What are the neural mechanisms behind higher cognitive functions, and in particular those allowing flexible and voluntary behaviours? This is the main theme of my research. It adresses action and outcome valuation, cognitive control / working memory and sequential planning, and how these processes participate to learning and rapid adaptations of behaviour.Understanding these mechanisms requires investigating brain functions from behavioural to basic neurophysiological and neurochemical levels. System neuroscience is our approach, and it guides most projects in the NEF lab. Our research is devoted to uncovering the functional specificities and relationships between prefrontal areas and understanding the impact of neuromodulatory systems on prefrontal functioning. Integrating a realistic quantitative description of prefrontal cortico-cortical connectivity of prefrontal areas with other brain structures is now an important axis of our research in interaction with Henry Kennedy’s lab. The aim is to bind network neurophysiological and pharmacological data with neuroanatomy. Finally we are in the process of developing, in collaboration with PF Dominey’s lab, an important computational neuroscience approach to our problematic on network function devoted to higher cognition. These converging researches are forming the core of the Integrative Neuroscience department at SBRI. Finally, our basic research activity also feeds the transversal project to understand subtle reorganisations in fronto-striatal networks taking place in early stages of dopaminergic degeneration, stages at which using replacement therapy could be more efficient.
