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Nutrition and physical activity against age-related neurodegeneration in a primate – NUTRIACT
Since the industrial revolution, the level of physical activity drastically declined while the amount of ingested calories increased and those of essential omega-3 fatty acids (w3) decreased. Physical activity, caloric intake and w3 are beneficial for health and survival. However, no study tried to
Investigating the role of plasticity at excitatory synapses onto interneurons in memory processing – EXINmemory
The importance of GABAergic interneurons (INs) in orchestrating the dynamic of principal cells (PNs) networks especially during cognitive processes such as learning and memory is unanimously accepted. Central to this control are the EX-IN synapses - the glutamatergic synapses onto GABAergic cells -
Causal information transmission in locomotion – LOCONNECT
Life-threatening cues such as a sting in the foot cause immediate avoidance behavior. In that moment, the prompt integration of sensory inputs by motor centers can become a matter of life and death. A major challenge in neuroscience is to understand how information flows in the brainstem during such
Micro-electrocorticography-based mapping of Dysfunctionning Cognitive networks using evoked high frequency oscillations – MICRODYSCOG
Cortical field oscillations in the high frequency range are associated with normal brain function, but also recognized as a potential biomarker of pathological brain activities. The distinction between these pathological and physiological oscillations is thus crusial for basic research but also to h
Understanding how early adverse experience impacts macaques’ social cognition and associated brain functions – sociomonk
It is known that the adversities occurring at an early period of infancy have a dramatic impact on brain and behavioral development. Children with a history of institutional rearing show significant psychiatric problems ranging from social interaction abnormalities, to anxiety and to inattention. Ea
Tracking Occurrence of Monitoring using Ultrasound Neurotechnologies – TOMFU
The performance monitoring system is involved not only to evaluate our own actions, but also to monitor others’ behavior. Self-performance monitoring is a process that is well understood however there is yet a lot to learn about the processes involved in performance monitoring of others' actions an
Neural bases of cataplexy in sleep and emotion control networks – CATAPLExSLEEP
Narcolepsy type 1 is a disabling orphan neurological disorder characterized by excessive daytime sleepiness and cataplexy. Clinical observations have also described an impairment of rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep regulation with a nighttime premature occurrence of REM sleep episodes and pathognomoni
Role of the Axonal Initial Segment in Major Depression – AIS-in-DEP
There is an urgent need to intensify the research to develop more efficacious treatments against mood disorders (MD). Notably, the axon initial segment (AIS), the site of action potential initiation, was found to express serotonin (5-HT) receptors and to contribute to regulation of neuronal activity
The development of rhythm perception from premature birth to early infancy: Investigating the beneficial effect of musical interventions at NICU – PreMusic
Infants born prematurely spend a part of the period corresponding to the third trimester of gestation in the NICU, where they are deprived of normal maternal/environmental sounds. This may result in disturbances to auditory temporal processing and in turn the development of general cognitive capacit
The role of mesocortical projections in age-related cognitive decline – DOPAGE
Mesocortical projections from the ventral tegmental area to the prefrontal cortex are suggested to participate in working memory cognitive decline. The DOPAGE project will investigate through in-depth behavioral and anatomical analysis the involvement of mesocortical neurons in age-related cognitive
Early development and plasticity of body representations in the baby brain: advanced neuroimaging and behavioral studies on touch – BabyTouch
Pre- and perinatal events are a major cause of neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD) as they disrupt the early organization and maturation of the brain, and consequently the entire developmental trajectory of the child. Given the central role played by early tactile and motor experiences, brain represe
Sequence and Place Interplay for space Coding, in Epilepsy and Dystonia – SPICED
Even in a familiar city, we may get momentarily lost when exploring districts we had never visited before. Have you ever stumbled into a known place completely unexpectedly and felt that the whole environment had to be reorganized and reoriented to fit the representation you had? Our project quest
Pheromone information processing in the social insect brain – PHEROBRAIN
Sociality is classified as one of the major transitions in evolution, and the most advanced level of sociality in animals is found in eusocial insect societies, like honey bees. The success of social insect colonies relies on elaborate communication among the colony members, and in particular on the
State-dependent modulation of neuronal circuits underlying sensorimotor decisions – NeuroMOD
Hunger is a strong motivational state able to alter a broad range of behaviors. Howvere, how hunger is integrated in circuits underlying nonfeeding decisions is unknown. This is primarily due to the difficulty in establishing causal relationships between single neurons and behaviors and the challen
The impact of head motion on vision – SensoMotion
An organism’s survival is dependent on sensing and interpreting their external environment. Sensory systems are classically described in a representational framework, in which sensory neurons encode specific features of the external world. This concept has been a guiding principle of sensory systems
Circuit Electrophysiology of Anxiety – CEA
Anxiety disorders are the most prevalent mental disorders, with a lifetime prevalence of 15-30%. Current treatments remain however insufficient because of their lack of effectiveness. Several studies have highlighted that the amygdala is a key structure involved in anxiety notably through long-range
Trading off effort against time in reward-oriented behaviors: a cross-species investigation at the behavioral and neuronal levels – BasalCost
When we engage in daily reward-oriented behaviors such as reaching for a glass of wine or walking to meet some friends, we trade effort against time because immediate rewards are more valuable than delayed ones. Thus, effort and time can be considered as two interdependent costs that must be optimiz
Role of perineuronal nets in consolidating memory traces of early-life adversity – RE-OPEN
Early-life adversity (ELA) is amongst the strongest predictors of mental health issues, in particular depression. This psychopathological outcome is though to be partly mediated by altered trajectories in the development of brain areas crucial for the maturation of stable emotional phenotypes. The c
Characterization of tertiary neurodegenerative lesions in Encephalopathy of Prematurity – PremAging
Encephalopathy of prematurity (EoP) includes all brain lesions linked to prematurity. EoP is responsible for cellular events leading to permanent motor and/or cognitive deficits. The main risk factor for EoP is infections in the perinatal period. The microglia, a resident macrophage of the central n
Hippocampus-Accumbens Circuit in Aging: unraveling APP physiology – HACAP
Aging is associated with cognitive decline and constitutes a main risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Clinical diagnosis of dementia show co-occurrence of hippocampal mnesic deficits with marked alterations in emotional and motivational states. Altered hippocampal-output networks impacting non
Understanding cognitive domains through the study of individual variation in cognitive strategies – INDCOG
Are there individuals that are smarter than others in the same species? Is there a modular system based on cognitive subunits adapted to solve specific problems, or cognitive abilities evolved more generally and the same mechanisms allow solving multiple problems? The study of inter-individual varia
Hippocampal dynamics in health and ASD during the first two postnatal weeks. – HippoDevInAu
The function of the mature hippocampus is to create a mental representation (cognitive map) of locations and experiences in the context in which they occur. In this framework, a mismatch between external information and the dynamics of the local hippocampal network could create an incorrect mental r
Cortical visual plasticity in navigation – VIPLANAV
To control the movement and position of our body during spatial navigation, our brain must accomplish formidable tasks. Vision strongly influences the neuronal representation of space and this integration is crucial for survival and the emergence of spatial memory. Visual information reaches the pri
Neural mechanisms of iterative learning – Meca-Iter
A broad range of motor and cognitive behavioural skills are acquired, adapted and perfected through practice. It has proven very challenging to explain such behaviours by demonstrating the implementation of a sufficient algorithm within neural circuitry. There is strong evidence that the cerebellum
Thalamocortical control of voluntary actions – THALACOR
Surviving in dynamic environments requires to arbitrate between the exploration of new options to gain more information or to exploit already known ones to secure a gain. The control of these voluntary actions relies on a highly distributed cortical-subcortical circuits among which secondary motor r
The olfactory system, a gateway to appease body and mind – BreathSmellRelax
At a time when the search for well-being has become a societal priority and when medical practices aim at minimizing pharmacological approaches in chronic diseases, our project proposes to explore how, at the crossroads between emotions and breathing, the olfactory system represents a particularly e
Thalamo-cortical dynamics across natural brain states and their role in perception and learning – AUDIODREAM
Understanding the switch of the brain’s operating mode between wake and sleep remains a major challenge in neuroscience. Sleep indeed leads to an absence of conscious perception but not to an absence of sensory processing even in higher order centers such as sensory or associative cortex. This has b
Role of midline thalamic inputs to neocortical layer 1 in coordinating sleep rhythms. An implication for memory consolidation? – SOLTI
In Europe, more than a third of individuals suffers from poor sleep quality and 30% of them suffers from severe sleep deprivation. Fundamental research on sleep mechanisms, especially deep sleep stages that are known to be essential for recovery and memory consolidation, is of primary importance to
Gating of spinal-efferent copy signal and sensory signals for gaze control during locomotion – LOCOGATE
As a result of a previous ANR project, the 2 involved teams could demonstrate the existence of a spino-extraocular motor coupling in 2 animal models: the xenopus and the mouse. The present proposal, will define the role and prevalence in the control of gaze of efferent copies, and their relation to
Studying sensory coding of complex naturalistic stimuli in the barrel cortex with a perturbative method and a machine learning approach – PerBaCo
Sensory perception relies on brain circuits that extract ethologically relevant features from the sensory organs. Understanding the feature “vocabulary” and how it can be used to build elaborate internal representations has been one of the main aims of sensory neuroscience. In particular, how sensor
Role of the pallido-thalamic neuronal circuitry in processing the negative delayed consequences of cocaine addiction – PATHADELCOCO
Repeated drug use often leads to the accumulation of harmful consequences on health. For most cocaine users, intense negative events eventually make them quit drug. However, for a subset of them, adverse consequences fail to impact subsequent cocaine use. Because harmful events are often delayed, it
The Bipolar Bayesian Brain at 7T: Mood disturbances in bipolar disorder studied with ultra-high field MRI – B37T
Bipolar disorder (BD) is a chronic mood disorder characterized by emotional hyperresponsiveness during acute periods (i.e., mania and depression), as well as during periods of remission (i.e., euthymia). Current neurocognitive models suggest that lack of cognitive control may be responsible for thes
Network insight of nociception and pain in Parkinson’s disease – PPNet
Parkinson’s disease is a neurological disorder characterized by both motor and non-motor symptoms, including pain which further deteriorates the quality of life of patients. Central neuropathic pain and altered nociceptive sensitivity in these patients are thought to arise from central nervous syste
Feeling awake while asleep: neural signatures of sleep state misperception – SleepTight
In France ~20% of adults complain of bad sleep. Yet, quantifying sleep disturbances is difficult when classical tools used to assess sleep fail to uncover abnormalities. In other words, some individuals can feel awake despite their brain appearing physiologically asleep. To better understand thi