Breakfast & Science Seminar 61
Hosted by Marzia De Lucia CIBM EEG CHUV UNIL Section Head, we are pleased to invite you to attend the 61st CIBM Breakfast & Science Seminar on October 27th at 09:30 CET by Hamza Kebiri Postdoctoral researcher CIBM SP EPFL-UNIGE Section who will be sharing on “Do real and artificial brains encode emotions similarly ?”.
Date and time: Tuesday, October 27, 2026 – 9:30 to 11:00 CET
Location: CIBM Seminar room, EPFL, Lausanne or online
Program
09:30 – 10:30 Do real and artificial brains encode emotions similarly ?
10:30 – 11:00 CIBM news and networking
Abstract
Foundation models trained at internet scale have transformed artificial intelligence by learning general-purpose representations that can be adapted to many downstream tasks, including brain activity prediction. A growing question is whether these large-scale multimodal models can capture some aspects of the human brain.
In this preliminary work, we examine this question using TRIBEv2, a state-of-the-art multimodal brain encoding model designed to predict fMRI brain activity from naturalistic stimuli. Specifically, we ask whether TRIBEv2 captures emotion-related brain representations in a way that resembles empirical human fMRI responses. To test this, we use the EmoFilm dataset, in which participants watched naturalistic short films while brain activity was recorded, and where the films were continuously annotated for discrete emotions as well as emotion components from the Component Process Model. In this work, we compare encoding patterns derived from real brain activity and from TRIBEv2-predicted activity across cortical and subcortical regions.
Hamza Kebiri
About the Speaker
Hamza Kebiri is a CIBM postdoctoral researcher at the University of Geneva and EPFL working with Prof. Dimitri Van De Ville. His research focuses on neuroimaging, artificial intelligence, and machine learning methods for uncovering brain structure and function, with a particular interest in fetal and neonatal brains.
He initially trained in Communication Systems at EPFL before moving toward cognitive science through a master’s degree at Osnabrück University in Germany. After an interlude in deep learning-based nanoscale connectomics at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, he returned to Switzerland to complete a PhD in Life Sciences at the University of Lausanne under the supervision of Prof. Meritxell Bach Cuadra. His doctoral work focused on super-resolution reconstruction of developing brains from diffusion MRI and was recognized with the Best PhD Thesis Award from the Faculty of Biology and Medicine.
Hamza was recently awarded an SNSF Postdoc Mobility grant to join Imperial College London and Harvard Medical School to work on the project titled “Robust functionally informed characterisation of structural connectomes in early development”.
Seminar Chair
JOIN US ON SITE!
You are welcome to join us on site at the CIBM Seminar room, EPFL, Lausanne.
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!
