Research Center on Animal Cognition

Welcome to the Research Center on Animal Cogntion

(CNRS - UPS Research Institute n°5169)

Director : Martin GIURFA

Assistant director : Bernard FRANCES

UMR 5169, Bât IVR3, 118 route de Narbonne F-31062 Toulouse cedex 09

Tél.: +33 5 61 55 67 31, Fax: +33 5 61 55 61 54

Reseach programs

Perception, Learning and Memory in Insects (PLMI) - Principal investigators: Martin Giurfa and Monique Gauthier

Memory, Aging and Plasticity (MAP) - Principal Investigator: Bernard Francés

Complex Dynamics and Interaction Networks in Animal Societies (DYNACTOM) - Principal Investigator: Guy Theraulaz

Last Informations

Innovators are not necessarily the best instructors

This conclusion was reached by a recent paper published in PloS One by Nicole Cadieu and her team.

The main topic of the article is the study of behavioral innovation and social transmission of new habits in canaries. Specifically, Nicole analyzed whether in a group of canaries some individuals were particularly innovative and whether they were able to transmit newly acquired habits to the rest of the group.

Serinus Canaria

Cadieu N, Fruchard S, Cadieu J-C (2010) "Innovative Individuals Are Not Always the Best Demonstrators: Feeding Innovation and Social Transmission in Serinus canaria" PLoS ONE 5(1): e8841.

Ventral striatal plasticity and spatial memory

Pascal Roullet

Deep structures of the brain are responsible for our memories indicates a study recently published on PNAS, fruit of collaboration between the Sapienza University of Rome and the University Paul Sabatier in Toulouse.

Until now it was thought that the cerebral cortex was only responsible for remembering facts, locations and faces.

Ferretti V, Roullet P, Sargolini F, Rinaldi A, Perri V, Del Fabbro M, Costantini VJ, Annese V, Scesa G, De Stefano ME, Oliverio A, Mele A.(2010) "Ventral striatal plasticity and spatial memory" PNAS 107(17):7945-50.

Disentangling pedestrian movement in a crowd

How do pedestrians move in the street? And how do they interact one with each other?

Scientists from the Research Center for Animal Cognition (CRCA, Toulouse University 3/CNRS) and from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich have run a series of studies in order to further our understanding of human collective displacement in urban zones.

Mehdi Moussaïd

Their realistic models of crowd movements, published on april 7th in PLoS ONE, may help to improve pedestrian traffic management in crowded situations.

M. Moussaïd, N.Perozo, S. Garnier, D. Helbing & Guy Theraulaz, "The walking behaviour of pedestrian social groups and its impact on crowd dynamics", Plos One (2010)

Reorganization of a neural network associated

with long-term memory

What are the structural consequences of the formation of memories in a brain able to learn and remember, and amenable to the structural analysis of its constituting networks ? Is long-term memory accompanied by volume changes of certain brain regions and, if so, what are the links between possible changes in brain structure and those in neural activity after memory formation ?

In order to answer these questions, Benoît Hourcade and Emmanuel Perisse (PhD students at the CRCA), together with Jean-Christophe Sandoz (research associate, CNRS) and Jean-Marc Devaud (assistant professor, Paul Sabatier University) studied the formation of olfactory long-term memory in honeybees, and have analysed in parallel the volume changes in the antennal lobe (first odorant processing centre in the insect brain) that go along this memory formation.

Benoît Hourcade, Emmanuel Perisse, Jean-Marc Devaud and Jean-Christophe Sandoz "Long-term memory shapes the primary olfactory center of an insect brain", Learn. Mem. 2009 16: 607-615.

Hot From the Press

Hourcade Benoit, Perisse Emmanuel, Devaud Jean-Marc, Sandoz Jean-Christophe

"Long-term olfactory memory shapes the primary olfactory centre of an insect brain"

Learning and Memory 16, 607-615, 2009.

Daumas S., Ceccom J., Halley H., Francés B., Lassalle J.M.

"Activation of metabotropic glutamate receptor type 2/3 supports the involvement of the hippocampal mossy fibre pathway on contextual fear memory consolidation."

Learning & Memory 16: 504-507, 2009

Moussaïd M., Helbing D., Garnier S., Johansson A., Combe M., Theraulaz G.

"Experimental study of the behavioural mechanisms underlying self-organization in human crowds."

Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B-Biological Sciences 276: 2755-2762, 2009