Christophe Bernard.

Christophe Bernard

Director of research
Institute of Systems Neuroscience

Christophe Bernard is director of research at the Institute of Systems Neuroscience, INSERM U1106. His main interest is to understand brain dynamics in health and disease, with a focus on epilepsy.

He acts as a reviewing editor for Science Advances, and formerly for Science and the Journal of Neuroscience. He created and is the editor-in-chief of eNeuro, the online open-access journal of the Society for Neuroscience. eNeuro is designed to serve and educate the neuroscience community, promoting reproducibility, publishing negative results and sensitizing scientists to open science and better data interpretation with a focus on statistics and experimental bias.

Bernard obtained his Ph.D. in neuroscience from Pierre and Marie Curie University, did his postdoctoral research at the University of Southampton and spent a sabbatical at Baylor College of Medicine. He participated in the development of organic technologies to record and control brain activity, which earned him the Felix Innovation Prize, and in the development of the Virtual Mouse Brain.

Explore more from The Transmitter

INSAR takes ‘intentional break’ from annual summer webinar series

The International Society for Autism Research cited a need to “thoughtfully reimagine” its popular online program before resuming it in 2026.

By Lauren Schenkman
30 June 2025 | 4 min read
Research image showing that activity in single neurons spikes when a person encodes sequential items into working memory.

Null and Noteworthy: Neurons tracking sequences don’t fire in order

Instead, neurons encode the position of sequential items in working memory based on when they fire during ongoing brain wave oscillations—a finding that challenges a long-standing theory.

By Laura Dattaro
30 June 2025 | 4 min read
A hand points to a chalkboard with an astrocyte on it.

How to teach this paper: ‘Neurotoxic reactive astrocytes are induced by activated microglia,’ by Liddelow et al. (2017)

Shane Liddelow and his collaborators identified the factors that transform astrocytes from their helpful to harmful form. Their work is a great choice if you want to teach students about glial cell types, cell culture, gene expression or protein measurement.

By Ashley Juavinett
30 June 2025 | 10 min read