Projects
How do the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex cooperate in memory processing? KU Leuven
Memories of past experiences influence how we view the present
and how we make predictions about the future. The brain is welltuned
to capture and translate precise information about experiences
into a set of memory traces arranged in a network of distributed
connections. During periods of immobility and sleep, the brain is
actively reactivating previously stored memories as evidenced by
internally-generated ...
Intermittent exogenous ketosis: a novel strategy to improve hypoxic tolerance and adaptation KU Leuven
Altitude-related hypoxia decreases human functional capacity, especially during exercise. Early data in rodents and own preliminary work in humans indicate that intermittent exogenous ketosis (IEK) by ketone ester intake improves hypoxic tolerance, a.o. by facilitating muscular and neuronal energy homeostasis and reducing oxidative stress. We aim to investigate the acute and chronic effects of IEK on exercise and recovery responses, and ...
Probing the neural correlates of perception and cognition using population decoding KU Leuven
From the moment we open our eyes, we receive an overwhelming amount of information about the world in front of us. While incredibly complex, our brain makes sense of this information effortlessly through the coordinated action of a large number of cortical areas and processes. Developing artificial systems that can perceive the visual world as efficiently as humans do has always been one of the central quests of artificial intelligence. In ...
Pathophysiological relevance of the chemosensory channel TRPA1 regulation by cholesterol reducing medications. KU Leuven
Cholesterol is a bioactive lipid that contributes to the structural stability of signaling hubs in cellular membranes. Unhealthy live styles and genetic defects leading to cholesterol dysregulation can result in life-threatening cardiovascular diseases with a huge societal impact. A mainstream treatment against these conditions is the inhibition of cholesterol synthesis by statins. However, these drugs can have serious side effects as ...
A high-throughput platform for screening amyloid strains and their seeding capacity at single-particle resolution KU Leuven
The development of recent methods, such as cryo-electron microscopy, has had a great impact on our understanding of amyloid aggregates. Despite this recent influx of structural information, however, we still do not fully understand how differential intrinsic properties of amyloid strains/conformers, such as their morphology, co-aggregation potential and transmissibility barriers relate to selective cellular/tissue toxicity and aggregation ...
Multifunctional nanoparticle-hydrogel composites for tissue engineering KU Leuven
In living tissues, cellular organization and functions are controlled by dynamically changing extracellular matrices (ECMs). Multifunctional and multiscale, ECMs present physico-chemical cues that stimulate the cellular functions through mechanical and biochemical interactions. Moreover, changes in matrix mechanical properties have been linked to cellular inflammation and disease, although it is unclear whether these changes are causative or ...
Uncovering Enteric glia-macrophage communication in the intestinal homeostasis and inflammation. KU Leuven
One of the main tasks of the immune system is to appropriately react to “danger” or “non-danger” signals. This is even more relevant in the intestine, where immune cells are constantly presented with foreign substances as food. Hence, the balance between immune activation versus tolerance should be tightly regulated to maintain intestinal homoeostasis and to prevent indiscriminate immune activation against the gut content. Loss of this ...
Linking past to future: contributions of awake hippocampal replay to learning KU Leuven
Memories of past experiences influence how we view the present and how we make predictions about the future. The brain is welltuned to capture and translate precise information about experiences into a set of memory traces arranged in a network of distributed connections. During periods of immobility and sleep, the brain is actively reactivating previously stored memories as evidenced by internally-generated patterns of neuronal activity that ...