Combining advanced neuroimaging and neuromodulation to understand brain circuits underlying psychiatric symptoms and develop personalized therapeutic strategies.
The INPULSE Lab, co-directed by Pauline Favre and Charles Laïdi, combines advanced neuroimaging, computational approaches and neuromodulation to better understand the brain mechanisms underlying psychiatric symptoms and to develop new strategies for precision psychiatry.
Our research focuses on the brain circuits underlying emotion, cognition and social functioning, and on how alterations in these circuits contribute to psychiatric symptoms across diagnostic categories. Particular attention is given to mood disorders, schizophrenia and treatment-resistant psychiatric symptoms, using both categorical and transdiagnostic approaches.
The research axis led by Pauline Favre focuses on emotion processing and regulation, their alterations in mood disorders, and their modulation through cognitive and therapeutic interventions. We combine cognitive paradigms with state-of-the-art neuroimaging and computational methods, including ultra-high-field 7T MRI, functional and structural connectivity, real-time fMRI and machine learning. These approaches are used to characterize individual brain mechanisms associated with mood and psychiatric symptoms, and to investigate their potential contribution to diagnosis, prognosis and treatment stratification.
We are also interested in experience- and treatment-induced brain plasticity. Building on previous work on psychosocial and mental training interventions, we develop real-time fMRI neurofeedback approaches to directly train the regulation of brain circuits involved in emotion. Ongoing clinical research investigates whether neurofeedback can improve emotion regulation and residual symptoms in bipolar disorder, while ultra-high-field imaging is used to provide a more fine-grained characterization of mood-related brain mechanisms.
The research axis led by Charles Laïdi investigates brain circuits associated with persistent and treatment-resistant psychiatric symptoms, with a particular interest in the cerebellum and its interactions with cortical and subcortical networks. Using large-scale and transdiagnostic neuroimaging datasets, we investigate the neural substrates of symptoms such as social interaction deficits in autism, negative symptoms in schizophrenia and treatment-resistant depression in bipolar and unipolar depression.
These mechanistic investigations provide the basis for the development of circuit-based therapeutic interventions using non-invasive brain stimulation, including transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS). Neuroimaging is used to identify and personalize stimulation targets, characterize the effects of neuromodulation on brain circuits and ultimately improve the prediction of treatment response.
Together, these complementary approaches aim to bridge neuroscience and clinical psychiatry, moving from the characterization of brain circuits to their individualized modulation. By integrating multimodal and ultra-high-field neuroimaging, large-scale datasets, machine learning, real-time fMRI neurofeedback and non-invasive brain stimulation, INPULSE seeks to contribute to the development of a more mechanistic and personalized psychiatry.
Current projects
INPULSE is currently involved in several clinical and translational research programs spanning advanced neuroimaging, computational psychiatry and neuromodulation:
- FrenchMinds / PEPR PROPSY: large-scale multimodal 3T and 7T neuroimaging for precision psychiatry across major psychiatric disorders, with a focus on symptom dimensions and treatment stratification.
- ANR B37T — Bipolar Bayesian Brain at 7T: ultra-high-field MRI and ecological assessments to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying mood variability in bipolar disorder.
- PHRC-N NEUROFEED-BD: a randomized clinical trial evaluating real-time fMRI neurofeedback to improve emotion regulation and residual symptoms in bipolar disorder.
- ERC CLOVIS: ERC Starting Grant project developing personalized cerebellar TMS, guided by advanced neuroimaging, to improve cognitive and negative symptoms across psychiatric disorders
- PHRC-R CERSTIM: a randomized clinical trial evaluating cerebellar Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation to improve negative symptoms in schizophrenia
- PSYTRO-7: a transdiagnostic 7T MRI project investigating the neural mechanisms of psychotrauma, autobiographical memory and emotion regulation.
These projects are complemented by large-scale international collaborations, including ENIGMA, and by computational approaches combining multimodal imaging, connectivity and machine learning across diagnostic categories.
INPULSE is the Imaging group of the Translational NeuroPsychiatry team at the Institut Mondor de Recherche Biomédicale (IMRB, Inserm U955 – Université Paris Est Créteil) and is part of the Fondation FondaMental research network. The group is hosted within UNIACT at NeuroSpin (CEA Paris-Saclay) and benefits from its unique environment for high- and ultra-high-field human neuroimaging.
LINKS
- CEA, Neurospin, UNIACT, Psychiatry team: https://joliot.cea.fr/drf/joliot/Pages/Entites_de_recherche/neurospin/UNIACT/Equipe-Psychiatrie.aspx
- Fondation FondaMental https://www.fondation-fondamental.org/
- ENIGMA Consortium https://enigma.ini.usc.edu/
- PEPR PROPSY – Precision Psychiatry https://pepr-propsy.fr/
