CV Science

Jessica Dubois PhD in Neurosciences

Course and current status

Jessica Dubois is a researcher at Inserm since October 2009. She obtained her engineer degree in Physics in 2001 (Ecole Centrale Paris), her master M2 degree in “Interface between Physics and Biology” in 2002 (Univ. Paris 11), and her PhD in Physics in 2006 (Univ. Paris 11, dir. D. Le Bihan, CEA/SHFJ). She did post-doctoral fellowships in the labs of P. Hüppi (Geneva University Hospitals, Switzerland, 2006-2007) and C. Chiron (UMR663, Paris, 2007-2008). After being affiliated to the Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit (UMR992 directed by S. Dehaene, CEA/NeuroSpin, Saclay; G. Dehaene-Lambertz’s team, 2009-2018), she has joined the NeuroDiderot Unit (UMR1141 directed by P. Gressens) in January 2019 (inDev team co-led with L. Hertz-Pannier). She has been part of the Scientific Committee at “Fondation Paralysie Cérébrale” (previously “Fondation Motrice”) since 2017, and the Committee Autism and Child Neurodevelopment at “Fondation de France” since 2015. She has published more than 50 peer-reviewed articles (researcherID P-2461-2014). She has been academic editor for Plos One since 2018, and she is a regular reviewer for several scientific journals (publons P-2461-2014). She has been involved in several grants as PI (e.g. “Fondation de France”, Fyssen Foundation) or partner (e.g. ANR). She has obtained the Junior Prize Christian Nézelof of Pediatric Pathology in 2012 for her post-doc research, and the Prize of Clinical Research in Neurosciences (“Fondation Medisite”) in 2018 for the inDev team.

Scientific summary

Jessica Dubois’ main researches focus on the early development of the human brain, which she studies with dedicated neuroimaging techniques (e.g. magnetic resonance imaging MRI, electroencephalography EEG). Her goals are to provide non-invasive markers of the networks’ development, which relate to the infants’ functional acquisitions. Her works have detailed how the brain is early organized at the structural level in infants and preterm newborns. First, she has shown the architecture of white matter bundles with diffusion MRI combined with tractography. She has further described the progressive maturation of pathways by using multi-parametric approaches (e.g. relaxometry MRI). She has also mapped the intense brain growth and folding process from the pre-term to early post-term period. More recently, she has explored how the cortical microstructure changes in preterm newborns and infants. Her researches have highlighted anatomical asymmetries between cerebral hemispheres, notably within the developing language network. Through studies of the visual and auditory modalities with MRI and EEG, she has described that the speed of functional responses is related to the structural maturation of underlying networks in a complex way. Her projects aim to explore how the brain organization might be impaired by early pre- or perinatal alterations such as premature birth.