Former PhD student. Sensitization is a process that consists in amplifying the response to pain consecutive to the repetition of the noxious stimulation. Sensitization is thought to play a role in the development of chronic pain. On the other side, psychological factors are known to modulate the experience of pain and are also suggested to play a role in the development and the maintenance of chronic pain. It is therefore hypothesized that cognitive factors such as attention could influence the risk of chronic pain by modulating the strength and the extent of sensitization. My project aimed at observing in healthy volunteers the impact of attention on a lab model of sensitization of the central nervous system consecutive to repeated experimentally-induced painful electrical stimuli.

Former PhD student at NOCIONS. My PhD was conducted in the framework of an Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI PAIN-CARE; https://www.imi-paincare.eu) project, subtopic BioPain. The aim was to identify and validate a number of functional biomarkers based on non-invasive measures of neural activity (peripheral measures of nerve excitability, spinal and brainstem reflexes, measures of brain activity using electroencephalography [EEG] and functional magnetic resonance imaging [MRI] that can be used in humans to assess the effects of a given drug on the nociceptive system. These biomarkers could be used in future studies for the early stages of the pharmacological development of novel treatments for pain, and back-translated to animal models.

Former postdoc in the lab. The aim of my project was to better understand how the perception of pain emerges from brain activity. Pain perception and associated brain responses are known to be highly sensitive to several contextual, cognitive and mood factors. In particular, prior expectations largely influence pain, as exemplified by powerful placebo and nocebo effects. These effects suggest that pain perception does not result from a direct readout of sensory inputs, but can be seen as the outcome of an inference process based on noisy observations, which necessitates an internal model accounting for endogenous modulations. Yet, there is no unifying framework explaining how prior expectations and incoming stimuli are combined in our brain to lead to pain perception. In this setting, my project aimed to shed light on the mechanisms governing the construction and updating of internal pain models. To reach this goal, I developed statistical models that can explain how human subjects combine prior information with incoming evidences to identify which inferential features are encoded in brain responses.

Former PhD student. Now postdoc in the group of David Gueorguiev (ERC Tango). Touch is a dynamic process: when we explore a surface, sensory input is generated by a number of different sources, including both somatosensory and proprioceptive inputs. My PhD was part of the EU H2020-ITN ‘’MULTITOUCH’’. The aim of my project was be to investigate how stimuli from different sensory modalities (vision, audition) are integrated with tactile feedback under conditions of active, dynamic touch. In order to investigate the neural underpinnings of multisensory integration during haptic exploration, we used a combination of psychophysical and electroencephalography (EEG) experiments.

Former PhD student. The aims of my research project are (1) to evaluate whether olfactory impairment is a reliable predictor of perioperative morbidity and mortality and (2) to identify the potential underlying mechanisms, notably through the links between olfaction, cognition and brain plasticity using olfactory training.

Studies have suggested that Alzheimer's disease (AD) is related to changes in brain function that are present already at very early, pre-clinical stages of the disease. For example, recent functional neuroimaging studies have shown early alterations in brain connectivity, and that these alterations are most prominent in highly-connected cortical "hub areas". These hub areas are also those that are most affected by AD lesions. These findings support the view that AD pathology could, at least in part, result from an activity-dependent degeneration. Initial excessive neural firing in hub areas due to increased excitability or connectivity could lead to later neurodegeneration and disruption of connectivity. Very recently, studies conducted by Prof. JN Octave (UCL) have suggested that AD could be related to a decrease in the expression of the cellular Cl- ion extruder KCC2, leading to an increase in intracellular Cl- and, thereby, an inhibitory-to-excitatory shift of GABAA receptor activity. The aim of the present study is to test whether GABAergic neurotransmission is altered at early pre-clinical and pre-demential stages of AD as compared to matched healthy controls.

After three years as the head of the technical support team within the Cognitive and System Department of the Institute of Neuroscience of the UCL, I started a PhD. The general objective of my research is to develop a novel approach based on transcranial focused ultrasound (TFUS) and on the combination of TFUS with electroencephalography (EEG) to characterize and to investigate the interdependencies between the different brain regions involved in human pain perception.

After a professional experience in the artistic field I worked as a physiotherapist notably in a chronic pain centre. From 2014-2018, I conducted a PhD at UCLouvain, under the supervision of André Mouraux and Samar Hatem, with the aim of characterizing the relationship and hierarchical organization between brain areas involved in nociceptive processing such as the primary somatosensory cortex and the operculo-insular cortex. I conducted several studies combining neuromodulation techniques (such as repetitive transcranial magnetic (rTMS) or transcranial and spinal direct current stimulation (tDCS)) combined with functional neuroimaging techniques such as electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). I am also collaborating with Emanuel van den Broeke to a research project investigating central and peripheral mechanisms of secondary hyperalgesia. In 2019, I joined the research team of Prof. G.D. Iannetti (UCLondon).

The objective of this PhD was to conceive original psychophysical approaches to study the perception elicited by novel tactile displays.

The topic of my research is how musical rhythm entrains the human brain activity. With the help of Profs André Mouraux and Isabelle Peretz, my co-supervisor in Canada, I developed during my PhD an approach to capture the neural mechanisms of musical beat in humans. Currently, I explore this approach as a mean to investigate human neural mechanisms such as neural entrainment, sensorimotor synchronization and multisensory integration. ​To this aim, I use surface and intracerebral EEG, coupled with auditory/visual stimulations, and motion recordings. Also, this research gives rise to thoughts about how and why mixing art and science in research activities. Sylvie Nozaradan is now Professor at UCLouvain.