Our mission

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Social interactions are among the strongest forces influencing future behaviors.

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Winning or losing a fight, finding a mate, or competing for resources can permanently alter how animals behave. Yet we still know little about how these experiences are integrated and represented in the brain.

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Our laboratory investigates the neural circuits that transform social experience into adaptive behavior.

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Rather than studying aggression as a simple innate behavior, we view it as a dynamic behavioral state emerging from interactions between memory, sensory information and neuromodulation.

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The main goal of our lab is thus to unravel the neurobiology of innate and social behaviors by identifying molecular mechanisms and their underlying neural circuitry, while in parallel exploring the impact of aggressive interactions on future social behaviors. To this end, we combine the powerful Drosophila melanogaster model system with sophisticated genetics, behavioral assays, machine-learning behavioral scoring, chemistry, immunohistochemistry, and functional imaging.

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Our environement

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We are part of the team EXPLAIN which aims to investigate the experience-dependent plasticity in insects, with a particular focus on cognitive functions. We belong to the Research center on Animal Cognition (CRCA) and the Center for Integrative Biology (CBI) in Toulouse, France.

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CBI hosts more than 400 researchers from nearly 40 nationalities, providing a highly collaborative and interdisciplinary environment where neuroscience, behavior, genetics and cell biology converge. Internationally recognized for excellence in neuroethology and cognitive neuroscience, the CRCA offers outstanding opportunities for collaboration and access to state-of-the-art facilities for imaging, behavioral analysis, neurogenetics and imaging plateform, enabling research from molecules to neural circuits and behavior.

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