Patrik Vuilleumier trained in clinical neurology and neuropsychology. He currently heads the Neurology and Cognitive Imaging Laboratory at the UNIGE and the HUG. He was director of the Geneva University Neuroscience Centre for ten years, and co-founded the Brain & Behaviour Laboratory with the Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, of which he is a member of the steering committee, and he currently is co-directing the human neuroscience platform of Campus Biotech.

A pioneer in the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging for neuroscience in the early 2000s, he has used this technology to investigate the brain circuits that generate conscious perception and emotion. His research aims to dissect the functional mechanisms that generate these two functions. His aim is to understand how these mechanisms are disrupted in psychiatric and neurological illnesses, in order to devise new and more effective approaches for improving diagnosis and restoring altered functions.

•  Page on the website of the Faculty of medicine

Studying Emotions to Understand Neurological Disorders

Patrik Vuilleumier and his colleagues are developing behavioural and functional brain imaging methods to assess the influence of emotions on the behaviour of healthy people, such as the influence of fear or rewards on attention, memory, or action. This new knowledge is then used to study the dysfunction of emotional circuits in neurological and psychiatric patients. Their team is mainly exploring depression, anxiety, as well as somatic and dissociative symptoms such as functional motor disorders Their aim is to test new non-pharmaceutical treatment methods, such as meditation, hypnosis and neurofeedback.