Steven Laureys - Biography#
Steven Laureys (1968) obtained his M.D. at VU Brussels in 1993 (thesis ‘Thalamic monoamines in rat models of mononeuropathic pain’). During his clinical neurology training he obtained a M.Sc. in Pharmaceutical Sciences (VU Brussels) (thesis ‘Transient focal cerebral ischemia assessed by in vivo micro-dialysis and diffusion MRI in the rat’). Fascinated by the study of pain and alleviation of suffering yet frustrated by the absence of reliable assessment tools for subjective experience in non-human animal models, he turned to human neuroimaging and, after a stint at U Cambridge (1996), moved to U Liège where he was board certified in Neurology (1998) and obtained his Ph.D. on ’Functional neuroanatomy of the vegetative state. A lesional approach to the study of human consciousness’ (2000) and laid the foundations for his subsequent research on the ‘Neurology of Consciousness’ – see his milestone book co-edited with psychiatrist Giulio Tononi, U Madison and updated 2nd edition with his former PhD student and post-doc (now tenure assistant professor) Olivia Gosseries.
In Liège, he built a world-renowned Liège school of human consciousness studies employing multimodal brain imaging to study higher cognition and neuroplasticity in health and disease. With his team he studies sleep, anesthesia and traumatic brain injury using PET, functional and structural MRI, EEG and neurostimulation. While keeping his clinical activities as a neurologist and working at both the U Hospital of Liège & Brussels in neurology, emergency, intensive care & rehabilitation wards, he kept patients’ wellbeing at the center of his interests and obtained an accreditation for palliative care (U Catholique Louvain, U Libre Bruxelles, U Liège, 2004). In 2007 he obtained his aggregation for higher education (Habilitation, U Liège) – his public lecture was entitled “The physiology of sleep”.
For over 2 decades he has worked to reduce the distance between research disciplines, faculties, universities, health centers and linguistic communities, and to establish cooperation at national and international levels. It is in this spirit that he founded the Coma Science Group (2006) a renowned international transdisciplinary group. In collaboration with U Cambridge and Weill Cornell Medical NY, he helped improving the trajectory of care after brain injury and coma, vegetative state (renamed under his leadership EU taskforce "unresponsive wakefulness", 2010), minimally consciousness and locked-in syndromes.
He founded (2014) the GIGA CONSCIOUSNESS Unit at U Liège, an internationally recognized school exploring pathological, pharmacological & psychological modifications of perception, emotion and conscious awareness where students and scholars come from all over the world to benefit from the cutting-edge neuroimaging infrastructure and scientific expertise, directly translated to the clinical reality at the Centre Cerveau clinical centre he founded (2019) at Liège U Hospital. In 2024 he was awarded the Canada Excellence Research Chair ($32M in total) on Neuroplasticity at CERVO Brain Centre, U Laval where he is founding an international research unit while keeping his position as Research Director at the Belgian National Fund for Research and U Liege.
