Neuroimaging
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Neuroimaging
Neuroimaging
The research projects of the Neuroimaging Unit focus on advancing research on neurodegenerative diseases through the use of state-of-the-art neuroimaging techniques. Neuroimaging plays a pivotal role in unraveling the complex brain changes underlying cognitive decline and dementia. By enabling the in-vivo assessment of disease-specific patterns of brain degeneration, neuroimaging serves as an essential tool for early diagnosis, disease monitoring, and the development of personalized treatment approaches in Alzheimer’s disease and related neurodegenerative dementias.
The Unit is equipped with cutting-edge infrastructure, including a Siemens Cima.X 3T MRI scanner, the first of its kind installed in a European research center. This high-performance system enables acquisition of advanced multimodal MRI sequences with exceptional resolution and speed. As the central neuroimaging core, the Unit oversees and supports all neuroimaging-related aspects of CIEN’s comprehensive research projects and cohort studies of patients with different types of neurodegenerative diseases. As such, the research activity in the Neuroimaging Unit includes coordinated acquisition, storage, pre-processing, and computational analysis of diverse types of neuroimaging data, including multimodal MRI acquisitions at the Unit’s own research-dedicated Cima.X 3T-MRI scanner as well as external acquisitions of PET imaging data at collaborating Nuclear Medicine Departments.
To carry out clinical-translational research projects, the Neuroimaging Unit has access to the rich biological samples and phenotyping data that are being collected through CIEN’s large-scale observational cohort studies of different patient populations, including the recently completed Vallecas project, which is a unique longitudinal cohort study of over 1000 deeply phenotyped older individuals who had normal cognition at baseline and underwent longitudinal clinical, multimodal MRI, and blood measurements for up to 10 years. In addition, the Vallecas Alzheimer Reina Sofia (VARS) study is a world-wide unique cohort study that follows dementia patients living in the associated nursing home of the Reina Sofia Foundation Alzheimer Centre with repeated clinical assessments, multimodal MRI, and biological sample collections, and provides detailed neuropathological examination after death in the context of a brain donation program. This design facilitates minimal time between ante-mortem neuroimaging assessments and brain collection and provides a unique opportunity to carry out neuropathological validation studies of multimodal MRI biomarkers in a cohort of dementia patients with diverse etiologies. Other ongoing cohort studies at the CIEN Foundation include the Madrid Frontotemporal Dementia Consortium and the large-scale national precision medicine project SCAP-AD, which recruits elderly individuals with early cognitive deficits that undergo in-depth neurological and neuropsychological examinations, CSF and blood sample collection, as well as a multimodal MRI-PET neuroimaging protocol.
The Neuroimaging Platform team, led by Dr Michel Grothe (PhD in Clinical Neuroscience), has a multidisciplinary character and is composed of the following professionals:
PhD in Clinical Neuroscience. PI and team leader.
PhD in Clinical Research in Medicine. Degree in Physics, expert in Neuroimaging. | Post-doctoral researcher
PhD in Radiological Imaging. Degree in Psychology. Post-doctoral researcher.
Graduate in Psychology, specialist in Neurosciences | Pre-doctoral Researcher
Graduate in Psychology, specialising in Neurosciences | Pre-doctoral Researcher
Coordinator. Radiodiagnostic Technician. Graduate in Radiology.
Senior technician in Diagnostic Imaging
Senior Diagnostic Imaging Technician. Graduate in Psychology.
Higher University Technician in Radiology and Imaging.
Higher Technician in Diagnostic Imaging
Neuroimaging Platform Secretary
Neuroimaging Platform Secretary
Principal Research Lines
Our research focuses on the use of multimodal neuroimaging techniques to study the neuronal correlates and molecular underpinnings of cognitive decline and dementia in age-related neurodegenerative diseases, most notably Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and related neurodegenerative dementias. The overarching goal of this research is to better understand the diverse pathophysiologic processes that lead to cognitive decline and dementia in the elderly, and to use this information for the development of clinically useful tools for earlier and more precise differential diagnosis of age-related neurodegenerative diseases and personalized prognosis of an individual’s risk for cognitive decline and dementia.
Current core research lines at the Neuroimaging Unit include:
The effect of Lewy body (co-)pathology on the clinical and imaging phenotype of amnestic patients. Brain. 2025 Jan 31:awaf037. doi:10.1093/brain/awaf037. PMID: 39888600.
Silva-Rodríguez J, Labrador-Espinosa MA, Zhang L, Castro-Labrador S, López-González FJ, Moscoso A, Sánchez-Juan P, Schöll M, Grothe MJ. Analyzes the impact of Lewy body co-pathology in patients with amnestic impairment, revealing differences in clinical and imaging phenotypes.Neuropathological contributions to grey matter atrophy and white matter hyperintensities in amnestic dementia. Alzheimers Res Ther. 2025 Jan 9;17(1):16. doi:10.1186/s13195-024-01633-2. PMID: 39789603
Ortega-Cruz D, Rabano A, Strange BA. Explores how different neuropathological lesions contribute to cortical atrophy and white matter hyperintensities in amnestic dementia.Imaging biomarkers of cortical neurodegeneration underlying cognitive impairment in Parkinson's disease. Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging. 2025 May;52(6):2002-2014. doi:10.1007/s00259-025-07070-z. PMID: 39888421.
Silva-Rodríguez J, Labrador-Espinosa MÁ, Castro-Labrador S, Muñoz-Delgado L, Franco-Rosado P, Castellano-Guerrero AM, et al. Compares imaging modalities to identify cortical biomarkers linked to cognitive decline in Parkinson’s disease.Cortical hypometabolism in Parkinson's disease is linked to cholinergic basal forebrain atrophy. Mol Psychiatry. 2024 Dec 5. doi:10.1038/s41380-024-02842-9. PMID: 39639173.
Labrador-Espinosa MA, Silva-Rodriguez J, Okkels N, Muñoz-Delgado L, Horsager J, Castro-Labrador S, et al. Links cortical hypometabolism to cholinergic basal forebrain atrophy, highlighting its key role in cognitive deterioration in Parkinson’s disease.Hippocampal sclerosis of aging at post-mortem is evident on MRI more than a decade prior. Alzheimers Dement. 2023 Nov;19(11):5307-5315. doi:10.1002/alz.13352. PMID: 37366342.
Ortega-Cruz D, Iglesias JE, Rabano A, Strange BA. Demonstrates that hippocampal sclerosis of aging can be detected on MRI more than a decade before death.Proposes a new histological staging of hippocampal sclerosis that corresponds with gray matter loss observable through neuroimaging.
Ortega-Cruz D, Uceda-Heras A, Iglesias JE, Zea-Sevilla MA, Strange B, Rabano A Propone una nueva clasificación histológica que se corresponde con atrofia observable mediante neuroimagen.Brain structure and phenotypic profile of superagers compared with age-matched older adults: a longitudinal analysis from the Vallecas Project. Lancet Healthy Longev. 2023 Aug;4(8):e374-e385. doi:10.1016/S2666-7568(23)00079-X. PMID: 37454673.
Garo-Pascual M, Gaser C, Zhang L, Tohka J, Medina M, Strange BA. A study from the Vallecas Project identifying brain structural characteristics associated with successful cognitive aging.