> Current Projects
Note: Lab members work on several projects simultaneously, using different techniques. Team work between undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral students is strongly encouraged.
- Dynamic Synapse (computational model): Study of the reliability of spike timing through unreliable stochastic synapses using biophysical models of reconstructed hippocampal cells.
- Hippocampus-VTA Interactions (in vivo): Study of ensemble dynamics of hippocampal and VTA cell populations during a rewarded spatial task. Optimal spatial navigation. Multi-units recordings in the behaving and sleeping rat. Study of place fields and spike patterns.
- Memory reconsolidation in rats (in vivo): Study of high-order spatial learning in rats. Influence of learning strategies. In collaboration with prof. Lynn Nadel.
- Rat Model of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (in vivo): Behavioral testing, and VTA electrophysiological recording in the anesthetized and behaving animals. In collaboration with prof. Ed. French.
- Role of the VTA in memory consolidation and extinction (in vivo): Study of VTA during sleep, during simple learning paradigms followed by extinction.
- Spike train clustering and spike train metrics (computational): Study of efficient and useful spike train metrics and application to clustering.
- Face perception (psychophysical and computational): What are the relevant facial features used for the perception of sex, emotional expressions and other information. Studies in humans and monkeys. In collaboration with prof. L. Zebrowitz (Brandeis University).
Note: Lab protocols and procedures are described elsewhere.
Other (not so active right now...) projects
Neuromodulation of Spike Timing and Spike Patterns (in vitro): Study of the dependence of spike time reliability on the activation of neuromodulatory inputs in prefrontal cortex and hippocampus in vitro placed in simulated in vivo conditions. Slice preparation under dynamic and reactive clamp.
Up and Down States, Cortical Songs and Motifs (computational model): Study of the propagation and reverberation of neural activity in large networks of neurons, with realistic synaptic noise and realistic unreliable synaptic transmission.