Brain. 2015 Nov 18;139(1):47-53.

Curriculum Vitae  (download CV as pdf)

Contact: 

Kathrin Giehl, PhD

E-mail: webmaster@mmni.de

Jochen Hammes, MD

Dr. Jochen Hammes has completed his residency at the Department of Nuclear Medicine at the University Hospital of Cologne and now is an external member of the Multimodal Imaging Group. He is especially interested in developing algorithmic methods in multimodal imaging research.

Jochen Hammes‘ profile on Researchgate.

 

Selected publications:
Hammes, J, Bischof, GN, Bohn, KP, Onur, O, Schneider, A, Fliessbach, K et al.. One stop shop: Flortaucipir PET differentiates amyloid positive and negative forms of neurodegenerative diseases. J. Nucl. Med. 2020

Hammes, J, Theis, H, Giehl, K, Hoenig, MC, Greuel, A, Tittgemeyer, M et al.. Dopamine metabolism of the nucleus accumbens and fronto-striatal connectivity modulate impulse control. Brain. 2019;142

Hammes J, Täger P, Drzezga A; EBONI: A tool for automated quantification of bone metastasis load in PSMA PET/CT, J. Nucl. Med. 2017

Hammes J, Leuwer I, Bischof GN, Drzezga A, van Eimeren T; Multimodal correlation of dynamic [18F]-AV-1451 perfusion PET and neuronal hypometabolism in [18F]-FDG PET; Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging 2017.

Hammes J, Bischof GN, Drzezga A: Molecular imaging in early diagnosis, differential diagnosis and follow-up of patients with neurodegenerative diseases; Clin Transl Imaging, 2017; 5: 465.

 

Curriculum vitae

2020
Board certification as Nuclear Medicine specialist (“Facharzt für Nuklearmedizin”) and Habilitation

2015-2020
Resident physician and postdoctoral researcher at Department of Nuclear Medicine, University Hospital Cologne
Algorithmic methods in imaging research
Imaging in neurodegenerative diseases

2014-2015
Manager for product development and IT at BetterDoc GmbH, Cologne
Product development, Database design, Userinterface design,
head of development team

2013-2014
Resident physician in neurology
Clinic for Neurology and Palliative Medicine, Clinics of the City of Cologne

2009-2013
Doctoral studies at Physics Group, Dept. of Nuclear Medicine, University Hospital Cologne
Thesis: GATE based Monte Carlo simulation of planar scintigraphy to estimate the nodular dose in radioiodine therapy for autonomous thyroid adenoma

2007-2013
Medical school
University Hospital Cologne, St. Claraspital Basel (CH), Kantonsspital St. Gallen (CH)