ARC MICROMOTO
ions | Bruxelles Woluwe, Louvain-la-Neuve
In vivo estimation of the white matter microstructure in motor pathways for the assessment of motor outcome in patients with brain damage
Internal reference number : 20/25-105
Start date : October 1st, 2020
End date : September 30, 2025
Partners
Principal Investigator (spokesperson) : Pr Yannick Bleyenheuft, Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain), Institute of Neuroscience (IoNS)
Co-Investigator 1: Pr Yves Vandermeeren, Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain), Institute of Neuroscience (IoNS)
Co-Investigator 2: Pr Benoît Macq, Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain), Institute for Information and Communication Technologies, Electronics and Applied Mathematics (ICTEAM)
Co-Investigator 3: Dr Laurence Dricot, Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain), Institute of Neuroscience (IoNS)
Aims of the Coordinated Research Project
Brain lesions are the leading cause of long-term physical disability worldwide. Cerebral palsy (CP) affects 1 in 500 neonates, and stroke impacts 1 in 4 adults over age 25. These conditions often result in severe motor impairments, limiting autonomy and quality of life. Traditional neurorehabilitation offers low-intensity therapy, which is insufficient to induce significant neuroplastic changes. Recent evidence demonstrates that intensive motor skill learning interventions can drive functional recovery and structural brain repair. MICROMOTO was designed to leverage this principle through HABIT-ILE, an intensive bimanual and locomotor therapy, combined with cutting-edge diffusion MRI techniques to study white matter microstructure (µS) and predict recovery potential.
Objectives:
- Demonstrate the efficacy of HABIT-ILE in adults with chronic stroke and infants with unilateral CP.
- Develop tools to apply advanced diffusion MRI models (DIAMOND, Microstructure Fingerprinting) to characterize white matter integrity and neuroplasticity.
- Identify predictive biomarkers of motor recovery by integrating multimodal data (clinical, robotic, imaging).
- Address four Grand Challenges: validate microstructure models, assess intensive therapy in infants, evaluate neuroplastic potential in chronic stroke, and compare repair mechanisms across age groups.
We believe that the MICROMOTO project allowed to bridge neuroscience, clinical rehabilitation, and imaging technology, allowing to use neurorehabilitation both in a predictive and a preventive perspective.
The publications arising from this project have had a large impact both I the neurorehabilitation field and in the neuroimaging domain.
The research team
Yannick Bleyenheuft (IoNS, UCLouvain, spokesperson)
Yannick Bleyenheuft is Faculty Member at the Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain), Institute of Neuroscience. She was trained as a Physiotherapist and completed her PhD in the field of Motor Control in children with cerebral palsy (CP) in 2009 at UCLouvain. She completed her Post-doctorate, sharing her time between UCLouvain and Columbia University (New York), working on intensive rehabilitation processes for children with CP. In 2014, she was appointed as tenured of the Chair for neurophysiological evidences in intensive neurorehabilitation at the Institute of Neuroscience, UCLouvain. She is now Head of the “Motor Skill Learning and intensive neurorehabilitation lab” that was developped in 2015.
Research group
People funded by the project: 2 PhD students
Yves Vandermeeren (IoNS, UCLouvain)
Yves Vandermeeren is a Neurologist involved in the care of acute and chronic stroke patients and in the study of neuroplasticity after stroke. He obtained is M.D. degree at the UCLouvain (Belgium, 1998), and his Ph.D. in Neuroscience in the Lab. of Neurophysiology (UCLouvain, 2003). After completing the Neurology residency program, he pursued his research on post-stroke plasticity as a Post-Doc Fellow at the NIH (National Institute of Health, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), Maryland, US, 2005-2007). In 2007, he joined the Neurology Department of the CHU UCL Namur (Mont-Godinne, Belgium), where he works half-time as a stroke neurologist and head of Stroke Unit, and half-time as a neuroscientist. He has been appointed Tenured Professor in 2020 (UCLouvain). He teaches in the Faculty of Medicine of UCLouvain and UNamur and in the Faculty of Motor Sciences. He is an active member of the Institute of NeuroScience (IoNS, UCL) and the Louvain Bionics consortium.
Research group
People funded by the project: 1 PhD student
Benoît Macq (ICTEAM, UClouvain)
Benoit Macq received is Diploma in Electrical Engr. From the UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium in 1984. He did his military service at the Royal Military School on development of Lidar interferometry. He did his PhD thesis on digital TV compression in the frame of the RACE program of the European Union contributing to JPEG and MPEG groups. He received his PhD degree from UCLouvain- Belgium in 1989. He has been researcher in Philips Research Laboratory Belgium in 1990 and 1991 developing wavelet-based compression algorithms and contributing to the JPEG-2000 standard. Benoit Macq is Professor at Polytechnic School of UCLouvain since 1993. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, a member of the Académie Royale des Sciences de Belgique, and a co-founder of more than ten digital technology spin-off companies.
Research group
People funded by the project: 1 PhD student
Laurence Dricot (IoNS, UCLouvain)
Dr Laurence Dricot Ir. is the scientific director of the Neuroimaging Platform at the Institute of Neuroscience (IoNS), Université catholique de Louvain. She is responsible for the management and development of the neuroimaging facilities and provides conceptual, methodological, and technical support to MRI research projects conducted within the institute. Her work focuses on optimizing advanced MRI acquisition and analysis methods and ensuring that neuroimaging studies at UCLouvain follow state-of-the-art standards. Through the Neuroimaging platform, she facilitates access to high-performance MRI technologies and supports multidisciplinary neuroscience research.