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Previous page Jacobo SITT Principal Investigator - MD, PhD, DR2, INSERM Team “PICNIC Lab: Physiological investigations of clinically normal and impaired cognition” https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jacobo_Sitt https://twitter.com/jdsitt

Biography

Being a Medical doctor and a BSc in Physics, I continued a multidisciplinary education by training as a psychiatrist and simultaneously pursuing a Ph.D. in Physics of Dynamical Systems. This dual atmosphere allowed me to be in touch with the daily challenges of clinical practice. But, at the same time, to acquire advanced tools from mathematical modeling, nonlinear dynamics, complexity science, information theory, and data mining, which are critical to analyze and interpret biomedical questions. In November 2015 I was recruited by INSERM (France) as an independent tenured PI (CRCN, promoted to Directeur de Recherche DR2 in 2019). My research plan focus on testing the causal role of neural markers of consciousness using different experimental models (brain-injuries, sleep, and anesthesia), neuroimaging methods (M/EEG, sEEG, fMRI) and stimulation techniques (tES, auditory stimulation).

Research work

  •  Multivariate EEG analysis in Disorders of consciousness: For the last ten years, I lead a program of development and validation of new neurophysiological markers of state of consciousness in brain-injured patients. More recently, we have integrated these markers into a public (and web-based, see demo.doc-eeg.net) pipeline that allows their implementation in any clinical center.
  • Representative papers/patents:
- Engemann DA, Raimondo F, King JR, Rohaut B, Louppe G, Faugeras F, Annen J, Cassol H, Gosseries O, Fernandez-Slezak D, Laureys S, Naccache L, Dehaene S, Sitt JD. Robust EEG-based cross-site and cross-protocol classification of states of consciousness. Brain. 2018 Nov 1;141(11):3179-3192. PubMed PMID: 30285102. - Sitt JD, King JR, El Karoui I, Rohaut B, Faugeras F, Gramfort A, Cohen L, Sigman M, Dehaene S, Naccache L. Large scale screening of neural signatures of consciousness in patients in a vegetative or minimally conscious state. Brain. 2014 Aug;137(Pt 8):2258-70. PubMed PMID: 24919971; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4610185. - King JR, Sitt JD, Faugeras F, Rohaut B, El Karoui I, Cohen L, Naccache L, Dehaene S. Information sharing in the brain indexes consciousness in noncommunicative patients. Curr Biol. 2013 Oct 7;23(19):1914-9. PubMed PMID: 24076243; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC5635964. - A method to Monitor Consciousness. France EP13305485. 2013 January 01.
  • Consciousness modulations of functional connectivity dynamics: in this project we studied how the brain functional connectivity dynamics changes in the different states of consciousness. We demonstrated that states of awareness are associated with the emergence of long-range connections and anti-correlations between brain areas. These results were validated across species (Human and non-human primates) and different loss of consciousness conditions (anesthesia and brain injuries).
  • Representative papers/patents:
- Demertzi A, Tagliazucchi E, Dehaene S, Deco G, Barttfeld P, Raimondo F, Martial C, Fernández-Espejo D, Rohaut B, Voss HU, Schiff ND, Owen AM, Laureys S, Naccache L, Sitt JD. Human consciousness is supported by dynamic complex patterns of brain signal coordination. Sci Adv. 2019 Feb;5(2):eaat7603. PubMed PMID: 30775433; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC6365115. - Uhrig L, Sitt JD, Jacob A, Tasserie J, Barttfeld P, Dupont M, Dehaene S, Jarraya B. Resting-state Dynamics as a Cortical Signature of Anesthesia in Monkeys. Anesthesiology. 2018 Nov;129(5):942-958. PubMed PMID: 30028727. - Barttfeld P, Uhrig L, Sitt JD, Sigman M, Jarraya B, Dehaene S. Signature of consciousness in the dynamics of resting-state brain activity. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2015 Jan 20;112(3):887-92. PubMed PMID: 25561541; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4311826.
  •  Consciousness detection from the body: In this line, we plan to study if we can use signals from the body (and their interaction with the brain) to determine the state-of-consciousness of DoC patients. The basis of this proposal is that although consciousness occurs in the brain, the brain is also constantly modulating the bodily activity (i.e. cardiac and respiratory function) and recent results in healthy participants showing that cognitive process modulates these body signals. In this project, we are extending these ideas to study consciousness in the clinics. A critical advantage of this new evaluation framework is that the brain-body interactions are traditionally explored using body signals that are easily accessible in any hospital. This new framework will allow introducing evaluation tools in contexts where neuroimaging-based tools are currently challenging to implement.
  • Representative papers/patents:
- Brain-body interaction for consciousness detection. France EP18306190. 2018 April 01. - Raimondo F, Rohaut B, Demertzi A, Valente M, Engemann DA, Salti M, Fernandez Slezak D, Naccache L, Sitt JD. Brain-heart interactions reveal consciousness in noncommunicating patients. Ann Neurol. 2017 Oct;82(4):578-591. PubMed PMID: 28892566. - Pérez P*, Madsen J*, … , Parra LC*, Sitt JD*. Conscious processing of narrative stimuli synchronizes heart rate between individuals. BiorXiv (2020)

Publications

- Demertzi A*, Tagliazucchi E*, … & Sitt JD. Human consciousness is supported by temporally evolving brain processes. Science Advances (2019)

- Engemann DA*, Raimondo F*, … & Sitt JD. Robust EEG-based cross-site and cross-protocol classification of states of consciousness. Brain (2018)

- Raimondo F, … & Sitt JD. Brain-heart interactions reveals consciousness in non-communicating patients. Annals of Neurology (2017) 

- Barttfeld P*, Uhrig L*, Sitt JD*, Sigman M, Jarraya B & Dehaene S, “Signature of consciousness in the dynamics of resting-state brain activity” PNAS (2015) 

- Sitt JD*, King J-R*, … Naccache L. “Large Scale Screening of the Neural Signatures of Consciousness in Vegetative and Minimally Conscious State Patients.” Brain (2014)