Prof. Dr. Olivia Gosseries is a neuropsychologist, research associate at FNRS, and co-director of the Coma Science Group at the GIGA Consciousness. She studies pathological, physiological, and pharmacological modifications in consciousness using behavioural assessments and imaging technologies. Her early work focused on diagnosis and prognosis in patients with disorders of consciousness recovering from coma using noninvasive brain stimulation and electrophysiology. In recent years, she has worked more extensively on therapeutic options for this challenging patient population. To study human consciousness more globally, she now also investigates anaesthesia, coma memory, lucid dreams, meditation, hypnosis, and cognitive trance. She aims to continue improving the care of patients who are recovering from coma, contribute to the understanding of human consciousness, and promote education and public awareness of this clinical and research topic.
Prof. Marie-Elisabeth Faymonville was awarded her degree as a Doctor of Medicine at the University of Liege in 1977 and is a specialist in Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine. She began her career as a research fellow at the National Foundation for Scientific Research, then as a specialist in the Department of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine of the University Hospital Center of Liege, with the responsibility of the Burn Center and the Department of Maxillofacial and Plastic Surgery. She developed, in 1992, a new method of anaesthesia: hypnosedation. Since 1994, she has been teaching this technique in a free course at the University of Liege, where more than 522 participants, coming from four different European countries, have already received this training. Her original research activity is centred on the investigation of the neuroanatomical mechanisms of various states of consciousness, including hypnosis. A Professor since 2003, she has directed, since 2004, the Pain Center and has taken an active part, as a consultant doctor, with the Palliative Care team of the C.H.U of Liege. She has been Head of the Department of Algology and Palliative Care from 2010 to 2018. She has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Palliative Care platform in Liege, Belgium, since March 2010, and a member of the Federal Commission of Control and Evaluation of Euthanasia in Belgium since September 2011.
Prof. Dr. Audrey Vanhaudenhuyse has been the head of the Sensation and Perception Research Group (www.gigalsprg.uliege.be), GIGA Consciousness, University of Liège Since 2016. She has been at the Algology Department, CHU, and the University of Liège as scientific staff, psychologist, and PhD in Medical Sciences since 2013. During her PhD and postdoctoral position at the University of Liege (Coma Science Group, ULiege, Belgium), she researched behavioural and neuroimaging studies in patients with disorders of consciousness following severe brain injury. She pursues the inspiring goal to develop and validate complementary approaches based on nonordinary states of consciousness to improve the well-being of patients with pain, anxiety, emotional distress, and fatigue, especially with hypnosis, virtual reality combined with hypnosis, and other methods of trance state induction. She is convinced that psychological support promoting autonomy and self-care is essential for patients (e.g., cancer, chronic pain, intensive care patients, burned patients, etc.). Her objective is to perform translational research that helps to better understand the mechanisms underlying nonordinary states of consciousness (fMRI, high-density EEG), and improve biopsychosocial well-being by proposing nonordinary states of consciousness as a complementary approach in patients’ clinical routine care.
