Breakfast & Science Seminar 60
Hosted by Carole Guedj, Postdoctoral researcher, CIBM MRI UNIGE & CIBM MRI HUG-UNIGE Sections, we are pleased to invite you to attend the 60th CIBM Breakfast & Science Seminar on September 29th at 09:30 CET by Vanessa Siffredi from CHUV-UNIL who will be sharing on “The paradox of the corpus callosum: insights from the developing brain”.
Date and time: Tuesday, September 29th, 2026 – 9:30 to 11:00 CEST
Location: Auditoire de pédiatrie Fred Bamatter, HUG, Hôpital des Enfants or online
Program
09:30 – 10:30 The paradox of the corpus callosum: insights from the developing brain
10:30 – 11:00 CIBM news and networking
Abstract
With more than 250 million axons, the corpus callosum is the largest white-matter bundle connecting the two hemispheres of the human brain. It presents an intriguing paradox: seemingly indispensable in typical development, yet remarkably dispensable when absent from birth. In typical development, the corpus callosum and interhemispheric functional connectivity play a central role in cognitive and socio-emotional development across childhood and adolescence, with variation in callosal architecture linked to general cognition, executive and attentional functions, memory, language, and socio-emotional outcomes. Yet in children born with congenital absence or anomalies of the corpus callosum, the brain appears to compensate for the alteration of this central structure, with children showing neurodevelopment comparable to peers with typical callosal development. This talk explores that paradox through studies of both typical callosal development and callosal dysgenesis, drawing on structural and functional neuroimaging evidence.
Vanessa Siffredi
About the Speaker
Vanessa is a Research and Teaching Ambizione fellow, awarded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), at the Translational Machine Learning Laboratory (Dr Jonas Richiardi); jointly affiliated with the Department of Medical Radiology at the Lausanne University Hospital and the Faculty of Biology and Medicine at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland.
Her research is rooted in developmental cognitive neuroscience, with a focus on the foundations of cognitive and socio-emotional development across childhood and adolescence; and on designing interventions to support optimal growth in both domains. Her research methodology combines behavioural, structural and functional neuroimaging, genetic, and environmental measures.
After an initial clinical training in child neuropsychology, she completed a joint PhD degree between the University of Melbourne, Australia, and the University of Geneva, awarded by the SNSF Doc.CH fellowship. She then joined the Medical Image Processing lab (MIPlab, UniGE, Prof. Dimitri Van De Ville) and the Child Development Lab (ChilDlab, UniGE, Prof. Petra Hüppi) as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and then Maître-Assistante at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Geneva before starting the Ambizione fellowship.
Seminar Chair
Carole Guedj
Postdoctoral researcher, CIBM MRI UNIGE Cognitive and Affective Neuroimaging Section & CIBM MRI HUG-UNIGE Clinical MR Imaging Section
JOIN US ON SITE!
You are welcome to join us on site at the Auditoire de pédiatrie Fred Bamatter, HUG, Hôpital des Enfants
The event is for free and registration is not required.
OR REMOTELY
To join us remotely please, register at the following Zoom link:
https://epfl.zoom.us/meeting/register/d5a9vjlLTUikwYFrjs6R6Q
Zoom Code: 663 2688 5046
We look forward to seeing you there!
