Virginie van Wassenhove is awarded an ERC Synergy Grant
On 5 November 2024, the European Research Council announced the 57 winning projects which have been awarded ERC Synergy grants in 2024. The Chronology project, which brings together four researchers, including Virginie van Wassenhove, has been awarded a grant of up to 10 million euros for a period of six years.
Virginie van Wassenhove is an expert in temporal cognition and a CEA researcher at the Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit (UNICOG - Univ. Paris-Saclay/CEA/Inserm). She has been awarded a Synergy grant for her project, Chronology, coordinated alongside Brice Bathellier (CNRS), Srdjan Ostojic (ENS) et Mehrdad Jazayeri (MIT).
The Chronology project aims to explore the theory that the brain develops a cognitive map of time which can be generalised to different brain scales and animal species. Using the concept that the mental evaluation of time is based on multi-scale neuronal activity, the team will carry out experiments on rodents, non-human primates and humans to record brain activity on different levels from single cells to the entire brain. Each species will be observed during temporal navigation and estimation tasks of varying cognitive complexity.
The collated data will be analysed geometrically to identify temporal cognitive maps which give individuals a mental chronology of events. The data will be modelled using neural networks which could predict the expected changes in brain activity according to experimental parameters.
The Chronology project is based on neurobiological principles to identify the universal brain mechanisms which underpin representations of time. The project is structured around three key steps:
- Assessment of processes in three animal species, following the artificial intelligence model indications for the resolution of temporal tasks. These models will also call on recurrent neural networks (RNN), in which the researchers Mehrdad Jazayeri and Srdjan Ostojic have significant expertise.
- Validation of model predictions for flexible mental manipulations of time in the protocols identified by Virginie van Wassenhove for humans, Mehrdad Jazayeri for non-human primates and Brice Bathellier for rodents.
- Direct manipulation of the type of neural representations using a new optogenetic stimulation tool developed by Brice Bathellier to address the neural population on a single-cell scale.
ERC Synergy grants are awarded over a period of 6 years and are worth up to €10 million. The grants are intended for groups of two to four scientists, from member or associate member countries, who have an ambitious research project at the frontiers of knowledge which tackle questions that cannot be resolved individually.