Conférence Dr Mélanie Boly - Neural correlates of consciousness: integrating lesion, stimulation and recording studies

Dr. Mélanie Boly will present her work entitled  “Neural correlates of consciousness: integrating lesion, stimulation and recording studies".

Biography: 

Melanie Boly is a neurologist and neuroscientist who has worked since twenty years in the field of altered states of consciousness such as vegetative state, sleep and anesthesia, under the mentorship of Pr. Steven Laureys, Pierre Maquet, Adrian Owen, Marcello Massimini and Karl Friston. Her research aims at combining neuroimaging techniques such as PET, functional MRI, TMS-EEG, high-density EEG and intracranial recordings to a theoretical framework, the Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness, hoping to uncover the neural mechanisms of the level and contents of consciousness in healthy subjects and neurological patients in order to improve both diagnosis and therapies. She is board certified in neurology in both Europe and the US. Her work has led to date to numerous publications in international peer-reviewed journals (>150 Pubmed-indexed articles, current Google Scholar H-index 80) and invited talks at international conferences. She is also Associate Editor of the journals Neuroimage, Frontiers in Consciousness Research, Frontiers in Brain Imaging Methods and Neuroscience of Consciousness.

"I will review evidence for the neural correlates of consciousness coming from human lesion studies, direct electrical stimulation studies in epileptic patients, and neuroImaging studies distilling consciousness from its cognitive consequences. Coherent findings from these three lines of evidence suggest that many contents of consciousness are specified by a posterior hot zone in the posterior part of the cerebral cortex, while the evidence for the prefrontal cortex is not so clear. I will finish by suggesting some promising directions for future research."