Dr. Bertrand Thirion
University of Paris Saclay
Date/Time: Thursday, 10 April 2025, 16:30
Place: SC106 Aysel Sabuncu Brain Research Center Seminar Room
TBrain imaging helps us to understand how the brain works, as well as psychiatric and neurological pathologies. The development of non-invasive imaging, notably MRI, and the creation of large databases over the last decade have provided an opportunity to improve our understanding of the brain through imaging. In this context, machine learning has made it possible to create activatable representations of the data, and then, in a second stage, to confront brain imaging with the rich semantics describing an individual’s behavior and pathologies. We will present the key stages in these advances, based on our own work. However, artificial intelligence offers a particular opportunity to understand brain function: it provides models of cognition, sometimes inspired by brain function. This is particularly the case in two key areas: vision and language, where AI has scored its greatest successes over the past decade. We will show how comparing the internal representations of AI models with brain activity provides a deeper understanding of brain function, as well as the limits of this understanding.
Bio:
Bertrand Thirion is researcher in the Mind team, part of Inria research institute, Saclay, France, that develops statistics and machine learning techniques for brain imaging. He contributes both algorithms and software, with a special focus on functional neuroimaging applications. He is involved in the Neurospin, CEA neuroimaging center, one of the leading high-field MRI for brain imaging places. From 2018 to 2021, Bertrand Thirion has been the head of the DATAIA Institute that federates research on AI, data science and their societal impact in Paris- Saclay University. In 2020, he has recently been appointed as member of the expert committee in charge of advising the government during the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2021, he has become the Head of science (délégué scientifique) of the Inria Saclay-Île-de-France research center. Bertrand Thirion is PI of the Karaib AI Chair of the Individual Brain CHarting project.