SSN awards 2019 - 2 Best Publication Awards at CNP

Daniela Zöller, 4th-year EDEE PhD student jointly supervised by Prof. Marie Schaer (University of Geneva) and Prof Dimitri Van De Ville, received the 2019 Best Publication Award in the category « Human and Clinical Neuroscience » from the Swiss Society for Neuroscience for her work entitled « Robust recovery of temporal overlap between network activity using transient-informed spatio-temporal regression », published in IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging. In her doctoral thesis, Daniela develops methods for the analysis of dynamic brain function and investigate their potential to improve our knowledge about psychosis vulnerability. The awarded article presents an improved method to retrieve brain networks and their dynamic properties from fMRI data based on transient activity. The approach opens new ways to look into fMRI data, with a strong potential to develop clinically relevant imaging markers for psychosis vulnerability and other psychiatric and neurological disorders.

Mark Anderson, Postdoc in the laboratory of Prof Grégoire Courtine, received the 2019 Best Publication Award in the category « Cellular/Molecular Neuroscience » from the Swiss Society for Neuroscience for his work entitled « Required growth facilitators propel axon regeneration across complete spinal cord injury » published in Nature. In this manuscript, Anderson and Colleagues show that efficient reversal of axon regenerative failure can be achieved via sequential activation of three mechanisms that are present during development but absent in adults, i) neuronal growth capacity, ii) growth supportive substrates, and iii) axon-specific chemoattraction. Regenerating axons regrow an entire spinal segment past sites of anatomically complete SCI, form synapse-like contacts with host propriospinal neurons, and convey a significant return of electrophysiological activity. This work provides a biological repair strategy with which to merge with neuroprosthetic rehabilitation paradigms to augment and improve functional recovery after the most severe forms of SCI.