Sabrina Ravel, part of the Marmobrain collaborative project, discussed the influence of social position on performance in a stimulus-reward association reversal learning task in common marmoset. The tests carried out through automated testing systems in their homecage highlighted the possibility of studying cognitive abilities without water or food constraints. The results showed that individual cognitive abilities, as well as hierarchy, affect learning speed in marmosets but this wasn’t the case during reversal learning.

Manuel Varlet from the MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour, and Development, during his talk “Self-other neural and behavioural mechanisms for coordinating with others” presented new research combining frequency tagging and EEG hyperscanning used to investigate self-other neural and behavioural mechanisms enabling interpersonal coordination using auditory and visual information. He highlighted the importance of leadership roles, and the processes specific to each modality underlying interpersonal synchronisation.

Robert Seyfarth, a comparative psychologist renowned for outstanding contributions to understanding animal social cognition, communication and for providing the foundation for many current ideas on the evolution of language and sociality, was invited for a Q&A session. He answered questions about his career, how the field has changed and made progress. He also gave a few insights on where it needs to focus and how the next generation of scientists can contribute to that.

After a long time, the Barbecue Party of the ISC made its comeback on June 30! Starting from 5-6 PM, we shared a great time and a meal together!

Philippe Tobler from the University of Zurich during his talk “Motivational functions of the human midbrain” discussed the nature of the signals of dopamine neurons with the processing of errors in the prediction of both the subjective value and motivational salience of outcomes. Thanks to neuroimaging during a Pavlovian task, analyses revealed that value coding was limited mainly to evidence of reward, in line with the dual dimension hypothesis.

Jerome Sallet from the Stem Cell and Brain Research Institute, during his talk “Circuits for social cognition and foraging of the macaque brain”, presented his work regarding social interactions and circuits involved in making strategic exploratory decisions in macaques. He explained the impact of sociality on brain structure and highlighted the importance of an evolutionary perspective.

For the second mentoring session in the framework of the Marc Jeannerod Young Investigator Award, the topic of gender biases was addressed. Dr. Christiane Schreiweis from the team "Neurophysiology of Repetitive Behaviours" and founding member of the Gender Equity Committee of the Brain Institute in Paris presented a talk on how can we understand these gender biases through neuroscience and what we can do to overcome them. It was preceded by the screening of a short documentary and followed by a discussion.

Abhishek Banerjee from Newcastle University in his talk "Building a flexible sensory cortex : Cellular and computational principles", showed that distinct neuronal subpopulations in OFC and S1 interact specifically, contributing to behaviour dependant neural computation. His work is key to understand local and global computations underlying flexible behaviour.

On April 4th, Etienne Abassi defended his thesis titled “The social dyad in visual perception: a new visual object category”. Congratulations !

Kami Koldewyn in her talk “Social Interactions in the Social Brain” explored the role of various structures in the “social brain” across development. She showed the posterior superior temporal sulcus as a key region for processing dynamic social interactions, but other regions such as the extrastriate body area (EBA) also show sensitivity to specifically interactive information, depending on stimulus content and context.

A new paper from the Ape Social Mind Lab with ISC CNRS Affiliation was published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society regarding the association between the oxytocinergic system and cooperative behaviors in wild chimpanzees. This system provides the basis of parochial cooperation and suggests that the roots of human parochial altruism exist in chimpanzees. Lemoine SRT, Samuni L, Crockford C, Wittig RM. 2022 Parochial cooperation in wild chimpanzees: a model to explain the evolution of parochial altruism. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 377: 20210149. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2021.0149

As part of the Labex Cortex Conferences, Marco Tamietto from the University of Turin presented his work on patients with cortical blindness or with hemispatial neglect in a talk titled : “Neural mechanisms of sensori-motor integration and affective processing without awareness and visual cortex “.

On March 8th, Celia Loriette defended her thesis "Non-invasive brain-machine interfaces and neurofeedback to enhance the attentional function". Congrats!

Haemy Lee Massson from the Johns Hopkins University showed that the complex integration among social, emotional, and somatosensory regions when receiving and observing affective touch, is disrupted in ASD, using advanced multi-methods of neuroimaging and machine learning. This is also associated with the severity of touch aversion and poor social responsivity.

They investigated, using eye-tracking, the development of visual categorization of animate and inanimate objects. In their visual exploration of objects, infants between 4 and 10 months seem to be guided by object salience, according to the animate–inanimate distinction. Then, through their second year of life, they organize their visual exploration based on biologically relevant categories. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35169072/

A new paper from the BabyLab was published on Current Biology. They studied the attentional blink phenomenon in infants, children, and adult participants, using eye-tracking to address how acceleration in information processing affects information processes that contribute to perceptual awareness. The results represent a major advance in our understanding of infant thinking and how it gradually transforms into adult thinking. https://www.insb.cnrs.fr/fr/cnrsinfo/comment-la-pensee-la-conscience-vient-aux-nourrissons Hochmann and Kouider, Acceleration of information processing en route to perceptual awareness in infancy, Current Biology (2022), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2022.01.029

On December 7, we had the 2021 edition of the Marc Jeannerod young investigator award. The first award went to Mathieu Malherbe. The second award has been attributed ex equo to two different projects presented by Marie Habart and Mathilda Froesel & Maëva Gacoin. Congratulations to the winners and to all the candidates who presented very competitive and outstanding projects.

iMIND organised a scientific day on social cognition in neurodevelopmental disorders at the ISC amphitheater. Speakers held talks on subjects ranging from the contribution of the primate model to the understanding of human social behavior to the neuro-computational approach to autism spectrum disorders along with translational aspects and remediation of social cognition. Notably, our lab head, Pier Francesco Ferrari, gave a talk on the cognitive neurodevelopment in primates, and Catherine Crockford on the role of oxytocin in cooperative behaviour in wild chimpanzees.

Olga Dal Monte from the University of Turin spoke at the ISC in her talk “Neural Mechanisms of Social Interactions”, in which she reported evidence of key functions of the prefrontal–amygdala network in different components of social interaction such as social decision making and social gaze interactions.

Ilaria Sani from the University of Geneva, showed that like fronto-parietal attentional areas, the posterior inferotemporal area exhibits significant attentional modulatory activity by combining a demanding behavioral paradigm with functional neuroimaging and diffusion tractography across primate species.

Some of our lab members took part in the 33rd symposium of the Société Francophone de Primatologie in Saint-Etienne, from October 20. Over 3 days, speakers held talks on subjects ranging from primate cognition to conservation. Notably, our lab head, Pier Francesco Ferrari, gave a talk on the evolution and development of the social mind in primates, and Catherine Crockford on the patterning and ontogeny of chimpanzee vocal sequences and involved brain pathways. All also attended Frans de Waal’s conference, who was named Docteur Honoris Causa of Saint-Etienne Jean Monnet University on that occasion.

For Halloween, ISC students organized a special evening. The program included crafting spooky decorations to hang in the lab’s offices and hallways; sharing Halloween treats and candies; and watching a movie in the amphitheater.

Catherine Crockford is a Director of Research at the ISC CNRS in Lyon and head of the the Great Ape Social Mind Lab. During a conference organised by the Labex Cortex, she presented her work on the ontogeny of chimpanzee vocal sequences and brain pathways.

Luca Bonini spoke at the ISC in his talk “Beyond mirror neurons: the social affordance hypothesis”, in which he used recent data to challenge classic views on the functional properties of these neurons and propose a new, more complex perspective.

October 11th, Mathilda Froesel defended her thesis “Cortical and subcortical neural bases of audio-visual social processing in macaques” under the direction of Suliann Ben Hamed. Congrats !