The image on the front cover is a negative of The Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635) captured by the Hubble Space telescope. The Bubble Nebula is located 7,100 light-years away and was discovered by William Herschel in 1787. The seething star forming this nebula is 45 times more massive than our sun. Gas on the star gets so hot that it escapes away into space as a “stellar wind” moving at over 4 million miles per hour. This outflow sweeps up the cold, interstellar gas in front of it, forming the outer edge of the bubble. As the surface of the bubble’s shell expands outward, it slams into dense regions of cold gas on one side of the bubble. This asymmetry makes the star appear dramatically off-center from the bubble, with its location in the 10 o’clock position in the Hubble view. The colours correspond to red for oxygen, pink for hydrogen and blue for nitrogen. I was drawn to this image because of the similarities between astronomy and visualising complex molecular processes in the human brain. The font used for the chapter pages is a personally modified Gilbert Color Bold. The Gilbert font is a tribute font to honor the memory of Gilbert Baker, the creator of the LGBT Rainbow Flag. The Gilbert Color font was later designed to express diversity and inclusion. The work described in this thesis was performed at the Department of Pathology of the Amsterdam UMC - location VUmc (Amsterdam, The Netherlands) under supervision of prof. dr. S. Amor and prof.dr. P. van der Valk and in collaboration with the Department of Brain Sciences of the Imperial College (London, United Kingdom) under supervision of dr. D.R.J. Owen. Financial support for the printing of this thesis was kindly provided by the Stichting MS Research and by the Graduate School Neurosciences Amsterdam Rotterdam (ONWAR). Printing: Ridderprint | www.ridderprint.nl ISBN: 978-94-6458-048-8 Copyright © 2022 E. Nutma. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior permission of the author
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