Louisa Specht-Riemenschneider and Theodor Rüber among top 3 at the Medical Imaging Bonn Future Panel

Prof. Louisa Specht Riemenschneider, Chair of Civil Law, Information Law and Data Law at the University of Bonn, and Theodor have been awarded €10k at the Medical Pitch Contest Bonn. Their 5-minute pitch presenting their recently founded start-up deyond has convinced the high-profile jury consisting of renowned venture capital investors. The prize money will be used to develop the brand, Louisa and Theodor agree.

Towards New Horizons

This autumn, we proudly introduce three new members of our research group: Annalena Lange, Theda v. der Recke and Justus Bisten

Annalena completed a Master's degree in mathematics at the University of Bonn. As a PhD canditate she is working on the problem of lesion detection in focal pharmacoresistant epilepsy, which is an important prerequisite for epilepsy surgery treatment.

Theda is a medical student in her 5th year of medicine at the University Witten/Herdecke. She is taking a research semester on morphological changes in the hippocampus in epilepsy using automated software to segment subfields of this highly interesting part of the brain based on 7T MRI scans.

Justus is a PhD candidate interested in the field of neuroinformatics, where he specialises on parcellation-free modelling of brain networks, with a particular focus on enhancing pre-surgical evaluations for individuals with epilepsy. With a background in biology and life science informatics, his aim is to develop new methodologies for understanding and mapping the complex neural connections within the brain, potentially enhancing the treatment and management of epileptic conditions.

We are excited about this new chapter and the upcoming research!

Transdisciplinary Resarch on Consciousness

Hemispherotomy is a maximally invasive neurosurgical procedure indicated as a last resort for certain individuals with catastrophic drug-resistant epilepsy. It results in the complete isolation of one hemisphere from the rest of the central nervous system. Such an isolated hemisphere raises the question of its state of consciousness and inspires a debate on "islands of awareness". Together with other researchers / colleagues at the Department of Epileptology, Tobias, Markus and Theodor have developed approaches to investigate this hemisphere using advanced network modeling and innovative fMRI paradigms. The results require neurophilosophical expertise and are therefore contextualized and discussed by Markus Gabriel and Charlotte Gauvry. This collaboration shows once again how fruitful transdisciplinary research projects can be. What exactly this means will hopefully be published soon...

Markus Gabriel is Professor of Epistemology, Modern and Contemporary Philosophy and Director of the International Center for Philosophy at the University of Bonn. Charlotte Gauvry is a postdoctoral researcher at the International Center for Philosophy, focusing on the philosophy of neuroscience and consciousness.

Charlotte and Theodor have organized the Bonn Conference on "Detecting unusual consciousness" together with Uwe Peters, which will took place on September 27-28 at the International Center for Philosophy and the Department of Epileptology.