NOM

Thomas Adrillon

Affiliation

Chargé de Recherche, Sorbonne Université, Institut du Cerveau – Paris Brain Institute – ICM, Inserm, CNRS, APHP, Hôpital de la Pitié Salpêtrière, Paris, France

Role in NOM

sleep and electrophysiology

Profile

Goal(s) in the NOM

  1. Exploring the two-way relationship between sleep and meditation.
  2. Understanding the neural and physiological correlates of meditative states.

Education 

Habilitation to supervise PhD students (HDR) (2023); PhD degree, Brain-Cognition-Behaviour Doctoral School, University of P. et M. Curie, Paris (VI) (2016);  Master in Neuroscience, University of P. et M. Curie, Paris (VI) (2012)

Experience

I am a sleep and consciousness scientist studying how brain activity shapes behaviour and subjective experience. Using a combination of sleep and wake protocols, behavioural testing, and physiological recordings, my research investigates how different brain states constrain how we interact with the world and the thoughts or experiences we generate.

A central focus of my work is local sleep, a phenomenon in which the brain exhibits a mosaic of physiological states, with some regions showing sleep-like activity while others remain wake-like. During sleep, local intrusions of wakefulness can help explain the emergence of conscious experiences such as dreaming or the feeling of being awake. During wakefulness, local intrusions of sleep can account for cognitive fluctuations such as mind wandering (thinking about something unrelated to the task) or mind blanking (the temporary absence of thoughts).

My research combines controlled laboratory experiments with real-world investigations conducted in classrooms, offices, and even sailing boats, using mobile EEG systems to capture brain activity in naturalistic environments. I also develop new methods to analyse brain signals during sleep and wakefulness, leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence to better characterise the dynamics of brain states.  

Select Publications

  • Andrillon, T., Poulsen, A. T., Hansen, L. K., Léger, D., & Kouider, S. (2016). Neural markers of responsiveness to the environment in human sleep. Journal of Neuroscience, 36(24), 6583–6596.
  • Andrillon, T., Burns, A., Mackay, T., Windt, J., & Tsuchiya, N. (2021). Predicting lapses of attention with sleep-like slow waves. Nature Communications, 12, 3657.
  • Corcoran, A. W., Le Coz, A., Hohwy, J., & Andrillon, T. (2025).
    When your heart isn’t in it anymore: cardiac correlates of task disengagement. Communications Biology, 8(1), 1646.
  • Andrillon, T., Lutz, A., Windt, J., & Demertzi, A. (2025).
    Where is my mind? A neurocognitive investigation of mind blanking. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 29(7), 600–613.
  • Munoz-Musat, E., Le Coz, A., Corcoran, A. W., Belloli, L., Naccache, L., & Andrillon, T. (2025). Behavioral, experiential, and physiological signatures of mind blanking. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(52), e2510262122.