Novo Nordisk Fonden awards DKK 45 million for 3 projects expanding our knowledge on brain function, nerve damage in the ear and gut bacteria. DRCMR (Professor Hartwig Siebner) is a co- applicant on two of the projects: “Interfacing Emerging Quantum Technology with Biology and Neurophysiology” and “UHeal: Uncovering Hidden Hearing Loss”. “Both projects are addressing important challenges and we are proved to be able to contribute to the solution”, says Professor Hartwig Siebner.

"Interfacing Emerging Quantum Technology with Biology and Neurophysiology"

The main applicant is Ulrik Lund Andersen, Professor, Department of Physics, Technical University of Denmark. He states: “The human brain is an unusually complex system, and we still do not fully understand how it functions. Improving our understanding of the brain’s underlying principles is therefore one of the greatest scientific challenges today. Several imaging techniques are currently used to obtain knowledge about the brain, but they all have low image resolution. The project will develop new diamond sensors to produce high-resolution images of neurons in mouse brains and nerves in muscle tissue. The long-term vision is to use this new method to obtain new knowledge on how the brain functions and on its inexplicable diseases.”

Picture 1: A mouse brain

"UHeal: Uncovering Hidden Hearing Loss"

The main applicant is Torsten Dau, Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, Technical University of Denmark. He writes: “We are increasingly exposed to noise in our daily environments. Exposure to noise over longer periods can cause nerve damage in the inner ear, which especially affects people’s ability to understand speech in noisy situations. This type of synaptic nerve damage cannot be measured in humans, and is not detected by the clinical hearing tests used today. This hidden hearing loss is presumably widespread, even among younger people. This international synergy project will combine magnetic resonance imaging technology with audiology and neurophysiology to establish methods for measuring this nerve damage in humans. The project will develop imaging techniques to detect cell damages in the ear and examine how this affects hearing. This will enable diagnosis for this hearing disorder to be developed and thereby better opportunities for treatment”.

You can read more on the Projects here.