News Archive

22.11.2023

New paper alert: Review on Catatonia, New England Journal of Medicine

Stephan Heckers and Sebastian Walther performed a state-of-the-art review on catatonia in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine. They discuss multiple presentations and treatment of catatonia in various settings. Sensational Impact Factor of 158.5!

17.11.2023

Jessica Peter receives SNSF Starting Grant

Prof. Dr. Jessica Peter from the Department of Old Age Psychiatry and Psychotherapy receives an SNSF Starting Grant (~ CHF 1.8 million) to run a 5-year project on remembering and forgetting in health and disease. The project will combine non-invasive brain stimulation and neuroimaging to investigate how memories are formed or forgotten in younger and older healthy adults as well as in patients with depression.

13.11.2023

Stephanie Lefebvre won the 1st Poster prize at the SSBP 2023 annual symposium

In this work (in press in Brain) Stephanie Lefebvre et al. from Pr. Sebastian Walther's team explored the association between psychomotor slowing and cortical excitability in schizophrenia.

13.11.2023

Lydia Maderthaner won the clinical research poster prize at the 18th Annual Meeting Clinical Neuroscience Bern

In this work, Lydia Maderthaner and Sebastian Walther demonstrated that the subdomains of though disorders rely on different brain pattern alteration.

19.09.2023

Mélodie Derome, PhD wins the prestigious Frutiger Prize 2023 - two prizes were awarded

Mélodie Derome from the research group of Prof. Katharina Stegmayer has been conducting excellent neuroscientific research in youth and the so called ultra-high risk (UHR) period immediately preceding the onset of psychosis. It is important to note that the UHR period often occurs during adolescence, a period characterized by rapid and significant neural reorganization. However, still there is no consensus about the exact nature of impairment prior to the onset of the disorder. Mrs Derome was among the first to provide developmental measures during adolescence. She moved our understanding of three predic-tors: schizotypy, anomalous experiences of the self, and childhood trauma in schizophrenia significantly ahead, confirming the importance of positive schizotypy for the development of the risk to develop self-disturbances, in particular during the transition between childhood to adolescence. Schizotypy could therefore become one of the markers of psychosis risk. The prize will be a sustainable promotion of her excellent, cutting-edge research and will have a significant impact on her research carrier.

19.09.2023

Andjela Markovic, PhD wins the prestigious Frutiger Prize 2023 - two prizes were awarded

Andjela Markovic from the research group of Prof. Leila Tarokh has been thriving in performing cutting-edge research on the link between sleep behavior, neurophysiology, and environmental factors with several original and timely projects. For instance, based on longitudinal data from 781 families fol-lowed throughout the COVID-19 confinement in 2020, Dr. Markovic identified the risk and protective factors for young children’s sleep behavior and published this work in the Journal of Sleep Research. This knowledge creates opportunities for tailoring early interventions to support children’s sleep and thereby healthy devel-opment. Dr. Markovic's scientific track record is impressive, with her work already being cited over 280 times at this early stage of her career. She has been listed as an author in 16 original peer-reviewed publications. Of those, she has served as the first or last author 15 times, primarily in neuroscientific and psychiatric journals. In summary, Dr. Markovic is an exceptional, talented, and hard-working scientist who has demonstrated remarkable growth as a professional researcher.

11.06.2023

Victoria Chapellier won a Early Career Award at SIRS 2023

Congratulation to Victoria Chapellier from Sebastian Walther's team for her SIRS early career award.

11.06.2023

Melanie G Nuoffer won the Poster prize at the GISS 2023 for her work gait in schizophrenia

In this work, (doi: 10.1038/s41537-022-00324-x), Melanie G Nuoffer and Sebastian Walther demonstrated Patients with psychomotor slowing are specifically impaired when an adaptation of gait patterns is required, contributing to the deleterious effects of sedentary behaviours.

17.04.2023

Dr. Niklaus Denier receives support from the competitive Sitem-Insel Support Funds (SISF)

For his research project "Mindfulness and the thalamocortical system as drivers in the maintenance of alcohol abstinence - a high field MRI study" Niklaus Denier, MD, senior physician and scientist of the University Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy (PP) of the UPD, will be paid by the sitem-insel Support Funds for the MRI measurements in the Inselspital in the amount of approximately CHF 100,000. The project has been selected from ten applications as worthy of support, as the Vice Director Research of the University of Bern writes in his letter. Congratulations!

14.01.2023

Dr. Dr. Lukas Krone has won the 2022 Young scientist Award of the European Sleep Research Society (ESRS)

The ESRS promotes Sleep Research and Sleep Medicine in Europe. The award is presented every biennially at the European Sleep Research Congress to four young scientists for outstanding scientific contributions. In his project together with the Universities of Oxford and Freiburg im Breisgau on the sleep-modulating effects of clozapine derivatives, Lukas Krone and his doctoral student Janine Traut were able to show systematic changes in the sleep architecture and sleep-related brain activity of mice by substances that have structural similarities to the antipsychotic clozapine. Lukas Krone has been working since 2021 as an assistant physician and "clinician scientist" at the University Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy of the of the UPD. Previously, he completed his Ph. in medicine and neuroscience at the universities of Freiburg (Germany) and Oxford (United Kingdom). (UK). For his research on regulatory mechanisms of sleep of sleep, he has already received the Young Investigator Award of the the World Sleep Society in 2020 and the Young Investigator Award of the of the German Society for Sleep Research and Sleep Medicine.