Thien Thanh Dang-Vu

Thanh Dang-Vu earned his M.D. in 2004 at the Université de Liège, in Belgium. He then completed his residency in Neurology and a Ph.D. in Biomedical Science in the same university. He did a post-doctoral fellowship in the department of Neurology at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston. He completed a second postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Advanced Research in Sleep Medicine at the Université de Montreal and Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur de Montréal. He won several research awards, notably from the Sleep Research Society, the European Sleep Research Society, the Belgian Association for Sleep Research and Sleep Medicine, and the Belgian Neurological Society. Dr. Dang-Vu is a Professor in the Department of Health, Kinesiology and Applied Physiology at Concordia University. He is a CIHR New Investigator and a FRQS Research Scholar. Dr Dang-Vu is also an attending neurologist and the Associate Director for Clinical Research at the Institut Universitaire de Gériatrie de Montréal (IUGM), the Vice-President (Research) of the Canadian Sleep Society (CSS), a Clinical Assistant Professor of Neuroscience at University of Montreal,  an Adjunct Professor of Neurology and Neurosurgery at McGill University.

In general, my research interests are focused on the interface between neuroimaging, sleep, and neurology, in order to investigate the neural correlates of spontaneous brain activity and consciousness, the role of sleep in brain plasticity, the pathophysiology of sleep disorders, and the clinical biomarkers of neurological disease progression.

I am particularly interested in the mechanisms and functions of brain rhythms during sleep. These neural oscillations (sleep spindles, slow waves) organize brain activity during sleep and modulate important functional properties of sleep. For instance, using simultaneous functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG), my previous studies demonstrated the role of these brain rhythms in the neural processing of external information (e.g., sounds) during sleep. Current research in my lab further explores the role of sleep oscillations in cognition and brain plasticity, in healthy participants and patients with neurological disorders (e.g., stroke, neurodegenerative diseases), using functional and structural neuroimaging techniques, and electrophysiological recordings.

Another line of research in my laboratory investigates the pathophysiology of sleep disorders, such as insomnia, hypersomnias and parasomnias, using multimodal neuroimaging and EEG. Beyond the identification of the neural mechanisms responsible for sleep disruption and daytime somnolence, these studies aim at further understanding the clinical evolution and cognitive impact of these disorders, in order to inform treatment options.