Mehdi Es-sounni

Mehdi Es-sounni is the Sleep Lab Manager at the Sleep, Cognition and Neuroimaging Laboratory (SCNLab), based at the Centre de recherche de l’Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal (CRIUGM), affiliated with the Université de Montréal and in partnership with Concordia University. He works closely with the lab’s director, Dr. Thanh Dang-Vu, and research associate Dr. Florence Borgetto. He oversees the lab’s day-to-day operations, including grant budget management, hiring and staff contracts, study protocol and research documentation development, coordination of concurrent projects, and liaison with national and international partners. He also performs sleep scoring, polysomnography montages, and PSG reporting for both research participants and clinical patients. Mehdi supervises and mentors undergraduate and graduate students throughout their training, including internships, honours theses, micro-programmes, and master’s theses. He contributes to a research programme focused on sleep, cognition, and neurodegenerative disease, and works professionally in both French and English.

My research interests focus on sleep disorders, particularly insomnia and disorders of hypersomnolence, the co-occurrence of sleep and mental health disorders, and cognitive changes in older adults. I am also interested in evaluating the performance of commercial sleep sensors against polysomnography, as well as studying sleep EEG and the patterns of brain waves during sleep.

Peer-reviewed publications

1. Barbaux, L., Cross, N. E., Perrault, A. A., Es-sounni, M., Desrosiers, C., Clerc, D., Andriamampionona, F., Lussier, D., Tannenbaum, C., Guimond, A., Grenier, S., Gouin, J.-P., & Dang-Vu, T. (2025). Effects of cognitive-behavioral therapy for insomnia during sedative-hypnotics withdrawal on sleep and cognition in older adults. Sleep Medicine, 136, Article 106826. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleep.2025.106826
2. Barbaux, L., Perrault, A. A., Cross, N. E., Weiner, O. M., Es-sounni, M., Pomares, F. B., Tarelli, L., McCarthy, M., Maltezos, A., Smith, D., Gong, K., O’Byrne, J., Yue, V., Desrosiers, C., Clerc, D., Andriamampionona, F., Lussier, D., Gilbert, S., Tannenbaum, C., . . . Dang-Vu, T. (2025). Effect of chronic benzodiazepine and benzodiazepine receptor agonist use on sleep architecture and brain oscillations in older adults with chronic insomnia. Sleep, 48(10), zsaf168. https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/zsaf168
3. von Bastian, C. C., Reinhartz, A., Udale, R. C., Grégoire, S., Essounni, M., Belleville, S., & Strobach, T. (2022). Mechanisms of processing speed training and transfer effects across the adult lifespan: Protocol of a multi-site cognitive training study. BMC Psychology, 10, Article 168. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-022-00877-7
4. von Bastian, C. C., Belleville, S., Udale, R. C., Reinhartz, A., Essounni, M., & Strobach, T. (2022). Mechanisms underlying training-induced cognitive change. Nature Reviews Psychology, 1, 30–41. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-021-00001-3

Submitted / in preparation

5. de Joode, N. T., Gool, J. K., Cross, N., Van Heese, E., Essounni, M., Groulx, W., Zhao, J.-L., Baltzan, M., Mak, M. S. B., Boulos, M., Zöllner, H. J., Saleh, M. G., Edden, R., Fronczek, R., Lammers, G. J., Grova, C., Van der Werf, Y., & Dang-Vu, T. (n.d.). Neurometabolic differentiation of central disorders of hypersomnolence: A harmonized spectroscopy study [Manuscript in preparation].