Baron, Jean-Claude (1949-.... ; neurologue)

Jean-Claude Baron, MD (Paris), ScD (Cambridge), FMedSci (UK), trained in Clinical Neurology at the Salpêtrière Hospital, Paris, then in functional brain imaging at Harvard University, Boston, USA, and finally in Medical Physics at the Atomic Energy Commission, Orsay, France. In 1986 he was appointed Director of Research at INSERM; in 1988 Director of INSERM Unit 320 and Scientific Director of the CYCERON Neuroscience Centre at Caen University, France; and in 2000 Professor of Stroke Medicine and Honorary Neurology consultant at Cambridge University and Addenbrooke’s Hospital, UK. In late 2010, he
returned to Paris as Director of Research and Deputy-Director of the Inserm/Paris Descartes University Research Centre for Psychiatry and Neuroscience, and honorary neurology consultant at Sainte-Anne Hospital. He continued in parallel to manage his research group at Cambridge until early 2014.

Professor Baron is a pioneer in the applications of positron emission tomography (PET) in cerebrovascular diseases, and has used this technique along with other imaging methods including CT, MR and SPECT to study the pathophysiology of
transient ischemic attacks (TIAs) and acute ischemic stroke and the mechanisms underlying post-stroke recovery, both in patients and in animal models. His main contributions include the demonstration of the existence of the ischemic penumbra in man and of the key role of hemodynamic compromise in carotid-territory TIAs, which have both markedly impacted patient management, and the discovery of crossed cerebellar diaschisis and thalamo-cortical diaschisis, which demonstrated in living man the synaptic effects of disconnection. More recently he worked on the little-studied phenomenon of selective neuronal loss in rodents and patients, showing it is frequent sequelae of acute ischemia that may have behavioral implications. He has also made significant contributions in the field of cerebral amyloid angiopathy as well as in neurodegenerative disorders, notably regarding the pathophysiology of cortical dysfunction and the mechanisms of cognitive impairment in Alzheimer and Parkinson diseases.

He was elected to the Academy of Medical Sciences (UK) in 2003, and was the first awardee of the Johannes Wepfer award of the European Stroke Conference in 2005. In 2014 he won the French Academy of Sciences Memain-Pelletier award for
Biomedical Sciences. In 2023 he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Society of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism (ISCBFM) and was elected to the Academia Europeae. He has published over 450 peer-reviewed articles, and enjoys a Web of Science h-index: 110 (Google Scholar h-index: 130).