Posted on : Thursday 4 February 2016

Job title : 2016/02/04 – Research engineer in computer science, Grenoble

Organization : Grenoble Institute of Neuroscience, Inserm – UGA
Brain Stimulation & Systems Neuroscience

Funding body: European Research Council (ERC)
Host institution: Inserm

Mission : The successful candidate will have to maintain and develop computational infrastructures of the lab.
He/she will also be involved in image processing for computational human neuroanatomy in relation to epilepsy surgery.

Project scientific summary:
In patients suffering from focal drug-resistant epilepsy who are explored using intracranial electrodes, single-pulse direct electrical stimulation of a cortical region induces electrophysiological responses in many of the implanted electrodes. The presence, latency and morphological characteristics of these cortico-cortical induced potentials can be used to infer functional and anatomical brain connectivity. Intracerebral electrodes record from a small fraction of the volume of the brain in a single individual, allowing studying only a small fraction of the possible brain connections.
In F-TRACT, we develop methods to analyse those responses in order to create a new probabilistic atlas of electrophysiological functional tractography of the human brain, which will be made freely available to the clinical and neuroscience community. Several thousand stimulation runs performed in several hundred patients will be included in the atlas database to reach a nearly full coverage of the
human cortex. Neuroanatomical data (MRI, CT), electrophysiological data (intracranial EEG) and clinical data (e.g. epilepsy type, age at surgery, anatomical lesion, epileptogenic region) are confidentially gathered by the F-TRACT project from epilepsy surgery centres worldwide. This new atlas of functional tractography will be very useful to understand how the brain works and to develop neurocomputational models at a large scale. It will also allow the development of new clinical tools for the presurgical evaluation of intractable epilepsy.

Host research group:
The main goal of the host research group (Brain Stimulation & Systems Neuroscience, PI: Olivier David) is to study large-scale brain networks in order to develop new applications of brain stimulation in the field of psychiatry, movement disorders and epilepsy using a translational approach based on clinical and preclinical research. Very close interactions between experimentalists, methodologists and
clinicians, offer an optimal environment to develop skills of young neuroscientists.

Locality : Grenoble, France

Remuneration : From 1873 €/month up to 2312 €/month, according to experience

Degrees required :

Skills required : Computer science / Image and signal processing / Neuroanatomy

Contact : Dr Olivier David, Research Director, Inserm, Olivier.David[at]inserm.fr. Please send application including CV, statement of research interests, and the names and full contact details of two referees.