Annotation: Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) is one of the most common neurodegenerative dementias after Alzheimer’s disease (AD), yet it remains frequently underrecognised. Positioned at the intersection of synucleinopathies and AD, DLB represents a “chameleon” of neurodegeneration, characterised by a highly variable clinical phenotype and frequent coexistence of multiple protein pathologies. This lecture integrates core clinical features such as cognitive fluctuations, visual hallucinations, REM sleep behaviour disorder, and parkinsonism with underlying disease mechanisms, including alpha-synuclein aggregation and its interaction with amyloid and tau. Emphasis is placed on insights from multimodal neuroimaging and biomarker research, which delineate distinct patterns of network dysfunction, selective vulnerability (especially of cholinergic systems), and disease heterogeneity. Characteristic biomarker findings will be illustrated, including dopaminergic imaging (DaTscan), cardiac MIBG scintigraphy, EEG, MRI, and FDG-PET patterns, providing a translational link between clinical phenotype, brain networks, and molecular pathology.

Biography: Dr Zuzana Nedelská is a cognitive and behavioural neurologist at Charles University and Motol University Hospital and a recognised international expert in dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) and related neurodegenerative disorders. She leads a clinical and translational research programme focused on DLB, integrating multimodal neuroimaging, biofluid biomarkers, and cognitive phenotyping within the Czech Brain Ageing Study (www.cbas.cz). Dr Nedelská completed her MD and PhD in neuroscience at Charles University and trained at the Mayo Clinic, where she conducted pioneering work in multimodal imaging of DLB, including some of the first longitudinal MRI and PET studies in autopsy-confirmed cohorts. Her research has advanced understanding of disease heterogeneity, coexisting Alzheimer’s pathology, and cholinergic system degeneration in DLB. She has authored over 60 peer-reviewed publications in leading journals, including JAMA Network Open, Neurology, PNAS, and Alzheimer’s & Dementia (h-index 30), and is an award-winning researcher and invited international speaker.

Contact at IPHYS: RNDr. David Levčík, Ph.D., Laboratory of Neurophysiology of Memory; david.levcik@fgu.cas.cz