The Clinical Neurosciences division of IoNS is composed of sixteen research groups from Cliniques Universitaires UCL Saint-Luc, CHU Dinant-Godinne UCL and CPS Louvain-la-Neuve UCL. Research is closely interconnected with the clinical activities and utilizes a broad technological repertoire.
NEUR aims at understanding clinical, physiopathological, biochemical, inflammatory, cognitive and social-cognitive, emotional, brain structural and functional dimensions, and neuropharmacological aspects of various nervous/mental disorders. It mainly focusses on studies in humans, but these are also sometimes complemented by preclinical studies.
The main research themes are:
- Neurological diseases: stroke (acute management, brain plasticity, non-invasive brain stimulation for therapeutic purpose), inflammatory diseases (in relation with the CSF analysis), neuromuscular disorders, Parkinson’s disease (deep brain stimulation), Alzheimer’s disease (early diagnosis by cognitive evaluation and biomarkers), refractory epilepsy, chronic pain, childhood neurometabolic disorders.
- Neuro-otology (cochlear implant induced plasticity, tinnitus) and the chemosensitive platform (neurophysiology, imaging, psychophysics)
- Neurosurgical aspects in neuro-oncology , neurovascular disorders, epilepsy surgery (including invasive EEG)
- Eye movement, oculomotor as well as neurosensory disorders
- Emotional, visual and musical recognition, cognitive, biological aspects in various psychiatric disorders: schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, alcohol dependency, anxious disorders, depression, eating disorders, gambling.
- Neuroimaging studies: brain perfusion imaging, preoperatory MRI in neuro-oncology, functional MRI, thermography, cerebral pathophysiology of stroke, etc. NEUR
Research groups
- Neuroinflammation Imaging Lab (NIL) (Pietro Maggi)
- LEP lab (Pierre Maurage, Philippe de Timary)
- OlfactIONS (Caroline Huart, Philippe Rombaux)
- Louvain Aging Brain Lab (Adrian Ivanoiu, Bernard Hanseeuw, Renaud Lhommel)
- Epilepsy research (Riem El Tahry)
- Neurosurgery Research Group
- Otorhinolaryngology (Naïma Deggouj, Caroline Huart, Philippe Rombaux)
- Neonatal epilepsy (Roberta Cilio)
- Visual system development (Demet Yuksel, Coralie Hemptinne)
- Neuropediatrics and rare diseases (Marie-Cécile Nassogne)
- CUSL neuroradiology
- Neuromuscular reference center (Peter Van den Bergh, Vinciane Van Parijs)
- CUSL Center for refractory epilepsy (Susana Ferrao-Santos)
- Neuroanesthesiology (Mona Momeni)
- Motor learning and plasticity after stroke (Yves Vandermeeren)
- Stress and Anxiety Research (Alexandre Heeren)