Grant: Project Grant

Our perception, thoughts and memory emerge from the collective activity of neuronal assemblies in large­scale brain networks, and unraveling the mechanisms underlying the communication between neuronal populations in various brain regions has become one of the central questions in neuroscience. My overarching goal is to understand how the brain processes sensory signals to generate spatial representations and memories that enable successful navigation. This research proposal aims to investigate how neuronal networks in vivo process the sense of head­direction, a critical piece of information for animals' navigation capabilities, how this signal is transformed into higher-level representation of space and how it participates to the formation of new spatial memories. Unraveling the relationship between, even basic, cognitive processes and neuronal dynamics will take us one step further toward understanding the neural basis of psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and other neurological disorders.