Universitetet I Oslo
NORMENT – KG Jebsen Center for Mental Disorders Research

Faculty of Medicine

Oslo University Hospital HF
Division of Mental Health and Addiction
Psychosis Research Unit/TOP
Ullevål Hospital, Building 49
P.O. Box 4956 Nydalen
N- 0424 Oslo
Norway

 

Website

Project Leader

Prof. Ole A. Andreassen
Phone: +47 23 02 73 50 / +47 22 11 78 43
Fax: +47 23 02 73 33

Project Staff

 

Prof. Ingrid Agartz Project investigator E-mail
Ass. Prof. Lars T. Westlye Project investigator E-mail
Prof. Ingrid Melle Core Researcher in NORMENT E-mail
Prof. Vidar Martin Steen Core Researcher in NORMENT E-mail
Prof. Srdjan Djurovic Core Researcher in NORMENT E-mail
Prof. Kenneth Hugdahl Core Researcher in NORMENT E-mail
Prof. Stephanie le Hellard Core Researcher in NORMENT E-mail
Prof. Kjetil Sundet, head of institute Core Researcher in NORMENT E-mail
Kristin Myklebust Network coordinator E-mail

 

Institute presentation

NORMENT was established in 2013, as a centre of excellence. NORMENT’s research profile is built upon a collaboration between University of Oslo (host institution), University of Bergen and Oslo University Hospital. It is integrated with the KG Jebsen Centre for Psychosis Research.

 

In Search of Underlying Pathology

 

At NORMENT – KG Jebsen Centre we strive to find answers to why some people develop perceptual disturbances, delusions, deep depressions or elated, manic phases, the core symptoms of severe mental illness.

The symptoms of schizophrenia (SCZ) and bipolar disorder (BIP) and their high heritability have been known since antiquity. Still, the disease mechanisms are mostly unknown and the current descriptive diagnoses lack reliable biomarkers.

Psychotic disorders inflict burdens at the emotional, social and financial levels for the individual patients, their families and the society. It is thus imperative to make progress in our understanding of the underlying pathology of these disorders, and factors related to clinical outcome.

 

The Missing Heritability

 

Important and encouraging developments have occurred during the last years, with findings of true genetic susceptibility factors and the emergence of new and exciting tools for psychiatric research.

Major technical developments have enabled systematic studies of the human genome and brain with ever more sophisticated methods, as well as knowledge about environmental risk factors. Still most genetic factors remain unknown (“the missing heritability”), abnormal interactions between different brain regions (neuronal networks) are undiscovered, and predictors of outcome are scarce.

 

A Multi-Disciplinary Expertise

 

At NORMENT KG Jebsen Centre we will build upon our well established and integrated thematically oriented research organization, to benefit from our multi-disciplinary expertise and large clinical samples with extensive clinical phenotype characterization and state-of-the-art experimental and neuroimaging methods.

Radboud University Medical Centre (Radboudumc)

Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour

Departments of Human Genetics, Psychiatry and Cognitive Neuroscience

Geert Grooteplein 10

6532 GA Nijmegen


Website Radboud

Website Donders

Project leader

Barbara Franke, PhD
Phone: +31 24 3614017
E-mail

Project staff

Jan K. Buitelaar, MD, PhD
Phone: +31 24 3610655
E-mail
Janneke Dammers (research assistant)
Phone: +31 24 3618929/68903
E-mail

Institute presentation

The Radboud University Medical Centre is a leading Dutch institute for medical research. The Neuropsychiatry Research Group, including the department of Cognitive Neuroscience, the department of Psychiatry and the Karakter Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Centre are specialized in top-level clinical care and research in neuropsychiatric disorders, with a special emphasis on neurodevelopmental disorders like ADHD and autism spectrum disorders – in children and adults. The Nijmegen outpatient clinics see about 2000 new children and adolescent patients and 800 new adult patients a year.


Research within the neuropsychiatric centres is part of the Donders Institute, a world-renowned centre of research expertise in neuroscience. Over 500 researchers work at the Donders on unravelling the mechanisms underlying brain function. We have full access to research magnetic resonance imaging facilities (MRI) of 1.5 Tesla, 3 Tesla and 7 Tesla as well as a mock scanner at the Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging within the Donders Institute.


The department of Human Genetics of the RUNMC is an internationally top-ranking genetics group. It is the largest centre for genetics research, clinical diagnostics and genetics counselling in Europe. Biobanking is fully automated from DNA-isolation to sample storage and tracking. We have full access to advanced Affymetrix genotyping facilities and are amply experienced in next generation sequencing. In fact, we were among the first to implement next generation exome sequencing into clinical diagnostics. Three Life Technologies 5500XL sequencers and an Ion Torrent Personalized Genome Machine Sequencer (Life Technologies) are available to us for genome sequencing and candidate resequencing, respectively. A total of 12 bioinformaticians and 3 genetic statisticians are based at Human Genetics for data analysis.

deCODE genetics
Population genetics
Sturlugata 8
IS-101 Reykjavík, Iceland

Project leader

Dr. Hreinn Stefansson
Phone: +354-5701947
Fax: +354-5701901
E-mail

Project staff

Dr. Andres Ingason
Phone: +354-5701900
Fax: +354-5701901
E-mail
Dr. Stacy Steinberg
Phone: +354-5701900
Fax: +354-5701901
E-mail
Bragi Walters
Phone: +354-5701900
Fax: +354-5701901
E-mail
Dr. Magnús Örn Úlfarsson
Phone: 354-5701900
Fax: 354-5701901
E-mail

Institute presentation

deCODE genetics is a global leader in analyzing and understanding the human genome. Using its unique expertise and population resources, deCODE has discovered genetic risk factors for dozens of common diseases. The purpose of understanding the genetics of disease is to use that information to create new means of diagnosing, treating and preventing disease.

 

Brain Innovation BV
Oxfordlaan 55
6229 EV, Maastricht


Website

Project leader

Prof. Dr. Rainer Goebel
Phone: +31 43 3884214
Fax: +31 43 3884125
E-mail
 
CFO, Claudia Goebel
Phone: +31 43 2100120
Fax: +31 43 2100121
E-mail

 

Project staff

 

 
Dr. Ralph Brecheisen, PhD
Phone: +31 43 3884046
Fax: n.a.
E-mail

 

 
Maria Heinze, MSc
Phone: +31 43 3884046
Fax: n.a.
E-mail

 

 
Robbert Harms, MSc
Phone: +31 43 3884046
Fax: n.a.
E-mail

 


Institute presentation

 

Brain Innovation B.V. (BI), located in Maastricht, Netherlands, is manufacturer and distributor of several multi-modal neuroimaging and modeling software packages that are developed, tested, supported, and distributed by a team of more than 10 employees being experts in software development as well as in applied neuroscience, biomedical engineering, research methods, business administration and business management. BI has a substantial experience in international scientific collaboration. The current major product, BrainVoyager QX, is a commercially available cross-platform neuroimaging tool for fMRI, DTI, EEG, MEG and TMS neuronavigation that is used in hundreds of research labs. Brain Innovation has long-standing experience in online and offline machine learning methods and has pioneered multivariate fMRI analysis tools together with Maastricht University (e.g. searchlight mapping, recursive feature elimination) that have become standard in the neuroimaging community. Besides IMAGEMEND, BI has a substantial track record of involvement in EU-funded projects including Marie Curie ITNs “Codde” and “C7” and FP7 HEALTH INNOVATION grant “BRAINTRAIN”.

For real-time functional imaging and neurofeedback, BI has developed Turbo-BrainVoyager (TBV), a highly optimized, easy to use software package for the real-time analysis and dynamic visualization of functional magnetic resonance imaging data sets. BrainVoyager QX and Turbo-BrainVoyager serve as an important basis for the software development in IMAGEMEND. TBV has been developed over 12 years for advanced real-time applications, including neurofeedback studies and brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). BI has also collaborated on the first clinical applications of fMRI-based neurofeedback in depression and Parkinson’s disease.

Rainer Goebel is founder, CEO and chief software developer of Brain Innovation. He is also full professor of cognitive neuroscience at Maastricht University, director of the Maastricht Brain Imaging Centre and chief science and technology officer (CSTO) of Scannexus housing 3, 7 and 9.4 Tesla MRI scanners. He is developer of the leading commercial for neuroimaging data analysis and creator of the first commercially available software for real-time fMRI based neurofeedback and brain computer interfaces. He was elected president of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping and has published more than 200 scientific peer-reviewed papers on neuroimaging and computational neuroscience (including the journals Nature, Science, Neuron, Nature Neuroscience and PNAS, H-Index 52). He supervised more than 30 PhD students and postdocs, many of which now belong to the neuroimaging leadership (e.g. Elia Formisano, Niko Kriegeskorte, David Linden, Lars Muckli). He co-pioneered fMRI neurofeedback with Dr. Nikolaus Weiskopf (University College London) and Dr. Niels Birbaumer (Tübingen University) and is pioneer of social real-time fMRI studies (“Brain Pong” neurofeedback study). He is developer of the first fMRI-based BCI for communication and has been awarded with an ERC Advanced Investigator Grant (2011-2016) to crack the columnar-level code in specialized brain areas using ultra-high magnetic field fMRI.