Research Monica van den Berg

Research team

• Bio-Imaging lab

Expertise

My academic training have provided me with an extensive background in multiple biomedical disciplines including, molecular biology, biochemistry, anatomy, physiology, (histo)pathology, genetics and in particular, neuroscience and neuroimaging. I joined the Bio-Imaging lab during as a master student, during which I conducted research with Prof. Dr. Georgios A. Keliris and Dr. Lore Peeters. We investigated the effects of chemogenetic activation of basal forebrain cholinergic neurons on whole-brain functional connectivity, which resulted in my first publication as a first author in iScience. This was my first experience with preclinical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and manipulation of neural circuits (DREADDs) aimed at understanding the brain. I continued as a PhD student at the Bio-Imaging lab under the supervision of Prof Keliris and Prof. Dr. Marleen Verhoye. My research focused on alterations in whole brain connectivity patterns, sleep behavior and hippocampal activity during presymptomatic stages of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). I used a multimodal approach, combining resting state functional MRI (rsfMRI), hippocampal local field potentials, biochemical analyses, and histological analyses in order to detect alterations in synaptic function and network activity during early stages of AD. Moreover, I tried to identify early disease mechanisms contributing to the early alterations in network activity. To do so, I have, together with my supervisors, implemented dynamic analyses methods for rsfMRI data and hippocampal electrophysiology in freely behaving rats in the lab. These challenging projects thought me valuable research skills including stereotactic surgery, MRI acquisition and analysis, electrophysiology acquisition, analysis is of local field potentials, Matlab coding and statistics. Moreover, my research resulted in several first author publications in journals such as Alzheimer’s Disease and Therapy, iScience and Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience. I also contributed to the standardization of preclinical rsfMRI where we developed a standard rat protocol. This resulted in a co-authorship on a Nature Neuroscience paper. I have presented my research results during numerous international conferences including European molecular imaging meeting, Society for Neuroscience and Alzheimer’s Disease and Parkinson’s disease conference. I received several presentation and poster awards for my scientific contributions. For my postdoctoral research career, I will continue to unravel mechanisms underlying the previously observed synaptic dysfunction during preclinical stages of AD.