Brain Trippers

Download a PDF version of the comic in Italian/French

The ERC Advanced Grant FUSIMAGINE project is introducing a breakthrough, full fledged neuroimaging modality based on ultrasound. Thanks to the ERC funding, our team at Langevin Institute will provide evidence that the functional ultrasound imaging of brain activity (fUltrasound by analogy to fMRI) could have a major impact in neuroscience, from fundamental research to clinical applications on human adults.

In « Brain Trippers » a small entourage of curious aliens are about to set foot on earth. Their objective? Find out what goes on with the peculiar, often eccentric dwellers of this blue-coloured planet. On their journey, they use highly advanced technology brought with them from their home light years away, and with it they will scale down to the intimate and delicate wiring of the human brain. Will they ultimately discover what makes these creatures function?

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The science behind the comic

Mickaël Tanter (researcher)

Mickaël Tanter is a research professor at Inserm (French National Institute for Health and Medical Research). He is the director of the laboratory “Wave Physics for Medicine” and Deputy Director of the Langevin Institute at ESPCI, Paris, France. Tanter is a world-renowned expert in biomedical ultrasound and wave physics. He is the recipient of 45 patents and the author of more than 300 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters. In the last 20 years, he co-invented several major innovations in the field of medical ultrasound (transient elastography, ultrafast ultrasound, shear wave elastography, functional ultrasound imaging of brain activity, deep ultrasound localization microscopy) and co-founded several companies in the field of medical technology. He has received many national and international awards (among them the Honored Lecture of the Radiology Society of North America in 2012, the Grand Prix de Médecine et de la Recherche Médicale de la Ville de Paris” in 2012 and the “Grand Prix de la Fondation pour la recherche Médicale” in 2016.)

Clayton Junior (artist)

Clayton Junior was born in Curitiba, Brazil, where he studied printmaking and visual arts. He has lived in London since 2007, where he received an MA degree from the Camberwell College of Arts and works as a freelance illustrator and animation designer for clients around the world. In comics, he has published short stories on anthologies from Brazil, the USA, the UK, Slovenia and Italy. His first solo work, the silent short novel Temporama, was published by Nobrow Press in 2010, and his first full-length graphic novel (Ma Vie de Loup) was released in 2017 by French publishers Sarbacane Editions.

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