Neural Bases of Spatial Cognition and Action

(PI: Suliann Ben Hamed)

Our group focuses on how our brain represents space and uses these representations to help us interact with our environment. 

Visual attention and perception. We are interested in understanding how individual neurons (microscale), local neuronal networks (mesoscale) and distributed cortical networks (mesoscale) implement these two fundamental cognitive functions. We are interested in how brain rhythms impact attention and perception. We are also interested in how these cognitive processes dynamically adjust to ongoing changes in the environment and in our behavior, how they plastically change through learning. Last we are interested in enhancing and repairing these functions, exploring both the role of pharmacological neuromodulation, and closed-loop neurofeedback.

Multisensory & social spaces. We are interested in understanding how neurons and cortical networks combine sensory information from multiple sensory organs in order to construct our internal representations of space, of self and of others. We are also interested in understanding how these internal representations dynamically change as a function of changes in our surrounding environment or as a function of the actions we plan around us. 

Our long term goal is to increase our collective fundamental understanding of these core cognitive functions and to contribute to thereby contribute to the rehabilitation of cognitive spatial deficits following acute brain damage as well as following neurodegenerative or neurodevelopmental spatial cognition deficits. To perform this research, we use combine behavioral studies and machine learning approaches with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), multi-electrode, multi-site, single cell and local field potential recordings (ePhys) as well as pharmacological neuromodulation and neurofeedback.