Institut Fresnel

CNRS thematic School organized by 2 Laboratories from Marseille : Institut Fresnel & Institut de Neurosciences de la Timone.

The program is basically divided into 3 days devoted to the 3 main axes of anatomical and functional imaging of the central nervous system :

 Eye : "satellite" nervous tissue of the brain and "main" sensory organ in the primate and human.
 Cerebral cortex : location of the processing of sensory information, its integration with existing information and the development of motor programs and actions.
 Spinal cord : the more peripheral element of central nervous system for the treatment of somatosensory and motor information.

Purpose of the School :
The understanding of the mechanisms of the development of the information by the central nervous system and the development of neuronal pathologies are multidisciplinary scientific research fields of critical socio-economic issues.
In this context, among conventional imaging techniques (PET, fMRI), photonic techniques allow non-invasive functional and multiscale explorations. They are currently undergoing an important development, because of their flexibility of use and their sensitivity. For example, the anatomical and functional imaging of cerebral cortex, spinal cord, imaging of the hemodynamic processes for the study of the neurovascular coupling, examination of the eye (retina, diabetic retinopathy, AMD, cornea), all make use of photonic techniques at microscopic, mesoscopic and macroscopic scales. The development of these non-conventional imaging techniques poses problems both experimental and theoretical, these problems being strongly coupled and requiring close interaction with the neuroscience community, to fully identify the issues. The main objective is to examine the organ in a non-invasive way, not affecting the cognitive process : the physical problem of optical imaging in vivo in neuroscience is that of imaging in strongly scattering and heterogeneous environment.

 Lecturers Eye session : Louis Hoffart (France), Michel Paques (France), Gaëlle Georges (France)

 Lecturers Brain session : Ivo Vanzetta (France), Anabela Da Silva (France)
 Matthias Kohl-Bareis (Germany), Alessandro Torricelli (Italie), Turgut Durduran (Spain), Elisabeth Hillman (USA), Jason Berwick (UK)

 Lecturers Spinal cord session : Keith Fenrich (France), Claire Wyart (France)

Registration & More information on : www.fresnel.fr/photons-neurones

Contact : photons-neurones@fresnel.fr