Faculty of Medicine

As you enter the kitchen, aroma tells you that your favourite meat loaf is baking in the oven. Immediately, a memory from decades ago is projected on your mind, of the kid you once were, happily returning from a mountain hike to your grandmother's kitchen. How does the brain do it? First – how can we separate the scent coming from this particular dish apart from the myriad of other odorants, and second, how is this translated into one coherent experience of smell with a meaning extending far behind the particular olfactory sensation?

 

On Friday 16 March 2012, Nobel laureate Linda B. Buck gave a fascinating lecture at NTNU, on our ability to differentiate thousands of distinct odours, and our brain's ability to perceive and remembers these smells. Buck focused first on odour receptor genes, to explain how the identities of different odorants are encoded at the receptor level and in network of the brain to produce the perception of distinct odours.She reflected on the capacity to differentiate smells. The olfactory system has an amazing complexity: Mammals are able to notice subtle variations in odours that are experienced as similar. Other smells are perceived as very different, although they may be carried by odorants with an almost identical chemical structure. Her group has found that some odour receptors are capable of detecting a number of odorants. It is the unique combination of receptors detecting certain substances that forms the basis for the brain's ability to recognize and separate odours. However, it is still a question for the future how the translation takes place from a combination of neural impulses to an immediate and coherent experience of a meaningful smell.

 

The second major topic of the lecture was the existence of distinct neural pathways in the olfactory system. First, there is the main olfactory system, which forms the basis for our experience of smell. The second is the pathway for impulses from chemosensory receptors, detecting pheromones that can elicit hormonal changes and instinctive behaviour in animals. These emotions and behavioural impulses relate to basic and innate responses, such as fear, aggression, sexual behaviour, and paternal instincts. A mouse exposed to fox urine will be struck by fear, even if the animal has spent all of its days in a laboratory setting. Likewise, the mouse is able to communicate its emotions and preparedness for mating to other members of its own species through the chemical composition of its own urine.

 

Buckwon the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with her colleague Richard Axel in 2004 for the discovery of odorant receptors and the organization of the olfactory system.  The lecture was hosted by the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience, NTNU. This was the 9^th lecture in the series "Distinguished Kavli Lecture". Approximately once every third month, the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience invites a world-class neuroscientist to Trondheim, to present recent findings and results.

 

By Erik Ingebrigtsen

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Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg conducted the official opening of Norwegian Brain Centre at NTNU on Tuesday, 28 February 2012. This research facility is the result of  major investments over a decade both from NTNU, the Norwegian Research Council and the Kavli Foundation. The combined Kavli Institute/Centre for the Biology of Memory is led by Professors May-Britt and Edvard Moser.

 

After a tour of the laboratories, where Stoltenberg received an improvised briefing on the reading of brain activity in rats from scientist Debora Ledergerben, the Prime Minister delivered an inspired talk to a lecture hall packed with students, scientists and invited guests.

 

Stoltenberg elaborated on the importance of research and education. In a particularly good mood, the Prime Minister departed from his pre-written manuscript, and greatly amused the audience with his talk. His main message was that nobody, except maybe a few overpaid consultants, are able to predict what we will live from in the future, 50 years from now: "I do not know what we will live from, but I know that knowledge will be the crucial factor. Our future industry and enterprise will be based on knowledge, and we will therefore give priority to research and education".

 

Eminence in brain research: particularly impressing

The Prime Minister stressed that he is always impressed after visiting eminent scientist, whether their field is oceanography, fish biology, climate research, petroleum technology or geology. These are all fields where Norway holds comparative advantages, due to our proximity to the ocean, our fish, our artic commitment, our oil industry and our mountains. "Brains, however", the Prime Minister jokingly remarked, "I have heard that they have those even abroad. Not to diminish the achievements of scientists studying fish, ocean, tunnels and so forth, but to become a world leading institute of brain research is, in this respect, an even more impressing achievement."

 

Stoltenberg proceeded to claim that he had recently read the biography of Nansen. His inability to explain the gist of Nansen's neuroscience research was presented with great self-irony, to the amusement of the audience.

 

Past and future investments

The Centre for the Biology of Memory (CBM) was established in 2002 as a Centre of Excellence with funding from the Research Council of Norway for ten years. In 2007, the centre was selected by the Kavli Foundation to become a Kavli Institute. This resulted in adding a name to the centre: the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience (KI). Over the last years, NTNU has also invested heavily in the Norwegian Brain Centre.

 

As part of the Norwegian Research Council's Infrastructure Program, the Center is one of the recipients of the 80 million NOK award for investment in state-of-the-art equipment for brain research equipment. This allocation represents phase 1 of the NORBRAIN project, in which NTNU collaborates with the University of Oslo, mainly the Centre for Molecular Biology and Neuroscience (CMBN). Phase 2, including among other infrastructure also a clinical 7 Tesla MR, will be crucial to integrate clinical neuroscience into the activities of Norwegian Brain Center. Stoltenberg's talk did not reduce the hopes to see this further development of the Brain Centre materialize: "I may not remember everything I have heard today, but I have experienced your enthusiasm and the outstanding atmosphere for research. This is something I will remember for the rest of my life."

By: Erik Ingebrigtsen

By: Erik Ingebrigtsen

 

- I sometimes meet local Neuroscientists at conferences abroad who I have never met in Trondheim! Post-doctoral fellow Helen Palmer explains the chief objectives of Trondheim Neuroscience Nexus at the inaugural meeting on Tuesday, 28 February:

- Neuroscience research in Trondheim is spread across several different institutes and campuses. Trondheim Neuroscience Nexus aims to host an annual event which brings together local Neuroscience researchers, as well as clinicians who are interested in Neuroscience, to get updates on each other's work and reduce the threshold for forming new collaborations."

 

Together with Helen Palmer, the main initiator behind this project is Professor Asta Håberg. Inspiration came from a network in Glasgow, where Palmer did her PhD. There, the network ‘Celsus' provides a meeting place and opportunity to exchange ideas for researchers and clinicians with a shared interest in the field of Inflammation. Palmer and Håberg hope that Trondheim Neuroscience Nexus will serve a similar purpose.

 

Picture: TNN Organizers: Asta Håberg, Ayumu Tashiro, Helen Palmer and Tor Ivar Hansen

 

The meeting offered an interesting and varied programme, with speakers representing a broad  spectrum of neuroscience research activities in Trondheim,  including memory and adult neurogenesis (Allesandro Luchetti, CBM/KI), wiring and function of neuronal networks (Jonathon Jay Couey, CBM/KI) , application of MRI for diagnosis and prognosis after traumatic axonal injury (Toril Skandsen, St Olav's Hospital), brain development and cognition in infants (Ruud van der Weel, Department of Psychology, NTNU), and the relationship between pain modulation and cardiovascular centres in the brainstem (Lars Jacob Stovner, National Headache Centre and Department of Neuroscience, NTNU)

 

A number of the already existing groups and networks in Trondheim are actively supporting the event, and this is very promising for the future success of this association. The meeting is hosted by Trondheim fMRI Group. Financial support has been given by the Centre for Research Driven Innovation MI Lab, NTNU and a grant awarded to the Trondheim Chapter by the Society for Neuroscience.

 

It is to be expected that future meetings, combining the strengths of all of these groups, will yield promising results in terms of project collaboration, joint applications and the exchange of innovative ideas, both within the Trondheim community and with external partners.

 

This information was linked to national databases, providing information on schooling and any subsequent need for sickness/disability/unemployment benefit between 1998 and 2007.

 

By the age of 24, the data showed that 17% of the study participants had not completed their secondary/high school education.

 

Those who said they were in poor health during their teenage years had a higher drop out rate (26.5%) than their peers in good health (16%).

 

By the age of 26, almost one in 10 (9%) of the 6451 participants for whom data were available, were in receipt of benefits, more than half of which were for ill health or disability.

 

Among those who had dropped out of school, almost one in four (23%) were in receipt of long term benefits by the age of 26. More than half were in receipt of benefits for ill health/disability.

 

This compares with just 7% of those who completed their secondary/high school education. Ill health/disability accounted for just 4% of benefits in this group.

 

After taking account of influential factors, such as age and educational attainment of the mother, the likelihood of receiving any type of benefit over the next five years up to the age of 28 was three times greater for school drop outs.

 

They were 44% more likely to be on benefit, compared with their peers who completed their secondary/high school education, who were 15% more likely to be in this position.

 

Dropping out of school and rating personal health as poor were strongly linked. One in three of those teens who described their health as poor was on benefit between the ages of 24 and 28, compared with one in five of those in good health.

 

The authors caution against drawing definitive conclusions about cause and effect, but suggest that their findings "may be an indication that ill health increases vulnerability to social exclusion in the transition from adolescence to adulthood."

 

"Research related to the association between health, high school dropout and work integration of young adults is scarce, while publicity on the topic is often dramatic and moralistic and could be a contributor to further stigmatisation," they write.

The Faculty of medicine, NTNU, and the Central Norway Regional Health Authority host the following core facilities:

• Genomics Core Facility (GCF)
• Bioinformatics Core Facility (BioCore)
• Proteomics and Metabolomics Core Facility (PROMEC)
• Cellular and Molecular Imaging Core Facility (CMIC)
• MR Core Facility

 

What is a core facility and why should you as a researcher use it?
Since 2005 the laboratory area at Faculty of medicine, NTNU, has increased considerably. New laboratories with advanced equipments are now a part of several core facilities made available for researchers all over the country. Besides helping other scientists, the core facilities are directed by leading scientist with extensive research activity.

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Nationwide collaboration is increasingly recognized as vital to the strengthening of PhD training in Norway. MedIm – Norwegian Research School in Medical Imaging, is promoting networks in medical imaging training. Hosted by the Faculty of Medicine, NTNU, this is a consortium between NTNU and the universities in Oslo, Bergen and Tromsø, with strong links to the university hospitals and SINTEF. MedIm receives funding from the Norwegian Research Council up to 2016.

 

Recently, the 3rd National PhD Conference in Medical Imaging was jointly organized in Oslo by MedIm and the Intervention Centre (Oslo University Hospital and University of Oslo). Seventy PhD candidates presented their research through posters or oral presentations.

 

Both the oral presentations and the posters were evaluated by scientific committees. Judit Haász (University of Bergen) was awarded NOK 10.000 for Best Oral Presentation. Haász argues that a precise description of brain morphology changes related to healthy aging is essential to promote our understanding of age-related cognitive changes, and that longitudinal studies have the advantage that the individual subject will function as its own control. The committee evaluated the level of presentations as very good, and ranked at second place was Daniel Høyer Iversen, MI Lab and Dept. of Circulation and Medical Imaging, for his presentation on model based correction of angle-dependencies in navigated 3-D flow imaging during neurosurgical interventions.

 

Emilie Vallée (Dept. of Circulation and Medical Imaging, NTNU) won the NOK 5.000 Best Poster Award, for a project developed in cooperation with Live Eikenes and Asta Håberg (both at Dept. of Neuroscience, NTNU). The evaluation concluded that the poster not only presented important scientific results, but also represents a template for successful communication using the poster format. Her study poses the question 'Diffusion-weighted functional MRI: a new method for localizing brain activity with MRI?' Vallée demonstrates that the method of DfMRI does not have the necessary reliability to be used in brain activation studies, as earlier proposed by LeBihan and colleagues.

 

In addition to these prizes, MedIm awarded 14 Travel and Research Grants of NOK 50.000 each to PhD candidates from all over Norway, four of which are affiliated with NTNU. These are Siv Eggen (Dept. of Physics), Martin Denstedt (Dept. of Computer and Information Science), Páll Jens Erikson (Dept of Circulation and Medical Imaging) and Erik Andreas Torkildsen (Dept of Laboratory Medicine, Children's and Women's Health). These grants were given on the basis of previously submitted applications.

 

The PhD conference attracted 130 participants. Ole Petter Ottersen, Rector of the University of Oslo, set the agenda with a fascinating full length lecture discussing the role that medical imaging can have in building ties between research and improved healthcare. Later, a panel including four deans (among them Dean Stig Slørdahl), MI Lab director Olav Haraldseth and Erik Fosse from OUS, agreed that cooperation in PhD training across institutional and disciplinary boundaries is crucial to the strengthening of future research in Norway.

 

The fourth MedIm conference will be held in Trondheim in November 2012. The event is increasingly seen as the number-one national meeting place for PhD candidates in the field of medical imaging.

 

Read more about MedIm

Children represent about 15%-20% of all people with lupus. Lupus in children tends to manifest more severely and can result in the need for more aggressive treatments. Both boys and girls had an increased BMI, probably caused by high doses of steroids.

Lupus is a chronic rheumatic disease where different organs can be affected, like the skin, joints, kidneys, heart, blood and brain. Lupus patients have got change in their immune system.

 

- Delayed growth and puberty can cause damage, affect quality of life, and add to the burden of coping with the disease, Marite Rygg at Department of Laboratory Medicine, Children's and Women's Health says.

Ryggs study is one of relatively few studies who addressed the effects of lupus and/or its treatments on growth and development in children.

Organized for the seventh time in four years, MI Lab-day is now a well-established event for imaging and innovation research groups in Trondheim. MI Lab's vision is to facilitate cost efficient health care to improve patient outcome through innovation in medical imaging, and MI Lab is working together with NTNU, the university hospital, SINTEF and many other partners from the industry.

 

Social network day

- This event is a meeting point for people working with MRI, ultrasound and image-guided surgery. It's important for these people to meet and talk together, Olav Haraldseth, head of MI Lab, says.

At MI Lab Day, representatives from industry and researchers from NTNU and St. Olav's Hospital meet for an update on what's going on in the field. In addition to ordinary presentations, six PhD candidates and researchers presented their work in the form of Speed Updates.  Based on the idea of speed dating, the audience is divided into groups, rotating between different stations, where they are given quick insights into advances in different MI Lab research projects.

Professor Kevin Brindle from the University of Cambridge, UK, presented in a keynote speech the possibilities of applying novel MR-based molecular imaging  techniques and metabolomics for the detection and prediction of responses to tumor therapy. He also addressed the challenges and potential of bringing this technology into the clinic.

 

New possibilities with new technology

Scientific equipment and research infrastructure are crucial factors in MRI and ultrasound research. Trondheimhas a history of leading the way in MR-technology in Norway. Both the first clinical MR scanner in the country and the first 3 Tesla MR scanner were installed here.

Today clinical MRI studies in Trondheim utilise a 3 Tesla MR scanner, but MR-physicist Pål Erik Goa hopes funding will be provided for a 7 Tesla scanner for clinical research in 2014. Last year,Goa had a 6 month research stay at Erwin L. Hahn Institute in Essen, Germany, to learn more about clinical MR Imaging at 7 Tesla.

- A 7 Tesla MR scanner will open new possibilities in diagnostic imaging and research, in the same way 3 Tesla has already done compared to lower field strengths. In particular, we will be able to study the structure and function of the brain with higher resolution and better accuracy than before, Goaunderlines.

Higher magnetic field also means new technical challenges. Goa continues:

- The history of MR technology development has shown us that these challenges will be met, with new technology and new possibilities as the end result. Trondheim has an ambition to be part of this development, both on the technical and on the application side. This is why we have already started to build competence and networks related to clinical 7 Tesla.

 

A good year for MI Lab

Research in medical ultrasound in Trondheim started over 30 years ago, with the development of ultrasound Doppler blood flow equipment and applications of the technology in non-invasive diagnosis of cardiac function and cardiac valve disease.

- The last year MI Lab received very good evaluations from international expert panels, Haraldseth says.

In 2009 the main success story for MI Lab was the new pocket-size ultrasound scanner, Vscan, from GE Vingmed Ultrasound. Both in the speed update by Ole C. Mjølstad and the plenary lecture by Bjørn Olav Haugen, this Vscan and ongoing research projects to evaluate how this handheld ultrasound scanner can enable new clinical applications of ultrasound in health care was a topic.

Read about the study in The New York Times

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EMBO membership is a lifelong award and Edvard Moser joins the ranks of 1,500 of the best researchers in Europe and around the world, all leaders in their research fields and communities.

 

EMBO counts 57 Nobel Laureates amongst its membership, including Bruce A. Beutler and Jules A. Hoffman who were awarded the 2011 Novel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in October.

 

About EMBO
EMBO stands for excellence in the life sciences. The organization enables the best science by supporting talented researchers, stimulating scientific exchange and advancing policies for a world-class European research environment.

 

EMBO is an organization of 1500 leading life scientist members that fosters new generations of researchers to produce world-class scientific results. EMBO helps young scientists to advance their research, promote their international reputations and ensure their mobility. Courses, workshops, conferences and scientific journals disseminate the latest research and offer training in cutting-edge techniques to maintain high standards of excellence in research practice. EMBO helps to shape science and research policy by seeking input and feedback from our community and by following closely the trends in science in Europe.

 

For more information: www.embo.org

Professor Paula Pitha Rowe, John Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA, has for more than 40 years studied immune signaling and the interferon response, and will in this guest lecture share with us her insights on interferon regulation with special emphasis on autoimmune diseases.

When: 12.30 pm

Where: MTA at building MTFS (Medisinsk teknisk forskningssenter)

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