CoActions Lab jointly with ULB organized a 2-day Cognition and Action workshop on the interdependence of cognition and action in the context of decision making, learning and movement, bringing together experts and researchers from various fields. The event featured insightful presentations and engaging discussions, fostering a vibrant atmosphere of knowledge exchange.
Participants enjoyed delicious dinners together, enhancing the sense of community. The workshop provided a valuable platform for sharing research and building connections.
On the 14th of March 2024, Pierre received the Biaggi de Blasys award 2024 at the Brain awareness week in Lausanne. This prize is attributed once a year to the author of an outstanding PhD thesis in translational neuroscience in doctoral schools of the lemanic area (UNIL, UNIGE, EPFL), in Switzerland.
In his PhD entitled “Mechanisms underlying reinforcement learning of motor skills”, jointly performed between the lab and the lab of Prof. Hummel at EPFL, Pierre used different approaches including in-depth kinematic analyses, fMRI and transcranial temporal interference stimulation to explore reinforcement processes at play during motor learning.
Congrats Pierre!!
Master's student Manon Chauvaux successfully defended her thesis this month!
Her research involved studying the role of contralateral primary motor cortex in interlimb generalisation of newly learned motor skills. We wish her success for future endeavours!
Congratulations to Ronan who got a postdoctoral grant from the Belgian Fonds Spéciaux de Recherche (FSR) involving 3 years of funding.
HIs project focused on the neural source of preparatory inhibition. The use of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in combination with Instructed Delay Choice Reaction Time Tasks in humans has led to the discovery of preparation related suppression of corticospinal tract excitability, so-called “preparatory suppression”. Despite these advances, motor evoked potentials (MEPs) produced by single pulse TMS over primary motor cortex (M1) have a limited ability to test competing perspectives on the functional role of preparatory suppression since they represent a summed approximation of many sources of inhibition and facilitation within the brain. We propose a set of experiments organized in 3 work packages (WP) using TMS and electroencephalography (EEG) and transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (tVNS) to improve understanding of the neural source of preparatory suppression. This will aid in future efforts to parse out the function(s) of the effect, in both healthy and clinical populations.
