JARA-BRAIN Scientist PD Dr. Irene Neuner Receives DGPPN Research Award 2014

The JARA-BRAIN scientist Dr. Irene Neuner received the German Association for Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics’s (DGPPN) 2014 research award for her outstanding research achievements in the area of innovative imaging. The award was presented for the first time to three scientists at the DGPPN Annual Congress in Berlin and is endowed with € 5,000 for each winner.

Whether a patient is suffering from schizophrenia, depression, or an anxiety disorder, the particular needs of the individual must be taken into consideration in order to give them the best possible treatment.  This is why Irene Neuner, who is a senior physician at the Department of

Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics at University Hospital Aachen and also works in the Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-4) at Forschungszentrum Jülich, combined the MRI, PET, and EEG imaging methods for diagnostics and individual therapy decisions related to mental illness. At present, this method is being used primarily for schizophrenia patients. The trimodal simultaneous imaging approach, which is based on a 3-tesla MRI device, is unique and is based on the establishment of simultaneous hybrid MR-PET by JARA-BRAIN director Prof. N. Jon Shah and Prof. Hans Herzog from INM-4 at Forschungszentrum Jülich.