Head : Isabelle BERRY
The Brain and Cognition Research Center (CerCo) is affiliated to the CNRS and the Université of Toulouse. We are grouped in 5 research teams and 3 professional service teams (see link).
Our overall aims and axes of inquiries
Our aimisto innovate with research on the brain and mind, at the intersection between behavioural, cognitive and computational neuroscience.
To this end, CerCo research builds on three comparative (and integrative) axes of inquiries:
- human versus animal cognition,
- biological versus artificial neural networks/intelligence,
- micro- versus macro-scale recordings
This allows addressing some of the big questions in neuroscience, such as whether being conscious is fundamentally human (or can emerge in AI), or what it is that makes biological (animal) brains so energy efficient, to more specialist questions about thalamic (and other subcortical) contributions to cognition.
Due to our location in a hospital campus (University Hospital Toulouse), we integrate and have strong connections with medical practitioners forging bespoke clinical research programmes, alongside our fundamental research profiles.
Our team-based research
We study the architecture of the visual system, the dynamics of visual computing, its interactions with other sensory modalities, and the neural basis of perception and higher cognitive functions. This includes the neural representation of space (team SV3M), scenes, objects, memory (team Dynamo), and consciousness (several teams). This is studied in the context of social interactions (team Sens4social) and neuromodulatory processes influencing cognition (team NemoCog), as well as in relation to artificial intelligence (team NeuroAI).
In more clinically oriented research, the CerCo-teams study pathophysiological processes in epilepsy patients down to the single neuron level (team Dynamo), the development of rehabilitation solutions in deaf patients through sensory aids (like neuro-prosthetics) or cognitive tools (such as robots and virtual reality) (team Sens4social), and normal vs pathological changes to the autonomous nervous system in ageing (team NemoCog).
Our facilities
We combine experimental, computational, neuroimaging and neurostimulation methods in a multi-modal, multi-scale, and cross-species approach.
Our cutting-edge facility includes non-invasive, intracranial and in-vitro electrophysiology. An inhouse, 3T-fMRI platform is shared with the Inserm unit ToNIC, and a multichannel optically pumped magnetoencephalography (OPM-MEG) platform is being set up. This is complemented by near-InfraRed Spectroscopy (NIRS) and non-invasive brain stimulation (TMS, tACS, tDCS, tFUS). A high-performance computing cluster accommodates CerCo’s computational approaches.
The Centre is part of the “Toulouse Brain and Mind Institute”