Neuroplasticity and Electrophysiology in awake brain surgery: In memory of Wilder Penfield: A Talk by Dr.François Bonnetblanc

The OBDAF Cluster is happy to announce an upcoming research presentation at UBC next week by Dr. François Bonnetblanc (Associate Professor, INRIA French National Institute for Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, Montpellier Laboratory of Informatics, Robotics and Microelectronics, CAMIN Research Team, Belgium) hosted by Dr. Jean-Sébastien Blouin (Professor, UBC School of Kinesiology)  

The “Awake brain surgery” consists in removing infiltrative and slow-growing brain tumor tissues in awake patients. The neurosurgeon performs an anatomo-functional mapping of the brain by electrically stimulating brain areas near the tumor to discriminate functional versus nonfunctional brain areas. The electrical stimulation is performed both cortically and subcortically to preserve the anatomical connectivity in real-time. During the surgery, the patient performs simple behavioral tasks of interest (intra-operative assessments like picture-naming, arm flexion, etc). Despite marked functional deficits, post-surgical recovery of these patients remains impressive with respect to the lesion volume (patients have a full recovery on standard neurological scales despite lesion volumes larger than 100 cm3). These observations question our understanding of brain dynamics and neural plasticity phenomena. The electrical stimulation procedure associated with the intra-operative assessments are thus critical aspects that need to be optimized in order to improve the precision of the anatomo-functional mapping of the brain and to better understand its dynamics and plasticity for these patients. Indeed, the modus operandi of direct electrical stimulation (DES) was fixed empirically since pioneering studies of the Canadian neurosurgeon W. Penfield. In the 1950s, he performed functional mappings of the cortex that greatly influenced the field of Neuroscience. However, our current understanding of the electrophysiological effects of DES remains limited. Specifically, our multidisciplinary approach aims at: (1) building new functional pre, post, and intraoperative assessments by adapting classical neuropsychological assessments to new technologies applied to health, (2) better understanding the electrophysiological effects of the direct electrical stimulation during the surgery using intra-operative electroencephalographic and electrocorticographic recordings and (3) better understanding brain plasticity for these patients and in particular the roles of remote structures (i.e. healthy cortical hemisphere and subcortical structures) in the recovery using non-invasive pre- and post-operative neuro-imaging and electroencephalography. By systematically performing these precise measurements before, after or during the surgery, we hope to better understand brain dynamics and plasticity in order to improve the surgical planning, brain mapping, rehabilitation and quality of life of patients.

Dr. François Bonnetblanc is a full researcher at INRIA (National Institute for Research on Informatics and Control) for two years. For more than 10 years, he has been interfacing neuroscience, neurosurgery and neural engineering through original pluridisciplinary collaborations with Pr. Hugues Duffau (world specialist of awake surgery of slow-growing brain tumors) and with Dr. David Guiraud (a French specialist ofNeuroprosthesis and Functional Electrical Stimulation).