I am Thomas Andrillon, a researcher at the Paris Brain Institute (Paris, France).
I did my PhD at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris (France) on brain's ability to process sensory information during sleep. I examined in particular how local modulations of brain activity such as sleep intrusions during wakefulness and wake intrusions during sleep impact the functioning of the brain.
I showed that, when we get tired, we may become slow at responding to images which is paralleled by neurons getting sluggish themselves. Conversely, when we are asleep, our brain does not completely shut from our environment and we can process auditory information complexly. My work suggests that we can even learn while sleeping!
After my PhD, I relocated in Australia in the laboratories of Prof. Nao Tsuchiya (Monash University) and Prof. Joel Pearson (UNSW), where I will explore the neural mechanisms underlying mind wandering and mind blanking. I notably showed that lapses of attention could be explained by the intrusion of local sleep-like activity in the awake brain.
I am now a tenured researcher in Paris where I will keep on studying sleep, dreaming and consciousness in healthy individuals and patients.