Dr. Patric Hagmann

The Telegraph article Scientist identify brain “core” that could reveal secrets of thought said

After centuries searching for the seat of consciousness, scientists have identified a good place to look.
 
A “core” region of the brain has been identified by an international team which has produced the first complete high-resolution map of the human cerebral cortex, the wrinkly surface of the brain where awareness, thought and other features of high level thinking reside.
 
The team traced the connections between millions of brain cells and identified a highly connected single network core, or hub, that may be key to the workings of both hemispheres of the brain.
 
Most important, in a study of five volunteers doing various tasks, they found that the connections of the brain did influence the overall activity. “This means that if we know how the brain is connected we can predict what the brain will do,” said Dr Sporns.
 
Dr Sporns and Dr Patric Hagmann now plan to look at more brains to map brain connectivity as brains develop and age, and as they change in the course of disease and dysfunction.

Patric Hagmann, M.D., Ph.D. is based at Lausanne University Hospital and also conducts research at the Signal Processing Institute (ITS), School of Engineering (STI), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne EPFL.
 
Patric’s current research includes the theoretical foundations of diffusion MRI and its mathematical representation, the relationship between the diffusion MRI signal and brain axonal trajectories (tractography or fiber tracking), the mathematical representation of brain connectivity (the brain connectome) and its architecture, as well as comparative neuroanatomy between different classes of subjects.
 
He coauthored Representing Diffusion MRI in 5D Simplifies Regularization and Segmentation of White Matter Tracts, Understanding Diffusion MR Imaging Techniques: From Scalar Diffusion-weighted Imaging to Diffusion Tensor Imaging and Beyond, Hand preference and sex shape the architecture of language networks, White matter fiber tract segmentation in DT-MRI using geometric flows, A method to study alterations in networks of structural connectivity, Deriving scalar maps from Diffusion Spectrum MRI, and Imaging the brain neuronal network with diffusion MRI: a way to understand its global architecture.
 
Patric earned his medical degree in 2000 from University of Lausanne, Switzerland. During his studies he spent two years as an exchange student successively at University of Basel, Switzerland, and University of Leicester, United Kingdom. He acquired his clinical skills in different specialties and hospitals in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Canada, and India.
 
In 2001, he completed his education with a Postgraduate Program in Biomedical Engineering at EPFL. Between 2001 and 2005 he worked at ITS as a research assistant, spent some time at the NMR-center (Harvard Medical School) in Boston, and was awarded with a PhD from the School of Computer and Communication Sciences of EPFL in 2005 for his work entitled “From Diffusion MRI to Brain Connectomics”.
 
Read his LinkedIn profile.