Portrait de Karim Jerbi

Karim Jerbi

Membre académique associé
Professeur agrégé, Université de Montréal, Département de psychologie
Sujets de recherche
Exploration des données
Neurosciences computationnelles
Systèmes dynamiques
Traitement du langage naturel
Site web
Google Scholar
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Biographie

Karim Jerbi est professeur agrégé au Département de psychologie de l'Université de Montréal. Il est titulaire de la Chaire de recherche du Canada en neurosciences computationnelles et en neuro-imagerie cognitive et directeur du centre UNIQUE, le centre de recherche en neuro-IA du Québec. Il est membre du Collège de nouveaux chercheurs et créateurs en art et en science de la Société royale du Canada.

Il a obtenu un doctorat en neurosciences cognitives et imagerie cérébrale de l'Université Pierre et Marie Curie à Paris (France) et un diplôme en génie biomédical de l'Université de Karlsruhe (Allemagne). Ses recherches se situent au carrefour des neurosciences cognitives, computationnelles et cliniques. Leur objectif est de sonder le rôle de la dynamique cérébrale à grande échelle dans la cognition d'ordre supérieur et d'étudier les altérations des réseaux cérébraux dans les cas de troubles psychiatriques et neurologiques.

La recherche multidisciplinaire menée dans son laboratoire combine la magnétoencéphalographie (MEG) et l'électroencéphalographie (EEG) du cuir chevelu et intracrânienne avec le traitement avancé des signaux et l'analyse des données, y compris l'apprentissage automatique. Les projets qui y sont en cours utilisent des enregistrements cérébraux électrophysiologiques pour examiner la dynamique des réseaux cérébraux à grande échelle dans une série de processus cognitifs (par exemple la prise de décision et la créativité) et dans différents états de conscience (éveil au repos, sommeil, rêve, anesthésie, méditation et états psychédéliques).

Karim Jerbi est fortement engagé dans la promotion de la justice sociale, de l'équité, de la diversité et de l'inclusion. Il s'intéresse également de près à la convergence entre les sciences du cerveau, l'IA, la créativité et l'art.

Étudiants actuels

Hamza Abdelhedi
Doctorat - UdeM
Site web
Github
Google Scholar
Maryem Benslimane
Maîtrise recherche - UdeM
Samin Mahdipour Aghabagher
Maîtrise professionnelle - UdeM
Site web
Github
Google Scholar
Yorguin Mantilla Ramos
Maîtrise recherche - UdeM
Site web
Github
Google Scholar

Publications

LSD Reconfigures Cortical Dynamics Through Faster Brain Rhythms and Increased Fractal Dimension
Venkatesh Subramani
Timothy Nest
Annalisa Pascarella
Jérémy Brunel
Yorguin José Mantilla Ramos
Yann Harel
Suresh Muthukumaraswamy
Robin Carhart-Harris
Giulia Lioi
Nicolas Farrugia
Karim Jerbi
Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) profoundly alters conscious experience, yet the electrophysiological mechanisms by which it reshapes neural… (voir plus) dynamics remain incompletely understood. A hallmark of psychedelic states is widespread cortical desynchronization, typically inferred from reductions in spectral power, but whether such effects reflect genuine weakening of neural oscillations or are confounded by shifts in oscillatory peak frequencies remains unresolved. Here, we address this gap by combining source-resolved magnetoencephalography (MEG), spectral parameterization, temporal complexity metrics, and interpretable machine learning in an LSD versus placebo design, with and without music. We show that LSD induces robust, spatially structured increases in alpha and beta peak frequencies alongside genuine attenuation of oscillatory power, with these effects displaying partly dissociable cortical patterns. Beyond rhythmic activity, LSD is associated with flattening of the aperiodic 1/f spectral slope and increased neural signal fractality and complexity, preferentially affecting sensory, language, emotion, and imagery-related networks while sparing motor cortex. Machine-learning analyses further identify peak-frequency shifts, aperiodic parameters, and complexity measures as key discriminators of the psychedelic state. Music does not robustly amplify these neural signatures and instead shows a trend toward attenuation. Together, these findings provide a comprehensive electrophysiological account of how LSD reorganizes large-scale human brain dynamics and highlight features that may differentiate its neural signature from that of other psychedelics.
2026-01-28
bioRxiv (prépublication)
doi.org
Divergent creativity in humans and large language models
Antoine Bellemare-Pepin
François Lespinasse
Philipp Thölke
Yann Harel
Kory Mathewson
Jay A. Olson
Yoshua Bengio
Karim Jerbi
Psychology Department
U. Montr'eal
Montreal
Qc
Canada
Music department
C. University
Sociology
Anthropology department
Mila
Departmentof Psychology
University of Toronto Mississauga … (voir 5 de plus)
Mississauga
On
Department of Computer Science
Operations Research
Unique Center
The recent surge of Large Language Models (LLMs) has led to claims that they are approaching a level of creativity akin to human capabilitie… (voir plus)s. This idea has sparked a blend of excitement and apprehension. However, a critical piece that has been missing in this discourse is a systematic evaluation of LLMs’ semantic diversity, particularly in comparison to human divergent thinking. To bridge this gap, we leverage recent advances in computational creativity to analyze semantic divergence in both state-of-the-art LLMs and a substantial dataset of 100,000 humans. These divergence-based measures index associative thinking—the ability to access and combine remote concepts in semantic space—an established facet of creative cognition. We benchmark performance on the Divergent Association Task (DAT) and across multiple creative-writing tasks (haiku, story synopses, and flash fiction), using identical, objective scoring. We found evidence that LLMs can surpass average human performance on the DAT, and approach human creative writing abilities, yet they remain below the mean creativity scores observed among the more creative segment of human participants. Notably, even the top performing LLMs are still largely surpassed by the aggregated top half of human participants, underscoring a ceiling that current LLMs still fail to surpass. We also systematically varied linguistic strategy prompts and temperature, observing reliable gains in semantic divergence for several models. Our human-machine benchmarking framework addresses the polemic surrounding the imminent replacement of human creative labor by AI, disentangling the quality of the respective creative linguistic outputs using established objective measures. While prompting deeper exploration of the distinctive elements of human inventive thought compared to those of AI systems, we lay out a series of techniques to improve their outputs with respect to semantic diversity, such as prompt design and hyper-parameter tuning.
2026-01-20
Scientific Reports (publié)
doi.org
arxiv.org
Meditation induces shifts in neural oscillations, brain complexity, and critical dynamics: novel insights from MEG
Annalisa Pascarella
Philipp Thölke
David Meunier
Jordan O'Byrne
Tarek Lajnef
Antonino Raffone
Roberto Guidotti
Vittorio Pizzella
Laura Marzetti
Karim Jerbi
While the beneficial impacts of meditation are increasingly acknowledged, its underlying neural mechanisms remain poorly understood. We exam… (voir plus)ined the electrophysiological brain signals of expert Buddhist monks during two established meditation methods known as Samatha and Vipassana, which employ focused attention and open-monitoring technique. By combining source-space magnetoencephalography with advanced signal processing and machine learning tools, we provide an unprecedented assessment of the role of brain oscillations, complexity, and criticality in meditation. In addition to power spectral density, we computed long-range temporal correlations (LRTC), deviation from criticality coefficient (DCC), Lempel–Ziv complexity, 1/f slope, Higuchi fractal dimension, and spectral entropy. Our findings indicate increased levels of neural signal complexity during both meditation practices compared to the resting state, alongside widespread reductions in gamma-band LRTC and 1/f slope. Importantly, the DCC analysis revealed a separation between Samatha and Vipassana, suggesting that their distinct phenomenological properties are mediated by specific computational characteristics of their dynamic states. Furthermore, in contrast to most previous reports, we observed a decrease in oscillatory gamma power during meditation, a divergence likely due to the correction of the power spectrum by the 1/f slope, which could reduce potential confounds from broadband 1/f activity. We discuss how these results advance our comprehension of the neural processes associated with focused attention and open-monitoring meditation practices.
2025-11-22
Neuroscience of Consciousness (publié)
doi.org
Biotuner: A python toolbox integrating music theory and signal processing for harmonic analysis of physiological and natural time series
Antoine Bellemare-Pepin
Karim Jerbi
The Biotuner Toolbox is an open-source Python toolbox for biosignals that integrates concepts from neuroscience, music theory, and signal pr… (voir plus)ocessing. It introduces a harmonic perspective on physiological oscillations by applying musical constructs such as consonance, rhythm, and scale construction. The core biotuner_object processes neural, cardiac, and auditory time series, providing a unified interface for extracting spectral peaks, computing harmonicity metrics, and supporting downstream analyses. Companion modules extend harmonic analyses across temporal (time-resolved harmonicity), spatial (harmonic connectivity), and spectral (harmonic spectrum) dimensions. Biotuner identifies harmonic structure across different biosignals, revealing significant variations in harmonicity between physiological states. Specifically, the toolbox extracts spectral peaks from complex signals using multiple algorithms, ensuring robust peak detection under varying signal-to-noise ratios. Moreover, we show how harmonicity metrics change across distinct sleep stages and capture variations in the slopes of the aperiodic (1/f) component of the power spectrum. Biotuner provides an extensible framework that unifies music-theoretic constructs with biosignal processing, enabling hypothesis-driven analyses for researchers and, in parallel, creative exploration of complex natural patterns for artists.
2025-11-20
Brain Informatics (publié)
doi.org
Combining virtual reality and hypnosis to alleviate chronic pain in elderly with hand arthritis: protocol for a randomised phase II clinical trial
Valentyn Fournier
Marie-Fania Simard
Sai Yan Yuen
Joséphine Guiné
Floriane Rousseaux
Julie Lebeau
Karim Jerbi
Philippe Richebé
Mathieu Landry
Pierre Rainville
David Ogez
2025-10-05
BMJ Open (publié)
doi.org
Combining virtual reality and hypnosis to alleviate chronic pain in elderly with hand arthritis: protocol for a randomised phase II clinical trial
Valentyn Fournier
Marie-Fania Simard
Sai Yan Yuen
Joséphine Guiné
Floriane Rousseaux
Julie Lebeau
Karim Jerbi
Philippe Richebé
Mathieu Landry
Pierre Rainville
David Ogez
Abstract Introduction Chronic pain is a common health condition that significantly impacts the quality of life of those affected, affecting … (voir plus)one in five people in Canada. The prevalence of this condition tends to increase with age, making it a major health issue given the ageing population. However, its management remains inadequate and requires significant mobilisation of healthcare professionals as well as the development of multiple therapeutic solutions. Among these, non-pharmacological interventions such as hypnosis and virtual reality have proven effective. Nevertheless, while the existing literature seems promising, it presents methodological limitations. Therefore, this study aims to assess the effectiveness of an intervention combining virtual reality and hypnosis in an ageing population suffering from a widespread chronic pain condition, that is, hand arthritis. Methods and analysis This study will be a single-centre randomised clinical trial. Participants will be randomly assigned to one of two conditions: one receiving an intervention combining virtual reality and hypnosis, and the other receiving only virtual reality. The effectiveness of the intervention on current perceived pain before and after the intervention (primary outcome) will be evaluated. Secondary outcomes will include anxiety and depressive symptoms, quality of life, relaxation and fatigue. Exploratory analyses will also be conducted to contribute to the emerging literature by examining physiological variables such as heart rate variability, respiratory rate and electrodermal activity during the intervention, and their relationship with primary and secondary outcomes. Ethics and dissemination The project was approved by the Research Ethical Committee of the Hospital Maisonneuve-Rosemont (Project no 2024-3539). Participants will be asked to provide written consent for their participation. Results from this study will be shared through peer-reviewed publications, as well as oral and poster presentations at scientific events. The protocol for this study was preregistered on Open Science Framework and raw anonymised data will be available on this platform (https://osf.io/vbh72/?view_only=1d17c5708f894faab6669d85e1fde75d). Trial registration number NCT06833905.
2025-10-05
BMJ Open (publié)
doi.org
Combining virtual reality and hypnosis to alleviate chronic pain in elderly with hand arthritis: protocol for a randomised phase II clinical trial
Valentyn Fournier
Marie-Fania Simard
Sai Yan Yuen
Joséphine Guiné
Floriane Rousseaux
Julie Lebeau
Karim Jerbi
Philippe Richebé
Mathieu Landry
Pierre Rainville
David Ogez
Abstract Introduction Chronic pain is a common health condition that significantly impacts the quality of life of those affected, affecting … (voir plus)one in five people in Canada. The prevalence of this condition tends to increase with age, making it a major health issue given the ageing population. However, its management remains inadequate and requires significant mobilisation of healthcare professionals as well as the development of multiple therapeutic solutions. Among these, non-pharmacological interventions such as hypnosis and virtual reality have proven effective. Nevertheless, while the existing literature seems promising, it presents methodological limitations. Therefore, this study aims to assess the effectiveness of an intervention combining virtual reality and hypnosis in an ageing population suffering from a widespread chronic pain condition, that is, hand arthritis. Methods and analysis This study will be a single-centre randomised clinical trial. Participants will be randomly assigned to one of two conditions: one receiving an intervention combining virtual reality and hypnosis, and the other receiving only virtual reality. The effectiveness of the intervention on current perceived pain before and after the intervention (primary outcome) will be evaluated. Secondary outcomes will include anxiety and depressive symptoms, quality of life, relaxation and fatigue. Exploratory analyses will also be conducted to contribute to the emerging literature by examining physiological variables such as heart rate variability, respiratory rate and electrodermal activity during the intervention, and their relationship with primary and secondary outcomes. Ethics and dissemination The project was approved by the Research Ethical Committee of the Hospital Maisonneuve-Rosemont (Project no 2024-3539). Participants will be asked to provide written consent for their participation. Results from this study will be shared through peer-reviewed publications, as well as oral and poster presentations at scientific events. The protocol for this study was preregistered on Open Science Framework and raw anonymised data will be available on this platform (https://osf.io/vbh72/?view_only=1d17c5708f894faab6669d85e1fde75d). Trial registration number NCT06833905.
2025-10-01
BMJ Open (publié)
doi.org
Intrinsic Neural Oscillations Predict Verbal Learning Performance and Encoding Strategy Use
Victor Oswald
Mathieu Landry
Hamza Abdelhedi
Sarah Lippé
Philippe Robaey
Karim Jerbi
2025-09-28
bioRxiv (prépublication)
doi.org
Hitting the right pitch: Cortical tracking of speech fundamental frequency in auditory and somatomotor regions
Yorguin-Jose Mantilla-Ramos
Ana-Sofía Hincapié-Casas
Annalisa Pascarella
Tarek Lajnef
Richard M. Leahy
Emily B.J. Coffey
Karim Jerbi
Véronique Boulenger
Low-frequency neural oscillations contribute to the parsing of continuous speech into linguistic units. Little is known however on the coupl… (voir plus)ing of brain rhythms to higher-frequencies in speech such as fundamental frequency (F0) or pitch. Using magnetoencephalography, we investigated whole-brain cortical tracking of F0 while participants listened to sentences produced at normal rate or fast rate, where pitch naturally increases, and to artificially accelerated sentences, where F0 remains unchanged. Our results revealed significant brain-to-F0 coupling across all speech rates not only in right auditory but also in right parietal, insular, and pre- and postcentral regions, likely including the ventral larynx area. Importantly, the cortico-acoustic coupling peak frequency was higher for natural fast speech to reflect the corresponding F0 increase compared to normal rate and time-compressed speech. These findings demonstrate the engagement of an auditory-somato-motor network in F0 tracking, supporting its role in facilitating phonemic processing during the perception of naturally-produced speech.
2025-09-13
bioRxiv (prépublication)
doi.org
Uncovering executive function profiles within interindividual variability: A data driven clustering exploration of design fluency in school-aged children
Myriam Sahraoui
Karim Jerbi
Vanessa Hadid
Bruno Gauthier
2025-08-24
bioRxiv (prépublication)
doi.org
The 2025 PNPL Competition: Speech Detection and Phoneme Classification in the LibriBrain Dataset
Gilad Landau
Miran Ozdogan
Gereon Elvers
Francesco Mantegna
Pratik Somaiya
Dulhan Hansaja Jayalath
Luisa Kurth
Teyun Kwon
Brendan Shillingford
Greg Farquhar
Minqi Jiang
Karim Jerbi
Hamza Abdelhedi
Yorguin Mantilla Ramos
Caglar Gulçehre
M. Woolrich
Natalie Voets
Oiwi Parker Jones
The advance of speech decoding from non-invasive brain data holds the potential for profound societal impact. Among its most promising appli… (voir plus)cations is the restoration of communication to paralysed individuals affected by speech deficits such as dysarthria, without the need for high-risk surgical interventions. The ultimate aim of the 2025 PNPL competition is to produce the conditions for an"ImageNet moment"or breakthrough in non-invasive neural decoding, by harnessing the collective power of the machine learning community. To facilitate this vision we present the largest within-subject MEG dataset recorded to date (LibriBrain) together with a user-friendly Python library (pnpl) for easy data access and integration with deep learning frameworks. For the competition we define two foundational tasks (i.e. Speech Detection and Phoneme Classification from brain data), complete with standardised data splits and evaluation metrics, illustrative benchmark models, online tutorial code, a community discussion board, and public leaderboard for submissions. To promote accessibility and participation the competition features a Standard track that emphasises algorithmic innovation, as well as an Extended track that is expected to reward larger-scale computing, accelerating progress toward a non-invasive brain-computer interface for speech.
2025-06-11
ArXiv (prépublication)
arxiv.org
arxiv.org
The 2025 PNPL Competition: Speech Detection and Phoneme Classification in the LibriBrain Dataset
Gilad Landau
Miran Ozdogan
Gereon Elvers
Francesco Mantegna
Pratik Somaiya
Dulhan Hansaja Jayalath
Luisa Kurth
Teyun Kwon
Brendan Shillingford
Greg Farquhar
Minqi Jiang
Karim Jerbi
Hamza Abdelhedi
Yorguin Mantilla Ramos
Caglar Gulçehre
M. Woolrich
Natalie Voets
Oiwi Parker Jones
The advance of speech decoding from non-invasive brain data holds the potential for profound societal impact. Among its most promising appli… (voir plus)cations is the restoration of communication to paralysed individuals affected by speech deficits such as dysarthria, without the need for high-risk surgical interventions. The ultimate aim of the 2025 PNPL competition is to produce the conditions for an"ImageNet moment"or breakthrough in non-invasive neural decoding, by harnessing the collective power of the machine learning community. To facilitate this vision we present the largest within-subject MEG dataset recorded to date (LibriBrain) together with a user-friendly Python library (pnpl) for easy data access and integration with deep learning frameworks. For the competition we define two foundational tasks (i.e. Speech Detection and Phoneme Classification from brain data), complete with standardised data splits and evaluation metrics, illustrative benchmark models, online tutorial code, a community discussion board, and public leaderboard for submissions. To promote accessibility and participation the competition features a Standard track that emphasises algorithmic innovation, as well as an Extended track that is expected to reward larger-scale computing, accelerating progress toward a non-invasive brain-computer interface for speech.
2025-06-11
ArXiv (prépublication)
doi.org
arxiv.org