Project information
Virtual brain twins for trajectories of Dementia with Lewy Bodies (VIBRANT-DLB)

Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), the second most prevalent neurodegenerative disease, presents significant challenges in early diagnosis leaving nearly 80% of Lewy body patients initially misdiagnosed. While the neuroimaging biomarkers can provide early detection, they often offer contradictory interpretation, are disconnected from the existing knowledge on the underlying neuropathology of the disease and overlook critical individual differences due to the case-control approach. We will adapt the recent advances in incorporating dopaminergic neuromodulation in virtual brain models and extend them to include additional pathways which are implied in the cognitive function deficits in DLB.

The resulting model will be used to build virtual brain twins of 103 subjects from our existing dataset on the prodromal DLB spectrum using functional data features derived from resting state EEG and fMRI, including longitudinal follow-up visits. Preliminary data on these subjects have revealed static and dynamic functional connectivity alterations indicative of compensatory brain network adaptation associated with cognitive benefits. Using the newly developed model, we aim to relate the changes in cognitive performance with the focus on executive functions and use the inference and validation capacities for virtual brain models available in EBRAINS.

The expected outcomes of this study include a novel virtual brain twin model for DLB, benchmarked with respect to individual stratification and disease trajectory mapping. The model together with a representative synthetic dataset of DLB will be integrated in EBRAINS, including implementation of the model in The Virtual Brain simulator, and entries of both the model and the data in the Knowledge Graph.