Dr. Gunnar Waterstraat

Specialist in neurology

  • specialized training in EMG (DGKN certificate, DGKN trainer), evoked potentials (DGKN certificate) and EEG (DGKN certificate).
  • member of the German Society for Clinical Neurophysiology
  • doctorate in 2016 at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin on the subject of (title translated) “Non-invasive single stimulus detection of high-frequency evoked potentials in humans” with the grade “summa cum laude”

Languages

german, english

Career

  • born 1984
  • medical state examination: 2010
  • 2010-2019 training in neurology at the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Campus Benjamin Franklin
  • 2020-2023 supervision of the electrophysiology laboratory of the Department of Neurology with Experimental Neurology, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Campus Benjamin Franklin
  • 2022-2023 senior physician at the Department of Neurology with Experimental Neurology, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Campus Benjamin Franklin, Head of the epilepsy outpatient clinic

Areas of specialization

  • lesions of peripheral nerves
  • radicular syndromes
  • pelvic floor diagnostics
  • polyneuropathies
  • vertigo
  • myopathies
  • neuromuscular disorders
  • vascular diagnostics of the neck vessels and intracranial vessels
  • multiple sclerosis and other chronic inflammatory diseases of the CNS
  • headaches
  • dementia assessment

Further activities

  • research and teaching at the Department of Neurology, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin
  • co-principal investigator of the DFG-funded project SPIKE-MEG
  • reviewer for international scientific journals (e.g., NeuroImage, Clinical Neurophysiology, International Journal of Developmental Neuroscience, Transactions on Neural Systems & Rehabilitation Engineering)

Publications (selected):

  • Fedele, T; Scheer, HJ; Waterstraat, G; Telenczuk, B; Burghoff, M; Curio, G. Towards non-invasive multi-unit spike recordings: Mapping 1 kHz EEG signals over human somatosensory cortex, Clinical Neurophysiology,123,12,2370-2376,2012.
  • Waterstraat, G; Telenczuk, B; Burghoff, M; Fedele, T; Scheer, HJ; Curio, G. Are high-frequency (600 Hz) oscillations in human somatosensory evoked potentials due to phase-resetting phenomena? Clinical neurophysiology,123,10,2064-2073,2012.
  • Waterstraat, G; Fedele, T; Burghoff, M; Scheer, HJ; Curio, G. Recording human cortical population spikes non-invasively–An EEG tutorial,Journal of neuroscience methods,250,74-84,2015.
  • Waterstraat, G; Burghoff, M; Fedele, T; Nikulin, V; Scheer, HJ; Curio, G. Non-invasive single-trial EEG detection of evoked human neocortical population spikes,NeuroImage,105,13-20,2015.
  • Waterstraat, G, Scheuermann, M, Curio, G. Non-invasive single-trial detection of variable population spike responses in human somatosensory evoked potentials, Clinical Neurophysiology,127,3,1872-1878,2016.
  • Waterstraat, G; Curio, G; Nikulin, V. On optimal spatial filtering for the detection of phase coupling in multivariate neural recordings,NeuroImage,157,,331-340,2017.
  • Stephani, T; Waterstraat, G; Haufe, S; Curio, G; Villringer, A; Nikulin, V. Temporal signatures of criticality in human cortical excitability as probed by early somatosensory responses,Journal of Neuroscience,40,34,6572-6583,2020.
  • Waterstraat, G*; Körber, R*; Storm, JH; Curio, G. Noninvasive neuromagnetic single-trial analysis of human neocortical population spikes,Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,118,11,e2017401118,2021.
  • Gerster, M; Waterstraat, G; Litvak, V; Lehnertz, K; Schnitzler, A; Florin, E; Curio, G; Nikulin, V. Separating neural oscillations from aperiodic 1/f activity: challenges and recommendations,Neuroinformatics,1-22,2022.11.5
  • Bahners, BH; Waterstraat, G; Kannenberg, S; Curio, G; Schnitzler, A; Nikulin, V; Florin, E. Electrophysiological characterization of the hyperdirect pathway and its functional relevance for subthalamic deep brain stimulation,Experimental Neurology,352,114031,2022.
  • Cantone, M., Lanza, G., Fisicaro, F., Bella, R., Ferri, R., Pennisi, G., Waterstraat G*, Pennisi, M*. Sex-specific reference values for total, central, and peripheral latency of motor evoked potentials from a large cohort. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 17, 2023.
  • Anders C, Curio G, Arnrich B, Waterstraat G. Optimization of data pre-processing methods for time-series classification of electroencephalography data. Network 2023:1–18.
  • Meißner-Bendzko N, Waterstraat G, Curio G, Rocco A, Hofmann-Shen C. Intensity-dependence of auditory-evoked potentials might present an early surrogate marker for post-stroke depression. Clin Neurophysiol 2024;167:254–61.
  • Gerster M, Waterstraat G, Binns TS, Darcy N, Wiest C, Köhler RM, Vanhoecke J, West TO, Sure M, Todorov D, Radzinski L, Habets J, Busch JL, Feldmann LK, Krause P, Faust K, Schneider G-H, Ashkan K, Pereira E, Akram H, Zrinzo L, Blankertz B, Villringer A, Tan H, Hirschmann J, Kühn AA, Florin E, Schnitzler A, Oswal A, Litvak V, Neumann W-J, Curio G, Nikulin V. Beyond beta rhythms: subthalamic aperiodic broadband power scales with Parkinson’s disease severity-a cross-sectional multicentre study. EBioMedicine. 2025;122(105988):105988.

* shared authorship