Alberto Bacci, head of the “Cellular Physiology of Cortical Microcircuits” team at the Paris Brain Institute, received the Camille Woringer Award from the Fondation pour la Recherche médicale.
The prize, worth €7,000, is intended to support research on brain diseases.
Alberto Bacci’s team is particularly interested in brain circuits of sensory perception. How is sensory information from the environment integrated at the level of the cerebral cortex to generate an adequate response? To answer this question, they study different populations of neurons in the cortex, their interactions and the connections they establish between them. The functioning of these networks requires as many neuron activation processes as inhibition processes in order to control the flow of information. Of particular importance for this are the interneurons. Structured interactions between these different types of cells in the cortex is essential to generate coherent representations of perceived information.
The study of brain circuits involved in the integration of sensory information is essential because several brain pathologies such as schizophrenia or autism are characterized by a disturbance of sensory perception and other cognitive functions. Studying the functioning of these networks is an essential step to better understand the alterations present in neurological and psychiatric diseases in order to provide therapeutic solutions.