Speaker: Dr. Joanes Grandjean

Title:  Translational Brain Connectomics

Date: Friday 30 September, 1-2 pm 

Venue: AS4/02-08 (Psychology Department Meeting Room) 

Abstract:

A comprehensive understanding of the architecture and function of the healthy and diseased brain, often referred to as the “connectome”, is arguably one of the biggest challenges in neuroscience. Analysis of the brain function using neuroimaging tools provides valuable insight into information processing at the organ level. Functional imaging has been extensively used to map the human brain, to localize brain activity evoked by specific cognitive tasks or estimate large-scale brain networks during rest. These methods have been used to map areas affected by brain disorders. Advances in high field magnets and radio-frequency coils now enable researchers to extend these researches to animal models, where brain circuits can be dissected in details. Studies in animal models offer a strong translational perspective to investigate the molecular mechanisms behind MRI-based fingerprints of human brain disorders, or to partake in the drug development process.

About the Speaker:

Joanes grew up in Switzerland and in Singapore. He obtained his Bachelor in Biology from the University of Lausanne, followed by a Master in Neuroscience and a PhD in Biomedical engineering from the ETH Zürich (formerly known as Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich). Following a short post-doc in the laboratory where he obtained his PhD, Joanes joined the Singapore BioImaging Consortium (A*) in 2016 as a Research Fellow. Joanes uses high-field mouse functional MRI techniques and optogenetic to study the dynamics of functional connectivity with an emphasis toward understanding the large-scale circuits involved in affective disorders and neurodegeneration.