Research Areas
Teaming up with clinical scientists, I employ network centered neurophysiological approaches in early-stage models of neurological disorders, aiming at defining neuronal network function as own pathophysiological entity, enabling novel therapeutic strategies, with a focus on brain-state informed interventions.
Figure 1 Early increases in interindividual variability of phenotypes in the presymptomatic phase of neurodegenerative disorders may be due to the individual trajectories of network compensation. The schematic illustrates an archetypical progression through disease stages, and the underlying trajectories of network function as well as network compensatory mechanisms. Between T0 and T1 the network is able to fully compensate for the effects of the increasing disease burden; that is, remains within homeostatic boundaries. Between T1 and T3 the disease burden exceeds the homeostatic compensatory ability of the network, leading to early subtle behavioral signs while the network finds temporally dynamic, metastable state solutions differing between individuals. At later stages, particularly at T3, the advanced neuronal cell loss, especially of critical nodes, leading to network sparsification, reduces the degrees of freedom of the network to compensate. This leads to an accelerating decline in function and network compensation, resulting in a common final path of rapid functional deterioration with little interindividual variability (from Stroh et al, TINS 2024).
Selected Publications
Cleppien D, Schwalm M, Backhaus H, Fu T, Aedo-Jury F, Schneider G, Stroh A. Crossing the scales: single-neuron recruitment and continuous cortical propagation of slow wave events revealed by integrative opto-magnetic imaging. Neuroimage . 2025. Oct 7:121513. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2025.121513.
Stroh A, Schweiger S, Ramirez JM, Tüscher O. The selfish network: how the brain preserves behavioral function through shifts in neuronal network state. Trends Neurosci . 2024. Apr;47(4):246-258. doi: 10.1016/j.tins.2024.02.005.
Zaer H, Fan W, Orlowski D, Glud AN, Jensen MB, Worm ES, Lukacova S, Mikkelsen TW, Fitting LM, Jacobsen LM, Portmann T, Hsieh JY, Noel C, Weidlich G, Chung W, Riley P, Jenkins C, Adler JR Jr, Schneider MB, Sørensen JCH, Stroh A. Non-ablative doses of focal ionizing radiation alters function of central neural circuits. Brain Stim. 2022; 15(3):586-597. doi: 10.1016/j.brs.2022.04.001.
Ellwardt E, Pramanik G, Luchtman D, Novkovic T, Jubal E R, Vogt J, Arnoux I, Vogelaar CF, Mandal S, Schmalz M, Barger Z, Ruiz de Azua I, Kuhlmann T, Lutz B, Mittmann T, Bittner S, Zipp F*, Stroh A*. Maladaptive cortical hyperactivity upon recovery from experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis. Nat. Neurosci. 2018; 21(10):1392-1403. doi: 10.1038/s41593-018-0193-2. (*Equally contributing).
Arnoux I, Willam M, Griesche N, Krummeich J, Watari H, Offermann N, Weber S, Narayan Dey P, Chen C, Monteiro O, Buettner S, Meyer K, Bano D, Radyushkin K, Langston R, Lambert J J, Wanker E, Methner A, Krauss S, Schweiger S*, Stroh A*. Metformin reverses early cortical network dysfunction and behavior changes in Huntington's disease. eLife. 2018; 7:e38744. doi: 10.7554/eLife.38744. (*Equally contributing).
Honors and Awards:
| since 2020 | Associate Editor at the Journal of Neurophysiology |
| 2009 | Certificate of Merit for contribution: “Rat fMRI at 17.6 T upon implantation of an optical fiber”, ESMRMB 2009 |
| 2005 | Kurt-Decker-Award, Annual national award for exceptional research assigned by the German Society for Neuroradiology (DGNR) |
| 2003 | Young Investigators Award for exceptional research in life sciences and medicine assigned by the Roland-Ernst-Foundation, Leipzig, Germany |
Academic CV
| since 2024 | Director of the Institute of Physiology I, Professor (W3) and Chair of Physiology, University Hospital Münster, Germany |
| 4/2018 - 10/2018 |
Visiting Professor at the University of Washington, Seattle, and the Center for Integrative Brain Research, Seattle Children´s Hospital |
| 2018 - 2024 | Tenured Associate Professor (W2) of Molecular Imaging and Optogenetics, Institute of Pathophysiology, Univ. Medical Center of JGU Mainz |
| 2012 - 2018 |
Assistant Professor (W1) of Molecular Imaging and Optogenetics, Institute for Microscopic Anatomy and Neurobiology, Univ. Medical Center of JGU Mainz |
| 2007 - 2012 |
Postdoctoral scholar at the Institute of Neuroscience, University Hospital, Technical Univ. Munich, with Arthur Konnerth |
| 2005 - 2007 | Postdoctoral scholar at the University Medical Center, Stanford University, with Karl Deisseroth |
| 2006 | Dr. rer. nat. (Ph.D.) in Experimental Biophysics (summa cum laude) on “MR Imaging of magnetically labelled stem cells in rodent models of neurological disorders” |
| 2002 - 2005 | PhD student at Charité Medical School Berlin, with Ulrich Dirnagl and Claus Zimmer, Member of Graduate school "Damage cascades in neurological disorders - studies with imaging techniques” |
| 1996 - 2001 | Studies in Biophysics at the Humboldt University Berlin |
| 1994 - 1996 | Studies in Biology at Free University Berlin |