Medical imaging only captures the human body in a static, horizontal view, which doesn’t reflect the forces and function that occur during everyday activities like standing or exercise. BioMotive aims to revolutionize this with an advanced MRI infrastructure that can scan the body upright and during movement. This will allow us to see how muscles, bones, and even the heart behave under real-life conditions, such as during exercise. By applying advanced MRI techniques, BioMotive enables real-time visualization of internal forces and physiological processes, providing deeper insights into conditions of the muscles, digestion and blood circulation influenced by posture and movement.

In this project we identified a novel connection between two brain regions that code for decision-making. In parallel, we studied the development of neuronal circuitry in the sensory regions in a mouse model for ASD. We found that in this model the balance between excitation and inhibition was impaired during development, which led to altered social behaviour. The identification of a novel circuitry for decision making and how this is altered in a mouse model for ASD provides us with new clues as to how misalignment of neural connections during development can lead to disease.

Traumatic memories can haunt one for life. This project investigates the role of an aberrant trauma memory in the development of symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) by investigating its neural representation and underlying neurobiological mechanisms. To this end, neural activity of mice susceptible to the development of PTSD-like symptoms following trauma is compared to mice resilient to these. First findings reveal that relative to their resilient counterparts, susceptible mice display overall hyperactivity in the amygdala during initial trauma memory encoding, and reduced activity of hippocampal memory cells during remote trauma memory recall.

Breast screening raises too many false alarms and treatment still too often fails to kill the tumor completely. This project will improve the way we find and look at tumors. With these new images, the doctors will know during screening if a possible tumor is only a non-dangerous cyst. Also, this new technology will create images of the tumor that will give the doctors more information to decide how to treat the tumor and best cure the patient.

Depression is a prevalent and severe mental illness. The most established psychological interventions are only effective for 40% of patients. Combining two treatments may enhance outcomes. Although effective, adding antidepressant medication to psychotherapy is costly and does not always map on to patient’s preferences. Exercise has emerged as a viable alternative augmentation strategy, yet questions about how, when, and for whom remain unanswered? The researchers will test how exercise enhances the effect of psychotherapy to help more depressed patients. They aim to provide insight into how exercise improves mood as well as the learning of new skills during psychotherapy sessions.