The Microstructure & Plasticity Group
The group aims for a basic-science understanding of brain structure and its plasticity on several levels, ranging from isolated tissue compartments (i.e. microstructure as cellular spaces, neuron, cell membranes) to visualisation and statistical analysis of whole brain connectivity networks, and its impact on normal and disrupted brain function.
Our research is subsequently applied to clinical, pre-clinical and cognitive research projects as well as to clinical settings. To fulfill this aim, expert knowledge from a broad range of research areas is essential and is obtained through collaboration with colleagues within the DRCMR, external members, as well as international collaboration with other groups working on diffusion MRI, scientific computing and neuroanatomy.
Download MaP datasets
We always seek to share our unique MRI data sets mostly being high-qualtiy ex vivo ex vivo so that other researchers can reproduce our results or foster new ideas. Go to our download site MaP is closely linked to several other research groups at DRCMR MaP GroupPicture
- Healthy Ageing
- Neuroimaging in Multiple Sclerosis
- Brain Maturation
- Preclinical
- Ultra-High Field MR
- Clinical (research, data processing pipelines, scanning and diagnosis service for patients)
Overall research areas
- Understanding of water and metabolic diffusion in individual isolated tissue compartments such as cellular spaces, neurons, cell membranes (pre-clinical and clinical)
- Active Imaging of tissue microstructure – Verification and validation of new optimised diffusion MRI sequence designs to probe new and specific tissue microstructures (clinical, pre-clinical)
- Imaging pipelines for high-quality and high-resolution (ex vivo and in vivo) diffusion MRI for studying tissue microstructure, method development and validation (pre-clinical)
- Tractography and mapping of brain connectivity – improve and extend existing approaches and relate to functional data (fMRI, transcranial magnetic stimulation).
- Brain plasticity including diseases such as multiple-sclerosis and traumatic brain injury (clinical and pre-clinical), brain maturation (pre-clinical), aging (clinical), and sensory deprivation such as blindness and deafness (clinical).
