Per Borghammer is a professor of Nuclear Medicine & Neuroscience, Medical Faculty of Aarhus University. He specializes in clinical imaging of neurodegenerative disorders - especially Parkinson’s disease.

Dr. Borghammer’s research involves understanding the early and prodromal phase of Parkinson’s disease (PD). His research focuses mainly on the etiopathogenesis of PD, in particular the prion-like spreading of alpha-synuclein and whether PD in some cases originates in the peripheral autonomic nervous system. Dr. Borghammer employs a highly multi-disciplinary approach, including in depth characterization of patient cohorts using multi-modality imaging, histological studies of archived patient tissues, epidemiological studies, and mechanistic studies in experimental animal models of PD. In addition, his group is developing a range of PET tracers and other objective imaging markers to study non-motor dysfunction in PD. Most notably, he pioneered the development of novel PET imaging techniques to quantify the loss of parasympathetic innervation to internal organs and recently proposed the brain-first vs. body-first model of Parkinson’s disease.

Dr. Borghammer’s research is funded by the Lundbeck foundation, Michael J. Fox Foundation, Danish Research Council, and Danish Parkinson Association.