Birgit Kettenmann, Ph.D.
Assistant Research Professor
Sanger Hall, Room B3-020
Phone: (804) 828-4424
Fax: (804) 828-6129
E-mail: bkettenmann2@vcu.edu
Areas of Interest
- Advanced imaging techniques, such as fMRI, Diffusion Tensor Imaging and Proton Spectroscopy.
Research Projects/Grants
- Brain imaging:
- Functional topography of perception and imagination in the chemical senses. Role of obito-frontal cortex in integrating smell, taste and satiety and potential role in obesity.
- Investigation of brain recovery and neural adaptation after severe brain injury.
- MRI in subjects receiving trans-cranial magnetic stimulation therapy for major depression.
- Proto Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy – relationship between regional brain chemistry and anxiety in monozygotic twins; relationship between brain chemistry and potential for recovery in head injury patients.
- Diffusion Tensor Imaging – white matter tractography.
- Chemosensory research:
- Patients with smell deficits from nasal pathologies.
- Smell and taste deficits in patients suffering from head and neck cancer, obesity, epilepsy or Parkinson’s disease.
- Nanotechnology:
- Create a platform for acute visualization and effective tumor therapy by using optimally functionalized and targeted multimodal tri-metallofullerenes (fMFs) that distribute throughout heterogeneous infiltrative tumors, such as glioblastoma, when infused intra-tumorally.
Description: Medical rehabilitation management during coma recovery has been hampered by the paucity of rigorous trials examining rehabilitation effectiveness. In collaboration with McGuire VA hospital in Richmond, Edward Hines Jr. VA Hospital and Northwestern University Chicago, a Phase II Randomized Clinical Trial using fMRI to determine treatment success has started to address this knowledge gap. The purpose of this study is to determine whether a high dose of familiar vocal stimulation, the experimental intervention, improves neurobehavioral outcomes for persons who are unconscious after severe TBI.
Title: MRI in subjects receiving transcranial magnetic stimulation therapy for major depression
Description: In collaboration with the departments of Psychiatry and Neurosurgery neuronal correlates and metabolic changes are studied with fMRI and proton spectroscopy in patients suffering from major depression pre- and post-TMS treatment, to correlate TMS-induced changes in depression scores, with neuroimaging results.
Title: Test-reliability for different fMRI stimulation paradigms
Description: The goal of this project is to evaluate the inter- and intra-subject reproducibility of fMRI activation to visual, auditory and olfactory tasks. These tasks are planned to be used in the context of pre-surgical functional mapping, treatment and rehabilitation, as well as disease progression monitoring.
Title: Feasibility of event-related olfactory fMRI in a clinical setting
Description: This project is investigating olfactory event-related fMRI paradigms. The goal is to proof feasibility and superiority over olfactory block designs in a clinical setting.
Title: Obesity study
Description: This project investigates neuronal mechanisms underlying obesity. In this study the hypothesis that there is a link between the underlying causes of obesity and the way the brain processes smell when eating is tested. This study will help us better understand this link and consequently how food intake is controlled.
Education
- Ph.D., Neuropharmacology – University of Erlangen-Nuremberg
- Approbation (pharmaceutical license) – University of Erlangen-Nuremberg
- M.S., Pharmacy – University of Erlangen-Nuremberg
- B.S., Chemistry – University of Bonn