When people lack visual imagination, this is known as aphantasia. Researchers from the University Hospital Bonn (UKB), the University of Bonn and the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) investigated how the lack of mental imagery affects long-term memory. They were able to show that changes in two important brain regions, the hippocampus and the occipital lobe, as well as their interaction, have an influence on the impaired recall of personal memories in aphantasia. The study results, which advance the understanding of autobiographical memory, have now been published online by the journal "eLife".

Researchers at the University Hospitals of Dresden and Bonn of the DFG Transregio 237 and from the Cluster of Excellence ImmunoSensation2 at the University of Bonn have made progress clarifying why patients with myotonic dystrophy 2 have a higher tendency to develop autoimmune diseases. Their goal is to understand the development of the disease, and their research has provided new, potential therapeutic targets. The results of the study have now been published in the renowned journal "Nature Communications".
 
 

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, the University Hospital Bonn and the University of Bonn have created an open-source platform known as A-SOiD that can learn and predict user-defined behaviors, just from video. The results of the study have now been published in the journal "Nature Methods".

Zebrafish are smaller than your little finger, with a brain no more than half the size of a pinhead. Yet these animals possess an efficient navigation system that enables them to find their way back to spots in the water where the temperature suits them. This has been revealed in a recent study by the University of Bonn and University Hospital Bonn together with the Technical University of Munich (TUM), whose findings have been published in the journal “Current Biology.”

Angioedema is a rare but potentially life-threatening adverse reaction to ACE inhibitors. In a joint analysis of eight European study collectives, researchers from the University Hospital Bonn (UKB), the University of Bonn and the Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM) for the first time conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) with more than 1,000 affected individuals. They identified a total of three risk loci in the genome. These included a new locus that had not previously been associated with the risk of ACE inhibitor-induced angioedema. The results of the study have now been published in the "Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology".
 
 

An estimated five to ten percent of blindness worldwide is due to the rare inflammatory eye disease uveitis. Intermediate uveitis is often associated with a chronic course of the disease and the need for immunosuppressive therapy. Intermediate uveitis primarily causes inflammation of the vitreous body, but blood flow to the retina can also be restricted. Researchers at the Eye Clinic of the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) and the University of Bonn have tested optical coherence tomography angiography as a new imaging monitoring method. The blood flow in the retinal vessels is associated with the severity of inflammation and allows conclusions to be drawn about the future course of the disease. Accordingly, this method could be used to monitor the disease and identify patients at risk of a future worsening of the disease. The results have now been published in Nature Scientific Reports.
 
 

To make your research in and with 3R methods more widely known and highly visible to the scientific community, you can now apply for the new "Paper of the Quarter".

Brown fat cells convert energy into heat – a key to eliminating unwanted fat deposits. In addition, they also protect against cardiovascular diseases. Researchers from the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) and the Transdisciplinary Research Area "Life & Health" at the University of Bonn have now identified the protein EPAC1 as a new pharmacological target to increase brown fat mass and activity. The long-term aim is to find medicines that support weight loss. The results of the study have now been published in the renowned journal "Nature Cell Biology".