isabelle budin-ljøsne · brain health across the lifespan: a lifebrain, silver santé study and...

BRAIN HEALTH ACROSS THE LIFESPAN: A Lifebrain, Silver Santé Study and German Brain Council Conference

November 6, 2019 | Harnack House Berlin, Germany

Isabelle Budin-Ljøsne

Norwegian Institute of Public Health

Isabelle Budin-Ljøsne leads the Stakeholder Engagement work package of

Lifebrain. She is a bioethicist and senior adviser at the Norwegian Institute of Public

Health. Her research explores ethical and societal challenges associated with health

research and the development of personalised medicine. Her work includes research

on consent processes, data sharing practices, methods for stakeholder engagement,

and the feedback of research results to research participants. Isabelle’s work in

Lifebrain aims to explore the views and perspectives of stakeholders on brain health,

for instance, by means of the Global Brain Health Survey. Isabelle is also the national

ELSI representative of the biobank infrastructure Biobank Norway and the chair of the

Nordic Committee on Bioethics.



Gaël Chételat

UMR-S INSERM 1237 Physiopathology and

Imaging of Neurological Disorders (PhIND)

Gaël Chételat (www.gael-chetelat.fr) is Director of Research at Inserm. She is

responsible for a research team named «Multimodal Neuroimaging and Lifestyle in

Ageing and Dementia». Her work is devoted to the understanding of the mechanisms

underlying ageing and dementia processes and the lifestyle factors that could prevent

or delay age-associated disorders. She is mainly involved in clinical studies using

multimodal neuroimaging techniques including MRI and PET. Her research team is

also interested in promoting healthy ageing and well-being through non-

pharmaceutical interventions. In particular, Gaël Chételat is coordinating an H2020

European grant (www.silversantestudy.eu, PHC22, 2015-2020) investigating the

impact of English learning and meditation training on mental health and well-being in

ageing populations.



Emrah Düzel

Director of the Institute of Cognitive Neurology and Dementia Research,

Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg

Emrah Düzel has been trained as a neurologist in Germany (in Bonn and

Magdeburg) and has a long-standing interest in the functional anatomy of human

memory networks, neuromodulatory circuits, their alterations in ageing and

neurodegeneration and their scope for plasticity. He coordinates the German National

Neuroimaging Network within the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases

(DZNE) which strategically unifies imaging efforts across 8 German universities and

DZNE. His goal is to improve the diagnosis and therapy of cognitive dysfunction in

old age and in neurodegenerative conditions.

He is Professor of Cognitive Neurology, Director of the Institute of Cognitive

Neurology and Dementia Research, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg;

Speaker of the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), Magdeburg

site; and Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and Group Leader (part time, 25%),

University College London, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience.



Peter Falkai

Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy of the University of Munich

and Vice-President of the WFSBP of the European Psychiatric Association (EPA)

Peter Falkai has been working in the field of psychiatry for 30 years. His main

research interest focuses on the neurobiology of psychotic disorders, namely

schizophrenia. He holds the position of Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and

Psychotherapy of the University of Munich.

Prof. Falkai has been leading multidisciplinary teams of researchers, allowing the use

of techniques ranging from functional imaging to gene expression in human post-

mortem tissue. His clinical and research expertise focuses continuously on the

neurobiological origins and pathomorphological aspects as well as on causal

treatment options of psychotic disorders.

He was Chairman of the DGPPN from 2011-2012 and is currently vice-president of

the WFSBP and president-elect of the European Psychiatric Association (EPA).



Agnes Flöel

University Medicine Greifswald, Germany

Agnes Flöel is Director of the Department of Neurology and Head of the Laboratory

for Cognitive Neurology at the University Medicine Greifswald. The Department of

Neurology treats around 8,000 patients yearly, including 1,000 patients with

neurodegenerative diseases, on in- and out-patient based platforms. Prof. Flöel has

conducted studies on healthy individuals and patients with neurodegenerative

diseases since 1999, ranging from epidemiological and cross-sectional cohorts to

proof-of-concept studies and Phase III randomised controlled clinical trials. These

studies aimed at elucidating the mechanisms underlying healthy and pathological

ageing, employing a large range of neuroscientific tools. Interventions encompass

pharmacological and nutritional approaches, as well as non-invasive brain

stimulation.



Gerd Kempermann

Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden

Gerd Kempermann, born in 1965, studied medicine in Cologne and Freiburg,

Germany. From 1995 to 1998, he was postdoctoral fellow with Fred H. Gage at the

Salk Institute and between 2000 and 2007 group leader at the Max Delbrück Center

for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch. Since 2007 he has been Professor at the

CRTD – Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden. Since 2009 he has also been

speaker of the German Center for Neurodegenerative Disease (DZNE) Dresden.

Main topics of his work are the function and activity-dependent regulation of adult

hippocampal neurogenesis and how both interact in health and disease.



Simone Kühn

Max Planck Institute for Human Development and

University Clinic Hamburg-Eppendorf

Simone Kühn is head of the Lise Meitner Group for Environmental Neuroscience at

the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and a professor for neural plasticity

at the Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the University Clinic Hamburg-

Eppendorf. Her primary research focuses on how the brain is shaped by the

environment in healthy and in psychiatric patients. Moreover, she has studied habitual

behaviour and self-control and has a strong interest in brain imaging methods. She

studied psychology at Columbia University in New York and Potsdam University, and

received her doctorate in psychology from the University of Leipzig. As a postdoc she

worked at University of Ghent in Belgium and at the Institute of Cognitive

Neuroscience, University College London.



Ulman Lindenberger

Max Planck Institute for Human Development and

Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research

Ulman Lindenberger is Director of the Center for Lifespan Psychology at the Max

Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany. Together with Ray Dolan,

he also directs the Max Planck University College London Centre for Computational

Psychiatry and Ageing Research, located in London and Berlin. Ulman Lindenberger

studied psychology and biology in Berlin and Berkeley. He completed his doctoral

degree and habilitation in psychology at the Freie Universität Berlin, and then held a

professorship at Saarland University. Currently, he holds honorary professorships

with the Freie Universität Berlin, the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Saarland

University. His research interests include behavioural and neural aspects of plasticity

across the lifespan, age changes in brain-behaviour relations, lifespan developmental

theory, and multivariate developmental methodology. He is a member of the German

National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, and received the Gottfried Wilhelm

Leibniz Prize 2010 of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.



Antoine Lutz

Inserm (Lyon Neuroscience Research Centre)

Antoine Lutz is a tenured scientist at Inserm (Lyon Neuroscience Research Centre).

He has pioneered research in contemplative neuroscience and is now considered

one of the world leaders in the field. He is the leader of the meditation aspects of the

H2020 European Silver Santé Study.



Natalie Marchant

University College London, Silver Santé Study

Natalie Marchant is an Alzheimer’s Society Senior Research Fellow based at

University College London. She obtained her undergraduate degree at Williams

College, USA and PhD at Sussex University, UK, both in psychology, before

completing a post-doctoral fellowship in neuroimaging and cognitive neuroscience at

the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on psychological risk

factors for dementia and on the development and empirical testing of the concept of

‘Cognitive Debt’ to explain the mechanistic action of these risks. Dr Marchant is

currently involved in several UK- and internationally-funded projects to investigate

behavioural interventions that may reduce risk for dementia.



Lars Nyberg

University of Umeå

Lars Nyberg serves as Professor of Psychology and Neurosciences at Umeå

University, Sweden. He has been active in the field of functional neuroimaging of

memory since 1994. He is the director of Umeå Center for Functional Brain Imaging

(UFBI), and a principal investigator of the Betula longitudinal project on ageing,

memory and dementia. Since 2008 he has been a member of the Royal Swedish

Academy of Sciences. Nyberg’s research is focused on the identification of genetic,

brain, and lifestyle predictors of heterogeneity in cognitive-ageing profiles.



Alfons Schnitzler

Institute of Clinical Neuroscience and Medical Psychology and

Center for Movement Disorders and Neuromodulation

Alfons Schnitzler studied medicine at the universities of Aachen, Kiel and

Cambridge (UK) and was trained in psychiatry, neurology and clinical

neurophysiology. From 1998 to 2006 he was a group leader and consultant

neurologist in the Department of Neurology at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf.

Between 2007 and 2008 he held a chair in Neuroscience and Neurology at Wales

Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, UK. Since 2008 he has been Professor and

Chairman of the Institute of Clinical Neuroscience and Medical Psychology, and

Director of the Center for Movement Disorders and Neuromodulation, Department of

Neurology, at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. His main research topics are the

functional role of brain oscillations, pathophysiology and treatment of Parkinson’s

disease and other movement disorders, and mechanisms of deep brain stimulation.

Since 2018 he has also been President of the German Brain Council.

isabelle budin-ljøsne · brain health across the lifespan: a lifebrain, silver santé study and...

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