Alexander Garthe

Dr. Alexander Garthe serves as a Group Leader at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) in Dresden, Germany, focusing on translational neuroscience to bridge laboratory animal models and clinical research in neurodegenerative disorders.

His research centers on three interconnected domains:

• Spatial Cognition Assessment: Development and validation of the Dresden Spatial Navigation Task (DSNT), a virtual reality adaptation of the Morris water maze, for detecting early Alzheimer's disease through homologous behavioral metrics across species.
• Neurotransmitter Dynamics: Investigating region-specific neurotransmitter interactions during spatial learning using structural equation modeling to map neural correlates of cognitive plasticity.
• Individual Learning Biographies: Applying high-dimensional Markov chains to quantify personalized spatial knowledge acquisition, identifying how landmark salience shapes cognitive maps in neurodegenerative contexts.

Methodologically, his group employs advanced trajectory analysis of temporally ordered movement data (xy-coordinates) via Matlab, R, and Python, extracting novel parameters like landmark usage patterns, decision points, and search strategies beyond traditional latency/path length metrics. This approach yields larger effect sizes and identifies specific learning deficits in mild cognitive impairment versus early Alzheimer's disease.

No scientific awards were documented in the source material. The research operates within his dedicated DZNE group without mention of formal student supervision or grant funding specifics, emphasizing computational modeling and cross-species validation of spatial learning paradigms for early dementia detection.