Prof. N. Jon Shah has received a Veski Innovation Fellowship 2014/2015 from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. The prize is endowed with $ 300,000.
The acoustic CR neuromodulation method developed by JARA-BRAIN scientist Prof. Peter Tass is a promising treatment. This method disturbs the synchronous firing of the neurons by using electrical stimulation. Recent research work has now shown that this therapeutic approach can be improved by incorporating sufficiently long pauses between the stimulation of the neurons even if very weak stimulations are used.
At the end of January 2015, this year’s Winter School of the International Research Training Group (IRTG) “Schizophrenia and Autism” took place at the RWTH Aachen University’s guest house. The IRTG is part of the JARA-BRAIN section. Over 50 current and former PhD students from Philadelphia, Jülich, and Aachen took part in presentations and discussions at the three-day event. The Winter School was opened by Sabine Mönkemöller, Programme Director at the German Research Foundation with responsibility for IRTG 1328, and Prof. Dr. Ernst Schmachtenberg, rector of RWTH Aachen University.
In IRTG 1328, PhD students from various disciplines conduct research on scientific issues concerning the psychiatric disorders of schizophrenia and autism. The researchers work in the specialist departments of University Hospital Aachen as well as at Forschungszentrum Jülich and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia (USA). IRTG 1328 is currently in its second funding period.
This month, the European research collaboration European Friedreich’s Ataxia Consortium for Translational Studies (EFACTS) published its research findings in The Lancet Neurology. JARA-BRAIN scientist Prof. Dr. Jörg B. Schulz, director of the Department of Neurology in University Hospital Aachen and spokesperson for the Aachen centre for rare diseases (ZSEA), heads the patient registry and a study on the natural course of the disease. Together with his senior physician Prof. Dr. Kathrin Reetz (JARA-BRAIN) and an expert team from University Hospital Aachen, he published the data from a prospective cross-sectional study.
Successful translation: the amino acid 18F-fluoroethyl tyrosine (FET), which was developed by JARA-BRAIN scientists, has been licensed for the first time as a radiopharmaceutical agent for the diagnosis of brain diseases in humans by the Swiss Agency for Therapeutic Products.
