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Section: Partnerships and Cooperations
Regional Initiatives
PsyPhINe: Cogito Ergo Es
Participant : Nicolas Rougier.
PEPS site Mirabelle (CNRS & University of Lorraine) gathering researchers from the following institutes: MSH Lorraine (USR3261), InterPsy (EA 4432), APEMAC, EPSaM (EA4360), Archives Henri-Poincaré (UMR7117), Loria (UMR7503).
PsyPhiNe is an interdisciplinary and exploratory project between philosophers, psychologists and computer scientists. The goal of the project is related to cognition and behavior. Cognition is a set of processes that are difficult to unite in a general definition. The project aims to explore the idea of assignments of intelligence or intentionality, assuming that our intersubjectivity and our natural tendency to anthropomorphize play a central role: we project onto others parts of our own cognition. To test these hypotheses, our aim is to design a "non-verbal" Turing Test, which satisfies the definitions of our various fields (psychology, philosophy, neuroscience and computer science), using a robotic prototype. Some of the questions that we aim to answer are: is it possible to give the illusion of cognition and of intelligence through such a technical device? How elaborate must be the control algorithms or ”behaviors” of such a device to fool test subjects? How many degrees of freedom must it have?
Project PEPS of the Idex: Dopamine control of a novel basal ganglia cell-type
Participants : André Garenne, Nicolas Rougier.
The neurotransmitter dopamine (DA) plays a key role in basal ganglia (BG) circuits. However, despite the fundamental importance of DA in those circuits, the electrophysiological effects of dopamine on target neurons are largely unknown. Furthermore, contrary to classical models that only view the globus pallidus (GP) as a relay station of the indirect pathway, our neuroscientist colleagues at IMN have discovered a novel GP cell-type called the Arkypallidal (Arky-GP) neurons that only project to striatum in a very dense way. We thus have been modeling the structure of the striatum ( 3 millions neurons) and the globus pallidus ( 50,000 neurons) in the mouse using down-scaled models. Two models have been made, the first one utilized the neural field theory while the other one utilized integrate-and-fire neurons. The goal was to study the activity around the electrode contact point in order to give account on recorded activity in vivo. Unfortunately, electrophysiological recording were not precise enough to conclude on these models.
Project of the Aquitaine Regional Council: Decision making, from motor primitives to action
Participants : Nicolas Rougier, Meropi Topalidou.
The aim of this project (partly funding the PhD of Meropi Topalidou) is to investigate decision making at intermediate level in order to establish the link between motor primitives and higher level actions. The question is to understand how continuous complex motor sequences can be dynamically represented as actions such that they can be manipulated to resolve conflict when several actions are possible. In tight collaboration with Thomas Boraud from the Institute of Neurodegenerative Diseases, we have been modeling the basal ganglia such as to explain the formation of habits in the monkey. This fruitful collaboration lead to the joint publication of several articles [4] , [43] , [42] , [5] and the model enabled us to make very precise prediction on the behavior of the monkeys (dissociation of goal-directed and habitual behavior). Early experiments on two female macaques tend to confirm the prediction.
Collaboration with the Neurocentre Magendie on parameter optimization: Neurobees
Participant : André Garenne.
The development of computational models of neurons and networks typically involves tuning the numerical parameters to fit experimental results. Parameter tuning can sometimes be manually completed, it is more convenient to use automated optimization algorithms at least for two reasons: (i) to apply an homogeneous processing to all the calculation and parameter space exploration which alleviates operator influence and (ii) to avoid a tedious and uncertain result from human operators when the dimensionality increases. A multi-agent algorithm in line with ABC (Artificial Bee Colony) paradigm has been applied to new benchmark tests in order to ensure its robustness and better performances, especially when compared to evolutionary and swarm algorithms and this has recently been confirmed, thanks to the local Plafrim computation facilities. A draft paper is then currently modified before submission to take into account these last results.
Thematic Transverse Action of the University of Bordeaux: Project MISTERE
Participant : André Garenne.
The MISTERE (Etude du Mécanisme d’Interaction des Signaux de Téléphonie mobile sur des Réseaux de neurones in vitro) project has been recently accepted and we have obtained financial support and 1 year of post-doctoral contract by the Science and Technology department of the University of Bordeaux. The main topic of this project lies in the elucidation of the cellular mechanisms of the effects of the GSM radio frequencies (GSM-RF) on the neuronal activity. The approach will consist both in computational modeling studies and in pharmacological tests of neuronal cultures activity when submitted to GSM-RF.