postdoc in Drosophila circuit neurosicence

NeuroPSI is an institute dedicated to fundamental research in neuroscience at Paris-Saclay University (25 km South-West of Paris). The NeuroPSI research groups are organized in three thematic departments and address a wide range of questions in neuroscience, from molecules to cognition and from embryos to adults, using multiscale experimental and theoretical approaches. NeuroPSI recently moved to a brand-new building next to the NeuroSpin institute for brain imaging, thus forming the largest neuroscience cluster in the Paris area.

Neurl circuits and behavior team: 

In our research, we exploit the advantages of the exquisite genetic tools available in Drosophila for manipulation and monitoring of neuronal activity at single neuron level and the numerical simplicity of the larval nervous system that allows the reconstruction of synaptic connectivity across the nervous system using large-scale electron microscopy to study the structure and function of the neural circuits for sensorimotor decisions and action sequences. We focus on three main aims :

Aim 1. Determine how contextual information modulates behavioral choices.

Aim 2. Define the brain-wide mechanism underlying competitive interactions between multiple actions.

Aim 3. Determine the circuit mechanism underlying the production of longer innate sequences.

Making the right decisions depending on the context and the internal state is critical for survival across the animal kingdom. One of the key roles of the brain is to regulate behavior depending on the ever-changing external demands and internal needs. This capacity of the brain to modulate the behavioral output depending on the situations has implications for its organisation: the mapping between sensory information and motor output needs to be flexible. This allows different types of information to dynamically modulate the outcome of the decision process. Where and how this is achieved in the nervous system remains an intriguing open question and answering it has been a daunting task in the field of neuroscience. The modulation of neural circuit activity can occur at synapses and individual cells or local circuits and global networks. Studying it comprehensively thus requires different levels of analysis, from molecules and neural circuits to larger networks and behavior.

To determine the general principles of state dependent modulation across different scales we will use  a simple organism, the Drosophila Melanogaster larva, that has many advantages  for mapping neural circuits across the nervous system : a compact brain of about 10 000 neurons that has been mapped at synapse resolution and genetic tools allow to establish causal relationships between single neurons and behavior. We will focus on understudied aspect of the influence of feeding-state dependent modulation of escape behaviors and tinvestigate the neural circuit mechanisms involved using a combination of electrophysiology, Ca-imaging, quantitative behavioral analysis, genetics and

This project will be highly interdisciplinary, with close interaction between computational modeling (in collaboration with Alain Destexhe) and experimental work. The project will allow to determine in which way the neuromodulators, alone or in combination, reconfigure neural circuit activity, and how feeding states modulate neural circuit activity underlying sensorimotor decisions

A PhD in neuroscience or related disciplines is required. Experience in Electrophysiology and/or Calcium-imaging will be appreciated.

Being at the intersection of experimental, theoretical, and computational fields, we expect the outcomes of this project to have a large audience and impact, which will be internationally presented by the Postdoc in scientific communications at meetings, congresses, and in publications.