Research
Deciphering how social experiences shape behaviors
Our long term goal is to understand how internal states, past experiences, and sensory cues are integrated within the brain to guide adaptive social behaviors.
Photo credit: "Atlas of Drosophila morphology, wild type and classical mutants, 2013"
One of the fundamental goals of neuroscience research is to understand how the brain integrates the multitude of sensory cues arising from a constantly changing environment to generate appropriate behavioral responses and ultimately form memories. Our laboratory aims to investigate these processes in the context of social behaviors.
We investigate the neural circuits and molecular mechanisms that regulate aggression, mating, and social decision-making in Drosophila melanogaster.
By combining genetics, connectomics, in vivo imaging, behavioral analysis, and computational approaches, we investigate how experience and internal states are encoded in neural circuits to influence future behavior.
Our main scientific questions
How does the brain learn from social experience?
Aggressive encounters are not just a stereotyped sequence of behavioral patterns. Winners become more likely to win again, whereas losers often remain in a submissive state after a fight has ended.
We investigate how these social experiences are encoded, stored, and retrieved to generate persistent internal states that influence future aggressive decisions.
Current interests:
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Winner and loser social memories
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Internal state representation
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Experience-dependent plasticity
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Aggression as reinforcement learning
How do neural circuits regulate behavioral decisions?
Behavior emerges from interactions between sensory information, neuromodulators, and distributed neural circuits.
We identify the neurons, synaptic mechanisms, and neuromodulatory systems that transform experience into action, with a particular focus on Mushroom Body and their interactions with social behavior circuits.
Current interests:
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Mushroom body circuits
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Octopamine and dopamine signaling
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Circuit mechanisms of behavioral flexibility
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Neural control of aggressive escalation
How do evolution and physiology shape social behavior?
Social behaviors evolve under strong selective pressures and are tightly linked to reproduction, metabolism, and lifespan.
We investigate how aggression interacts with life-history traits, chemical communication, and reproductive strategies to understand the evolutionary costs and benefits of social behavioral adaptation.
Current interests:
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Reproductive trade-offs
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Pheromonal communication
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Mating duration
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Evolution of aggression
WHY DROSOPHILA ?
Although its brain contains only about 140,000 neurons, Drosophila melanogaster displays surprisingly rich social behaviors, including aggression, courtship, learning, cooperation, and decision-making.
Its complete connectome and unparalleled genetic toolkit make it possible to identify, manipulate, and monitor individual neurons while quantifying behavior with remarkable precision. This unique combination makes Drosophila one of the most powerful systems for understanding how brains generate behavior.
OUR APPROACH
Our research combines multiple complementary approaches:
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Genetics
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Behavioral neuroscience
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Neural circuit manipulation
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Spectrometry techniques
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Immunohistochemistry
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Connectomics
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Functional imaging
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Computational analysis
OUR LONG TERM GOAL
Our long-term objective is to understand how social experiences become internal states.
Rather than viewing aggression simply as an innate behavior, we investigate how every interaction influence activity of neural circuits and ultimately future decisions.
By identifying the processes performed by specific neural circuits, we hope to uncover fundamental principles of adaptive behaviors that extend far beyond insects and contribute to understanding disorders in which social behaviors regulation is disrupted.