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Fabrizio Benedetti

  Pr.  Fabrizio Benedetti achieved his Master's Degree from the University of Turin, Italy. In 1984, he received a Silbert International Fellowship from UCLA Medical School, to study psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences. After a short stint at the University of Texas at Dallas, he settled permanently at the University of Turin where he earned the position of Professor of Neurophysiology and Human Physiology in 1999.

In the 90s, Prof. Benedetti began to take an interest in the  placebo effect, and established that the promise of a treatment activates brain areas involved in the assessment of events and the severity of a threat. Subsequently, he demonstrated that this placebo effect could then have  beneficial effects on certain pathologies such as Parkinson's disease. In contrast to these research, he also shows a particular interest in the  Nocebo effect and showed the involvement of Cholecystokinin in the painful transmission induced by Nocebo.

Professor Benedetti published two books in 2008 (Placebo Effects: Understanding the mechanisms in health and disease) and in 2010 (The Patient's Brain: The Neuroscience Behind the Doctor-Patient Relationship), edited by Oxford University Press.

Dasiel Borroto-Escuela

  Dr. Dasiel Borroto-Escuela achieved his Master's Degree in 2003 from the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology of Havana in Cuba. He then flew to Spain where he joined the Polytechnic University of Catalonia to complete his PhD thesis. In 2009, he earned a PostDoc position in the Neuroscience department of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, where he now serves as Senior Lab Manager.

Dr. Borroto-Escuela is interested in the  molecular integration of cerebral signals via the receptor-receptor interaction of  heteroreceptor complexes and their effects on brain function and integration. Are alterations in specific heteroreceptor complexes involved in the pathogenic mechanisms contributing to the development of Parkinson's disease or  Schizophrenia?

Julia Simner

  Pr.  Julia Simner studied Language at Oxford University before specializing in Linguistics and Psychology at University of Toronto in Canada. In 2001, she won a postdoctoral grant from the British Academy to initiate her research on  Synesthesia at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Now, Pr. Simner is Professor of Psychology at the University of Sussex in UK and lead the MULTISENSE project funded by the European Research Council.

Through her research on the cognitive and sensory basis of Synesthesia, Pr. Julia Simner demonstrates that the perception of synaesthetes could be compared with the intuitive feeling present in all of us. These experiences perceived by the synesthetes can be positive as in art but in some cases can be negative. Being interested in popular science, her numerous works were relayed to the general public by various media such as the New Scientist, the NY Times or the BBC. She has also co-authored the Oxford Handbook of Synesthesia with Dr. Edward M. Hubbard, published by the Oxford University Press in 2014.

Alexis Paljic

  Dr. Alexis Paljic achieved his Master's Degree in 1999 from the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, France. In 2004, he defended his PhD thesis on "Interaction in Immersive Environments and Passive Effort Returns" that he realized in the I3D laboratory of Pierre and Marie Curie University. After having been a virtual reality engineer for the Airbus group and Ondim SA, Dr. Paljic earned a position of assistant professor in Paris School of Mines.

Through his work, Dr. Paljic attempts to design interaction techniques adapted to specific uses of VR as well as to determine the domain of validity of virtual simulations by qualifying and quantifying the user perception in VR systems. virtual reality. Can we trust this "reality" to simulate real human activities?

Chris Moulin

  Pr. Chris Moulin achieved his PhD ("Does a metacognitive deficit contribute to the episodic memory impairment in Alzheimer's disease?") at the University of Bristol (UK), in 1999. He then worked at the Clinical Research Institute at Bath, afterwards he rejoigned the Institute of Psychological Sciences at the University of Leeds between 2002 and 2012. Nowadays, Pr. Moulin hold a position in the Laboratory of Psychology and Neurocognition at the University of Grenoble.

Pr. Moulin is a researcher specialized in cognitive neuropsychology interesting in episodic memory, especially the autobiographic memory and its subjectiveness. In recent years he is particularly renowed for his work on the feeling of déjà vu which have been the subject of articles for the general public in The Guardian or the NY Times. In 2017, Psychology Press published his book "The Cognitive Neuropsychology of Déjà Vu".

Alexandre Billon

   Dr. Alexandre Billon achieved his Master's Degree in Cognitive Sciences from a program including the Ecole Normale Supérieure, School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences and the University of Paris. In 2005, he defended his thesis at the Applied Epistemology Research Center of the Ecole Polytechnique de Paris. Subsequently, thanks to funding from the European Science Fundation, he completed a two-year postdoc in the Jean Nicod Institute (Paris) before obtaining a position of associate professor at the University of Lille.

Dr. Billon is a researcher interested in the articulation between our subjective perception and the objective conception of the world. Based on philosophical psychopathology, and in particular on the study of schizophrenia, depersonalization and Cotard's syndrome, he questions the overrate of the objective conception of the world to the detriment of our subjective perception.