Paris (France), 10 June 2009 – The 20th annual Neuronal Plasticity Prize has been awarded to Alim-Louis Benabid (CEA Minatec LETI,Grenoble, France), Apostolos P. Georgopoulos (University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA) and Miguel A. L. Nicolelis (Duke University, Durham, USA) for their research in the domain of the brain-machine interaction. The €60,000 prize was awarded on 27 May 2009 by an international jury* led by Professor Wolf Singer (Max-Planck Institute for Brain Research, Frankfurt, Germany) at the 9th Société des Neurosciences Meeting in Bordeaux, France.
About the winners
Alim-Louis Benabid is a neurosurgeon, Emeritus Professor in biophysics at the University Hospital Joseph Fournier (Grenoble, France) and Scientific Counsel of the French Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique. He is member of the Institut Universitaire de France, of the French Academy of Sciences, of the French Academy of Medicine and of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium. Dr. Benabid’s research has been focused on the neurosurgical pathologies, particularly of brain tumors as well as movement disorders. He has also developed surgical methods, particularly stereotactic. Dr. Benabid’s new method of stereotactic inhibition of surgical targets, which was initially limited to the thalamus and the pallidum, has diminished the side effects of long-term dopaminergic treatment in patients with Parkinson’s disease. The discovery in 1987 of the effects mimicking the lesion induced by electrical stimulation at high frequency caused a rebirth of stereostatic surgery and new therapeutic possibilities. The remarkable efficacy of this treatment, associated to its very low morbidity, has allowed surgeons to apply this method to other targets, including the subthalamic nucleus, and has led to a diminished need for medical treatments.
Apostolos P. Georgopoulos is Regents Professor at the University of Minnesota, Professor of Neuroscience, Neurology and Psychiatry, and the McKnight Presidential Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience. Dr. Georgopoulos is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine of the US National Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Athens, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences. He has pioneered the application of analyses based on neuronal populations to decipher brain activity underlying the planning of movement, cognitive processing, and, more recently, brain disease using magnetoencephalography.
Miguel A. L. Nicolelis is the Anne W. Deane Professor of Neuroscience and Professor of Neurobiology, Biomedical Engineering and Psychology at Duke University. He is also Co- Director of Duke Center for Neuroengineering; and Co-Founder and Scientific Director of the Edmond and Lily Safra International Institute for Neuroscience of Natal. Dr. Nicolelis has devoted his career to the search for the physiological principles that govern the interaction of large populations of neurons in behaving animals. Although Dr. Nicolelis is best known for his study of Brain Machine Interfaces (BMI) for neuroprosthetics in human patients and nonhuman primates, he is also developing an integrative approach to studying neurological and psychiatric disorders by recording neuronal ensemble activity across different brain areas in genetically modified mice. Dr. Nicolelis believes that this approach will allow the integration of molecular, cellular, systems, and behavioral data in the same animal, producing a more complete understanding of the nature of the alterations associated with these disorders.
About the Neuronal Plasticity Prize
Founded in 1990, the Neuronal Plasticity Prize of La Fondation Ipsen has been awarded to renowned specialists: Albert Aguayo (Montréal, 1990), Anders Björklund (Lund, 1990), Fred Gage (La Jolla, 1990), Ursula Bellugi (La Jolla, 1991), Wolf Singer (Frankfurt, 1990), Torsten Wiesel (New York, 1991), Philippe Ascher (Paris, 1992), Kjell Fuxe (Stockholm, 1992), Terje Lomo (Oslo, 1992), Per Andersen (Oslo, 1993), Masao Ito (Wako Saitama, 1993), Constantino Sotelo (Paris, 1993), Mariano Barbacid (Princeton, 1994), Yves Barde (Planegg-Martinsried, 1994), Hans Thoenen (Planegg- Martinsried, 1994), Jacques Mehler (Paris, 1995), Brenda Milner (Montreal, 1995), Mortimer Mishkin (Bethesda, 1995), Friedrich Bonhoeffer (Tubingen, 1996), Corey Goodman (Berkeley, 1996), Marc Tessier-Lavigne (San Francisco, 1996), Antonio Damasio (Iowa City, 1997), Richard Frackowiac (London, 1997), Michael Merzenich (San Francisco, 1997), Heinrich Betz (Frankfurt, 1998), Gerald Fischbach (Boston, 1998), Uel McMahan (Stanford, 1998), Masakazu Konishi (Pasadena, 1999), Peter Marler (Davis, 1999), Fernando Nottebohm (Millbrook, 1999), Tomas Hökfelt (Stockholm, 2000), Lars Olson (Stockholm, 2000), Lars Terenius (Stockholm, 2000), Albert Galaburda (Boston, 2001), John Morton (Londres, 2001), Elisabeth Spelke (Cambridge, USA, 2001), Arturo Alvarez-Buylla (San Francisco, 2002), Ronald Mc Kay (Bethesda, 2002), Sam Weiss (Calgary, 2002), François Clarac (Marseille, 2003), Sven Grillner (Stockholm, 2003), Serge Rossignol (Montréal, 2003), James Gusella (Boston, 2004), Jean-Louis Mandel (Strasbourg, 2004), Huda Y. Zoghbi (Houston, 2004), Ann Graybiel (Cambridge, USA, 2005), Trevor Robbins (Cambridge, UK, 2005), Wolfram Schultz (Cambridge, UK, 2005, Eckhart D. Gundelfinger (Magdeburg, 2006), Mary B. Kennedy (Pasadena, 2006), Morgan Sheng (Cambridge, USA, 2006), Nikos K. Logothetis (Tübingen, 2007), Keiji Tanaka (Wako, 2007), Giacomo Rizzolati (Parma, 2007), Jean-Pierre Changeux (Paris, 2008), Peter W. Kalivas (Charleston 2008) and Eric J. Nestler (Dallas, 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 with 4 workshops a year, 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.
