team

Want to join? Current Openings HERE!

Virginie van Wassenhove

CEA Research Director, INSERM team leader (DR)
Cognition & Brain Dynamics

Sophie Herbst

CEA Researcher (CR)

Leila Azizi

Operational Director of NeuroSpin MEG

ca 2022.04 [Left to Right]: Harish, Yvan, Andrés, Robert, Marianna/Yunyun, Anna, Virginie, Leila, Sophie, Christina, Anna, Mathias, Valentine
ca 2022.04 [Left to Right, when Virginie is not around…]: Andrés, Robert, Harish, Marianna, Anna, Sophie, Leila, Yunyun, Christina, Anna, Yvan, Mathias, Valentine

Newcomers, please keep the Cognition & Brain Dynamics Manual handy!

Christina Yi Jin, PhD is a postdoctoral fellow in the EXPERIENCE Project. Her background is machine learning with neurophysiological data to detect the changes of mental states as well as understanding the underlying neural mechanism. While having an interest in various topics regarding artificial consciousness, her current post-doc work at the NeuroSpin will be a virtual reality study in which participants’ internal clocks synchronize.

Harish Gunasekaran, M.Sc. is a highly curious student, with a long term vision in understanding the deep philosophical problems such as how the brain encodes the ‘reality’ i.e., the concepts of space and time, the mind-body duality, the SELF, and consciousness. He is currently pursuing his PhD titled Exploring the functional role of neural oscillations in temporal processing, jointly funded by CEA and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 under Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (NUMERICS PhD 2019-22). His PhD work aims to deepen our understanding of the endogenous nature of slow neural oscillations (delta/theta bands) and their role in temporal processing. As a preliminary step, he is analyzing the existing MEG data recorded previously from the team by applying different methods and later will investigate how such endogenous oscillations mediate timing when a temporal structure is imposed by sensory inputs (rhythmic and non-rhythmic), by conducting behavioral and MEG experiments.

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Valentine MANDIN, M.Sc. is a PhD student at the Université Paris Saclay Biosigne under the supervision of Sophie Herbst. She has been investigating for 2 years the implication of temporal predictions on temporal resolution by multiple paradigms, focusing on the auditory modality. Her work targets the implicit induction of temporal predictability. She is interested in the neural basis of temporal prediction and aimed at using MEG to fully explore the role of neural oscillations on these mechanisms.

Yvan Nédélec, M.Sc. joined the team as a master student for his 6 months internship, and he is now pursuing his PhD in the Wildtimes project. WildTimes aims at characterizing our conscious experience of time in complex environments, such as train travels, bridging the gap between laboratory experimental psychology and real-life situations. He investigates how temporal information from the environment impacts our internal representations of duration to shape our experience of time. To do that, he uses tasks drawn from experimental psychology combined with portable neuroimaging technics such as EEG. His main focus is to understand how the brain uses temporal information from the environment and its own dynamic, allowing us to perceive a continuous unfolding world…

Ignacio POLTI, M.Sc.   After a master at NeuroSpin (Cogmaster), Ignacio went on to pursue his PhD studying timing & uncertainty at the Kavli Institute for System Neurosciences (NTNU) with Christian Doeller.

Anna Wagelmans, M.Sc., is a PhD student currently doing her thesis – Exploring temporal orientation in the human brain – at Neurospin under the supervision of Virginie van Wassenhove. There, she studies the ability to mental time travel – that is to say, to mentally project oneself in time. Anna works at the intersection of cognitive neuroscience, psychology and philosophy of mind to investigate the structure of human experience and the constrution of the self. A problem that particularly occupies her mind is the continuity of the self in time. Her interest in problems of time branches out to phenomenological psychopathology, education and learning, and how narrative structures from all kinds of media interact with experience.

Robert Hajjar, M.Sc is a master student in M2 at IPP ( Institut Polytechnique de Paris). I am doing a 6 month internship working on the traveling waves analyses of MEG and EEG human brain recordings during quiet wakefulness and controlled tasks describing the implication of alpha activity in temporal cognition. In collaboration with Alain Destexhe (NeuroPSI), we will test generative models of alpha activity using The Virtual Brain to describe the possible contribution of thalamo-cortical activity in the modulation of cortical alpha bursts or possibly traveling waves. More generally, I am interested in a lot of cognitive science topics such as : consciousness, the functioning of mirror neurons and empathy, brain development in children or education and the means to improve it, and neurogenesis.  I am really happy and excited to join the laboratory and discover an all new environment!

My name is Marianna Lamprou Kokolaki and I am a master student in M2 BIP – Neuroscience at Sorbonne University. I do a six month internship as part of Wildtimes under the supervision of Virginie van Wassenhove .

Alumni

PhDs

Postdoctoral Scholars

Research Engineers

  • Emile Colin, M.Sc. (Wildtimes, SNCF)
  • Marco Buiatti (2010-14) now EEG Lab @ University of Trento, Italy
  • Etienne Labyt (2008-2010) now MEG lab @ CEA-Leti, Clinatech, Grenoble, France

Master and Undergraduate Students

  • Robert Hajjar, M.Sc (MII Institut Polytechnique, Paris) now in studying cognitive neuroscience in Korea
  • Mathias Vigouroux (MII, Computational Neuroscience & Neuroengineering, Univ Paris-Saclay, CentraleSupélec) now ENS Paris
  • Andrés Torres Sánchez (MII, Computational Neuroscience & Neuroengineering, Univ. Paris-Saclay)
  • Anna Razafindrahaba (Summer intern and MII, Computational Neuroscience & Neuroengineering, Univ. Paris-Saclay as part of Experience)
  • Raphaël Bordas (Licence double, Mathématiques Sciences de la Vie, Univ Paris-Saclay)
  • Diane Sam Mine (MI Neurosciences, Univ Paris Descartes) Summer Intern
  • Cyril Nicolaï (Licence Frontières du Vivant, Centre Recherche Interdisciplinaire) now ENS Paris
  • Aurélien Faulquier (MII Neurosciences, Univ Paris Sorbonne)
  • Alexandru Terbea (MII, Univ Paris Descartes)
  • Paul Berton (MII, Cogmaster) now M2 ACCES
  • Blandine Breinart (MII, Marseille)
  • Dragana Manasova (MI, Univ Paris Descartes), now PhD student @ICM w/ Jacobo Sitt
  • Izem Mangione (MII, Bordeaux Univ)
  • Camille Lakhlifi (2017-18, MII ENS Cogmaster) on her way to link academic research and policy makers.
  • Ava Kiai (2017-18, MII ENS Cogmaster), now with Lucia Melloni
  • Alexandre Nauleau (summer intern; ENS Paris-Saclay), now with Alexandre Pouget
  • Rohit Yadav (summer intern; Machine learning & Data mining, University of Jean Monnet/ University of Lyon)
  • Jacques Pesnot-Lerousseau (2016-17, ENS Cogmaster, année césure), now postdoc at Oxford.
  • Pauline Demory (2017), now MII Cogmaster student
  • Ignacio Polti (2014-16, ENS Cogmaster), now PhD student w/ Christian Doeller at Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience (NTNU)
  • Karin Petske (2014-15, RA)
  • Hafeza Tajuddin (2015, MII BME Paris)
  • Yousra Bekhti (2013, MII) now PhD student w/ Alexandre Gramfort, Télécom ParisTech
  • Milton Augusto Vendramini de Avila (2013, MI UCL-ENS) now PhD in the Neuroscience and Behavior program, Univ of Sao Paulo, Brazil.
  • Lucille Lecoutre (2013, MII ENS, Paris) now Consulting Engineer in Human Factors, Bordeaux
  • Agnès Falco (2013, MI ENS) now PhD student at Université Toulouse – Jean Jaurès, France.
  • Luca Iemi (2013, MII UCL-ENS, London-Paris) now PhD at Charité Univ Médecine w/ Niko Busch
  • Salim Kebache (2011, visiting MI ENS Paris)
  • Marianne Duyck (2011, visiting MII ENS Paris) now PhD at LPP, Paris.
  • Lukasz Grzeczkowski (2011. MII ENS) PhD at EFLP w/ Michael Herzog
  • Anna Lambrechts (2010, MII ENS-UCL) PhD at City University London w/ Kielan Yarrow
  • Brice Martin (2009-2010) Master . MD-PhD psychiatry

Visitors (and ongoing collab!)

  • Shirley Xue Li Lim (2021, visiting PhD student, Procope Mobility Stipend) Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany
  • Nikos CHALAS, MSc (MII, ERASMUS)
  • Pooja PRABHU, MSc (2018, Raman-Charpak Fellow) Phd Manipal Institute of Technology, India
  • Renan SCHIAVOLIN RECIO (2017, visiting PhD, SANDWICH program) Brazil
  • Thiago Oliveira da Motta Sampaio (2012-13, visiting PhD, SANDWICH program) now Professor UNICAMP, Cidade Universitária, Campinas, Brazil
  • Diana Omigie (2012, visiting PhD) now Max-Planck Inst, Frankfurt, Germany  now Lecturer at Goldsmiths University, London, UK