CHUV

Confirmed Speakers

• Pierre Magistretti
  Professor of Neuroscience at the Brain Mind Institute at EPFL and Professor of Psychiatry at UNIL/CHUV, he is also Director of NCCR since 2010 on “The synaptic bases of mental diseases”. He will talk about "Brainergy", or how the brain regulates its energy consumption which is visualized by functional imaging techniques to see the brain at work.
• Henry Markram
  In 2002, he joined the EPFL, where he founded the Brain Mind Institute. In the past 15 years he has focused on the structure and function of neural microcircuits – the basic components in the architecture of the brain. In 2005, he launched the Blue Brain Project: the first attempt to begin a systematic integration of all biological knowledge of the brain into unifying brain models for simulation on supercomputers. His talk is about "The human brain, a test drive for collaborative science".
• Grégoire Courtine
  He was trained in Mathematics and Physics, but received his PhD degree in Experimental Medicine. After a Post-doctoral training at the University of California (UCLA), he established his own laboratory at the university of Zurich. He recently accepted the International paraplegic foundation (IRP) chair in spinal cord repair at the EPFL. His talk focuses on "Restoring motor functions after spinal cord injury".
• Renaud Du Pasquier
  He is associate professor in Neurology at UNIL/CHUV. After medical studies and board certification in Internal Medicine and Neurology in Geneva, he performed a post-doc in neuroimmunology/neurovirology at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center & Harvard Medical School, Boston. His talk: "Multiple sclerosis: the missing link" will give insight in the fascinating interplay between the host immune system and viruses in triggering demyelinating diseases of the brain.
• Karin Diserens
  Since 2006, she is Médecin associé at the Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the CHUV. Her talk brings us into "Hidden Awareness", where clinical and para-clinical examination of consciousness in non-communicative brain damaged patients remains challenging. Neurophysiological and neuroimaging studies evaluate their ability to interact with the environment and to control it by a brain computer interface.
• Daphne Bavelier
  Initially trained in Biology at the Ecole Normale Superieure de Paris, she then received a PhD in Brain and Cognitive Sciences from MIT and trained in human brain plasticity at the Salk Institute. Her lab now investigates how new media, such as video games, can be leveraged to foster learning and brain plasticity.Her talk: "Smarter, Better, Faster, Stronger: Your brains on action games" highlights that surprisingly, playing what most of society perceives as potentially harmful games results into long lasting beneficial effects on brain and behavior; in contrast, multimedia tasking an activity cherished by our society has detrimental impacts. Clearly the effect of media use are far from intuitive!
• Olaf Blanke
  He is director of the Center for Neuroprosthetics at the EPFL, holds the Bertarelli Foundation Chair in Cognitive Neuroprosthetics, and is consultant neurologist at the Geneva University Hospital.His talk: "Out-of Body Experiences, Consciousness, and Cognitive Neuroprosthetics". What is a conscious self ? What exactly makes an experience a subjective phenomenon ? Starting with the neurology of out-of-body experiences and the breakdown of bodily mechanisms of self-consciousness, he will guide us among present novel neuroscience data on self-consciousness and subjectivity in healthy subjects using techniques from cognitive neuroscience and engineering- based technologies such as virtual reality and robotics.
• Richard Frackowiak
  He is head of the Department of Clinical Neurosciences at UNIL/CHUV. His interest is in human brain structure and function relationships in health and disease. His talk is about "Images of dementia" shows that magnetic resonance images are revolutionising dementia diagnosis because of the use of computers for their analysis. The brain degeneration that causes failure of memory can be detected before symptoms arise,which raises new perspectives for treatment.