PARIS - (Business Wire) The 17th annual Jean-Louis Signoret Neuropsychology Prize has been awarded to Doctor Pierre Maquet (Cyclotron Research Centre, Liege, Belgium) for his work on the domain of “Sleep and cognition” by an international jury1 led by Professor Albert Galaburda (Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA). He received the €20,000 prize on 16 november 2009 at the Journée Jean-Louis Signoret (Paris, France). About the winner
Pierre Maquet is Research Director at the National Fund for Scientific Research (Brussels, Belgium), and works at the Cyclotron Research Centre (Liege, Belgium) on the relationships between sleep and cognition.
Very early in his career Pierre Maquet’s interest focused on functional magnetic resonance imaging wich leads him to study the various modified states of consciousness such as coma, vegetative state, minimal consciousness state, hypnotic state, general anaesthetia, and sleep. This study permits him to localize the brain areas involved in those activities.
His work on the domain of sleep and cognition, published in the prestigious journals such as Nature, Neuroscience, Neuron and Journal of Neuroscience proved that sleep plays a crucial role in learning and in the consolidation of memories.
About the Jean-Louis Signoret Neuropsychology Prize
Established in 1992, the prize has been awarded by La Fondation Ipsen to many prestigious specialists: Eric Kandel (New York, 1992), Jacques Paillard (Marseilles, 1993), Rodolfo Llinas (New York, 1994), Stephen Kosslyn (Cambridge, USA, 1995), Alfonso Caramazza (Cambridge, USA, 1996), Jean-Pierre Changeux (Paris, 1997), Edoardo Bisiach (Turin, 1998), Joseph LeDoux (New York, 1999), Joaquin Fuster (Los Angeles, 2000), Stanislas Dehaene (Orsay, 2001), Deepak Pandya (Boston, 2002), Uta Frith (London, 2003), Hanna and Antonio Damasio (Iowa City, 2004), Marc Jeannerod (Lyon, 2005), Faraneh Vargha-Khadem (London, 2006), Alvaro Pascual Leone (Boston, 2007) and Elizabeth Warrington (London, 2008).
La Fondation Ipsen
Established in 1983 under the aegis of the Fondation de France, the mission of la Fondation Ipsen is to contribute to the development and dissemination of scientific knowledge. The long-standing action of la Fondation Ipsen is aimed at furthering the interaction between researchers and clinical practitioners, which is indispensable due to the extreme specialisation of these professions. The ambition of la Fondation Ipsen is not to offer definitive knowledge, but to initiate a reflection about the major scientific issues of the forthcoming years. It has developed an important international network of scientific experts who meet regularly at meetings known as Colloques Médecine et Recherche, dedicated to six main themes: Alzheimer's disease, neurosciences, longevity, endocrinology, the vascular system and cancer science. In 2007, la Fondation Ipsen started three new series of meetings. The first is in partnership with the Salk Institute and Nature and is an annual meeting which focuses on aspects of Biological Complexity; the second is the “Emergence and Convergence” series with Nature, and the third annual meeting is with Cell and the Massachusetts General Hospital entitled “Exciting Biologies”. Since its beginning, la Fondation Ipsen has organised more than 100 international conferences, published 69 volumes with renowned publishers and more than 205 issues of a widely distributed newsletter Alzheimer Actualités. It has also awarded more than 100 prizes and grants.
1 Jocelyne Bachevalier (Emory University, Atlanta), Laurent Cohen (Hôpital de la Salpétrière, Paris), Branch Coslett (University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia), Richard Frackowiak (CHUV, Lausanne), Didier Hannequin (Hôpital Charles Nicolle, Rouen), Kenneth Heilman (University of Florida, Gainesville), Bernard Laurent (Hôpital Bellevue, Saint-Etienne), Kimford Meador (Emory University, Atlanta), Michel Poncet (C.H.U. Hôpital Timone, Marseille), Donald Stuss (The Rotman Research Institute, Toronto)
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