JACOB Pierre-yves

The aim of my research is to understand how the brain codes for information that serves complex cognitive operations of explicit learning, memory processes and spatial navigation.
During my thesis, I used both in vivo electrophysiological and behavioural approaches in rodents to investigate the nature of spatial representation formed by the medial entorhinal cortex, a brain structure involved in spatial memory and containing grid cells, head direction cells and conjunctive cells. Using the same methods during my postdoc in the Jeffery lab, I provided some new understanding of the head direction signal in both cortical and subcortical structures: the retrosplenial cortex, the postsubiculum and the anterodorso thalamic nucleus. In particular, I shown how external information provided by visual landmarks, self motion information, and contextual information, are integrated to signal the head direction activity.

Back to the LNC spatial cognition team in Marseille, I am currently attempting to understand the function of the bidirectional cells (also called flip cells) I discovered in Jeffery lab, and how they interact with other spatial neurons, grid and place cells. My research is funded by the f, the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR), the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and Aix-Marseille University (AMU).

ORCID : https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4662-1051