Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a devastating disorder with progressive paralysis leading to death after 3-5 years. Currently there is no cure for ALS.

Recently, an overlap between ALS and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) has been discovered; patients with ALS may have cognitive and behavioral problems which can be mild to severe. This so called non-motor involvement is of clinical and scientific relevance (understanding of pathophysiology, compliance with therapy, stratification in trials).

The brain regions and networks that drive the non-motor part of ALS are not fully understood. A multimodal brain imaging approach (structural and functional MRI, and magnetoencephalography) on a longitudinal dataset of well characterized patients (pure motor ALS/ALS with frontotemporal dysfunction and FTD without ALS) could contribute to our understanding of this important feature of ALS.

We offer a Master Thesis/Internship position at the department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine which involves the analysis of a unique longitudinal neuroimaging dataset of patients with ALS (with and without non-motor involvement), patients with FTD and controls. The student will be responsible for the network analysis of Diffusion Tensor Imaging and resting-state functional MRI data. As such, some experience with programming is required.

In addition to that, the student will have to option to obtain some clinical experience at the outpatient ALS and FTD clinics. For the clinical part, proficiency in Dutch is required.

This is a collaboration between the Departments of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine and the Department of Neurology.

For more information and questions, please email Anouk Schrantee (a.g.schrantee@amsterdamumc.nl)