Michel Thiebaut de Schotten
Head of Neurofunctional Imaging Group, University of Bordeaux
Head of Brain Connectivity and Behaviour Laboratory (BCBLab), Sorbonne Universities, Paris
The emergent properties of the connected brain
Significant strides have been made in delineating the white matter architecture in the living human brain in the last two decades. These pathways have been identified as pivotal in supporting cognitive functions, with their variability closely associated with differences in cognitive performance, psychiatric conditions, and neurological manifestations. This underscores a hypothesis that brain functionality is not isolated within regions but emerges from the interaction facilitated by white matter connections. In our presentation, we will unveil cutting-edge methodologies developed recently in our lab – namely, the functionnectome and emuse – to explore these emergent properties. We will discuss their implications for understanding complex neuroscientific phenomena, such as consciousness and neuropsychological recovery post-stroke.
Michel Thiebaut de Schotten's work, which includes >100 peer-reviewed articles, spans the whole gamut from novel neuroimaging methodologies to experimental work to theory. Critically, he dedicates significant effort toward the clinical translation of his work through an open model approach that makes his tools freely accessible to the community. His PhD in Paris, la Salpêtrière, published in Science (2005), showed humans' first demonstration that hemispatial neglect could be reversibly produced by disconnecting the white matter. Today, operating rooms worldwide use his assessment to prevent spatial attention deficits after surgery. During his postdoc at King's College London, he mapped white matter anatomy in the healthy human living brain through a series of influential studies, which led to the publication of the Atlas of the Human Brain Connections. As a tenured researcher at the Paris Brain Institute, he developed the BCBtoolkit software suite, a set of programs for computing disconnections made freely available to the scientific and clinical communities. Recently, in Bordeaux as the head of the neuroimaging department, he has explored the role of white matter connections in defining functional areas. Most recently, he published his first Atlas of the function of white matter as well as a new software Functionnectome that unravels the contribution of white matter circuits to function. His latest theoretical point of view on the functioning of the brain is extensively illustrated in his review published in Science last year and entitled ”The emergent properties of the connected brain”.
Professor Thiebaut de Schotten will give the Sievers Lecture in Computational Neuroscience.
