Fatigue in Multiple Sclerosis Background, Clinic, Diagnostic, Therapy

Iris-Katharina Penner, PhD, is a cognitive neuroscientist and neuropsychologist at the University Hospital Bern in Switzerland. She is also the founder of the COGITO Center for Applied Neurocognition and Neuropsychological Research Düsseldorf. Professor Penner studied in Germany at the Universities of Bonn and Berlin and received her diploma in psychology at the Free University of Berlin. She completed her PhD at the Department of Neuroradiology (University Hospital Basel) and the Department of Cognitive Psychology and Methodology (University of Basel) on the topic of cognitive and functional changes in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). From 2003 to 2009, Professor Penner worked as senior neuroscientist at the Department of Cognitive Psychology and Methodology and as associate neuroscientist at the Department of Neurology (University Hospital Basel). She was scientifically engaged in cognition, fatigue, and cognitive rehabilitation in patients with MS. From 2009 to April 2015, sheworked as senior neuroscientist and lecturer at the University of Basel, as well as in private practice at the Neurozentrum in Zürich with a focus on neuropsychological assessments in patients with neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative diseases. In May 2015 Prof. Penner moved to the Neurology Department of the Heinrich-Heine University in Düsseldorf and founded the COGITO Center for Applied Neurocognition and Neuropsychological Research. In January 2022 Prof. Penner moved back to Switzerland where she is now the Head of Neuropsychology at the Department of Neurology and Neurorehabilitation at the University Hospital Bern.

 

Professor Penner is a nationally and internationally renowned expert in the field of cognition and fatigue in MS. She developed the fatigue scale for motor and cognitive functions and published numerous scientific articles and book chapters. Professor Penner is a member of several professional and scientific societies. Her clinical and scientific focus is concentrated on cognitive processes and brain plasticity in neurodegenerative and inflammatory diseases of the human brain. From 2013 to 2015, she served as the President of the International MS Cognition Society.