Section: New Results

Overview

Though our view is systemic, our daily research activities are concerned with the design, at a given scale of description, of models of neuronal structures, each concerned with a specific learning paradigm. Of course, a major challenge is to keep in mind the systemic view, to put a specific emphasis on the way each neuronal structure communicates with the rest of the system and to highlight how the learning paradigm interplays with other memory systems.

Among the numerous loops involving the brain, the body and the environment, a basic grid of description corresponds to distinguish “Perception Loops”, the goal of which is to extract from the inner and outer world sensory invariants helpful to identify and evaluate the current state and to make predictions from previous learning, and “Action Loops”, the goal of which is to rely on this sensory, emotional and motivational information to decide, plan and trigger actions for the benefit of the body.

Presently, our team is engaged on the following topics: Concerning perception loops, we are firstly considering the role of the hippocampus and of the posterior cortex in learning high level sensory cues that contribute to pavlovian conditioning in the amygdala. Secondly, we are investigating the role of the thalamus in attentional shifts in the cortex. Concerning Action loops, we are preparing a critical analysis of the current views of the interactions between the prefrontal cortex and the basal ganglia. Finally, we also report here more methodological achievements.