Vision & Sight Recovery

Pr. Olivier Collignon completed his PhD at UCLouvain university in 2006. He then received a post-doctoral grant from the National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS) and left for Montreal for his first post-doctoral program. After the end of his FNRS grant (2010), he received a postdoctoral grant from the Saint Justine Children’s Hospital in Montreal. In 2012, he was invited to become a Visiting Professor (Professeur Invité – PI) at the Center for Mind/Brain Science (CIMeC) of the University of Trento (Italy), where he initiated the Crossmodal Perception and Plasticity laboratory. Shortly after, he received an ERC starting grant for the purpose of understanding the functional consequences of the deprivation and restoration of sight. In 2015, he became a researcher for the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research, affiliated with the Louvain university. His laboratory relies on the respective benefits of a plurality of methods (psychophysical, EEG/MEG, stereotactic EEG, TMS, fMRI) to converge towards an all-encompassing understanding of the mechanisms underlying cross-modal perception and plasticity. More broadly, his research is motivated by the strong conviction that studying individuals deprived of one (or more) of their senses presents an excellent model to investigate the way the brain develops, maintains, and alters its functional architecture to adapt its interaction with the environment.