Science and news
Funsy science and news
Phase-dependent brain stimulation: why dynamic functional connectivity matters
Brain stimulation is increasingly used to modulate neural activity, with applications ranging from basic neuroscience to clinical interventions in epilepsy, depression, Parkinson’s disease, and disorders of consciousness. Yet one major challenge remains: the same stimulation can sometimes produce different effects depending on when it is delivered. This suggests that the brain is not a passive…
Detecting conscious perception in preverbal infants through Event Related Variability
A major challenge in developmental cognitive neuroscience is that preverbal infants cannot tell us what they perceive. This is especially difficult when studying conscious perception: how can we know whether an infant actually saw a stimulus, rather than merely processed it unconsciously? In this study, led by François Leroy and Ghislaine Dehaene at NeuroSpin, Saclay,…
How basal ganglia subnetworks tune decision policies to increase reward rate
Adaptive decision-making is not only about choosing the correct option. It also requires choosing at the right speed. In uncertain environments, the brain must continuously manage the trade-off between accuracy and reaction time: waiting longer can improve decisions, but waiting too long may reduce reward rate. How cortico-basal ganglia-thalamic (CBGT) circuits learn to tune this…
Optimal inhibitory-to-excitatory balance for flexible brain communication
Neural oscillations are among the brain’s main strategies for coordinating activity across cells and circuits. Different frequency bands are often associated with different computational roles: slower rhythms can support long-range coordination, while faster rhythms such as gamma are thought to help structure local processing and information transfer. Yet an important question remains open: how can…
40 Hz light stimulation restores brain dynamics and memory in an early Alzheimer’s disease mouse model
Alzheimer’s disease is often described in terms of its “hardware” damage: amyloid plaques, tau pathology, neuronal loss, and progressive structural degeneration. But before the brain is visibly damaged, its activity may already be changing. In this study, we asked whether early Alzheimer-like alterations could be detected not only in brain structure, but in brain dynamics…
L-Dopa reshapes aperiodic brain bursts in Parkinson’s disease
Parkinson’s disease is classically associated with abnormal rhythmic activity in cortico-basal ganglia circuits, especially excessive beta-band synchronization. Yet brain activity is not made only of regular oscillations. It also contains brief, irregular, aperiodic bursts that propagate across regions and may reflect the brain’s capacity to flexibly coordinate distributed activity. In this study, in collaboration with…
What if all these different oscillations where entangled in a network of interdependence?
Linking neural activity to sensory, motor or cognitive processes is an ongoing goal in Neuroscience and articular attention has been devoted to the role of brain oscillations, analyzed by averaging over many trials in suitably designed tasks. Previous findings offer a glimpse of the complexity of the overall picture, but have also limitations. First, searching…
CBGTPy: a flexible virtual laboratory for biological decision-making
Decision-making depends on the coordinated activity of cortico-basal ganglia-thalamic circuits. These circuits help the brain evaluate alternatives, select actions, suppress inappropriate responses, and learn from reward. Yet they are difficult to study because behavior emerges from interactions between many pathways, timescales, and cell populations. CBGTPy was developed to make these interactions easier to model, manipulate,…
A hypothalamus–habenula circuit for individual risk preference
When faced with a safe option and a risky option of similar expected value, individuals often show stable preferences: some consistently avoid risk, whereas others are more willing to accept uncertainty. How such individual risk preference is represented in neural circuits has remained poorly understood. Yaroslav Sych contributed to investigate how the brain encodes risk…
Mapping the energy landscape of cognition in adolescent-onset schizophrenia
Cognitive difficulties are among the most disabling aspects of schizophrenia, and they are often particularly severe in adolescent-onset schizophrenia. Yet standard neuroimaging analyses usually focus either on regional activation — which areas are more or less active — or on functional connectivity — which areas fluctuate together. In this study, in collaboration with Konasale Prasad…
The claustrum and synchronized brain states: a small structure with a large-scale role
The claustrum is one of the brain’s most intriguing structures: a thin, deeply located sheet of neurons, densely and reciprocally connected with many cortical areas. Because of this connectivity, it has often been discussed as a possible hub for attention, integration, or even consciousness. In this review, in collaboration with the group of Dr. Jesse…
Arkypallidal neurons in the external globus pallidus can mediate inhibitory control by altering competition in the striatum
Stopping an action at the right moment is a fundamental form of cognitive control. Whether avoiding an obstacle, cancelling a planned movement, or adapting to a sudden change in the environment, the brain must sometimes rapidly suppress an action that is already being prepared. This process, known as reactive inhibitory control, has classically been attributed…
Cortical cross-frequency coupling alterations as a novel biomarker of ALS?
We have published a new article in collaboration avec Véronique Marchand-Pauvert (Paris), Sabine Liebscher (Munich/Cologne) and Caroline Rouaux (Strasbourg). In this Science Translational Medicine paper we show that the cross-frequency coupling analyses we have used in previous papers can serve as a promising biomarker for Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). ALS is a devastating neurodegenerative disease,…
Hippocampal gamma oscillatory complexity is not noise but reflects behavior and learning
Our FunSy paper on gamma oscillatory complexity in hippocampus is out in Nature Comms! The hippocampus and entorhinal cortex exhibit rich oscillatory patterns critical for cognitive functions. In the hippocampal region CA1, specific gamma-frequency oscillations, timed at different phases of the ongoing theta rhythm, are hypothesized to facilitate the integration of information from varied sources and…
Subject-specific maximum entropy model of resting state fMRI shows diagnostically distinct patterns of energy state distributions
Existing neuroimaging studies of psychotic and mood disorders have reported regional brain activation differences (first-order properties) and alterations in functional connectivity based on pairwise correlations in activation (second-order properties). In this preprint, in collaboration with Jonathan Rubin, Konasal Prasad et al. (Pittsburgh, PA), we use a generalized Ising model, also called a pairwise maximum entropy…
Brain-state-dependent constraints on claustrocortical communication and function
Our new paper in collaboration with Jesse Jackson (Edmonton) is out ! Neural activity in the claustrum has been associated with a range of vigilance states, yet the activity patterns and efficacy of synaptic communication of identified claustrum neurons have not been thoroughly determined. Here, we show that claustrum neurons projecting to the retrosplenial cortex are most active during synchronized cortical states…
Different Faces of Medial Beta-Band Activity Reflect Distinct Visuomotor Feedback Signals
Beta-band activity reflects neural processes well beyond sensorimotor functions, including cognition and motivation. In this Journal of Neuroscience article in collaboration with Nicola Malfait (Marseille), by disentangling alternative spatio-temporal-spectral patterns of possible beta-oscillatory activity, we reconcile a seemingly discrepant literature. First, high-beta power in the medial frontal cortex showed opposite modulations separated in time in…
Prefrontal–striatal projection neurons support the maintenance of working memory
Working memory is the ability to keep information available for a short period of time in order to guide behavior. It is essential for flexible cognition, but the circuit mechanisms that allow prefrontal networks to maintain information across a delay remain incompletely understood. Together with Fritjof Helmchen’s group at the University of Zurich, we investigated…
Competing neural representations of choice shape evidence accumulation in humans
Making adaptive choices in dynamic environments requires flexible decision policies. Previously, we showed how shifts in outcome contingency change the evidence accumulation process that determines decision policies. In this eLife article we published in collaboration with Jonathan Rubin, Timothy Verstynen (Pittsburgh, PA) et al, we used in silico experiments to generate predictions and show how…
Perturbed Information Processing Complexity in Experimental Epilepsy
Usually we think that pathologies, as epilepsy, are associated to disruptions of the neural circuit mediating function. These disruptions certainly exist and are related e.g. to seizure events, which are rare and transient events. On the contrary, comorbidities, such as cognitive deficits, which often accompany epilepsies, constitute a basal state. This suggests that neural dynamics,…
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About us
The Functional System’s Dynamics team is an emergent team of the Laboratory for Cognitive and Adaptive Neuroscience (CNRS UMR 7364), within the Interdisciplinary Thematic Institute “NeuroStra” at University of Strasbourg, member of the trinational Neuroscience Upper Rhine network (NEUREX). The team was kickstarted thanks to the support of the University of Strasbourg Institute of Advanced Studies (USIAS).
How to find us
We are located within the building of the Faculty of Psychology, at the ground floor (LNCA wing, to the right, end of the corridor, entering from Rue Goethe side).
LNCA – 12 rue Goethe, F-67000 STRASBOURG
Tramway lines C/E/F – stop « Université » – Bus line 2 (~15 min from central station) – Strasbourg Entzheim airport at ~40 min, high speed train to Paris CDG and Frankfurt / Main international hubs.