15.04.2025 Hugues Duffau

Abstract: Awake surgery in patients with brain tumors represents a unique opportunity to map individual functional circuits, which has opened avenues to new models of nervous system organization, breaking with the localizationist traditional. These original models are based on dynamic interaction within and between networks - the concept of a meta-network - notably involving circuits of conation (execution and control of complex movement and action), language (articulation, phonology, semantics, syntax, prosody, etc.), cognition (visuo-spatial, social, executive functions, etc.), underlying human behavior. This perpetual succession of equilibrium states, which enables physiological neuroplasticity mechanisms (learning) as well as post-lesional mechanisms (functional compensation following brain damage) through the adapted reconfiguration of neuronal networks, offer a first step in understanding the neurobiology of these complex and integrated capacities, potentially leading to the development of innovative ideas - namely, creativity.