Gerard Derosiere is the principal investigator of our lab. He has held a permanent researcher position at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) since November 2022, establishing his line of research at the Lyon Research Center for Neuroscience (CRNL) on effort-based decision-making and apathy. Prior to his relocation to Lyon, Gerard dedicated eight years as a postdoctoral researcher in Prof. Julie Duque’s lab at UCLouvain, in Brussels, from 2014 to 2022. During this period, he also undertook short-term research stays in Prof. Paul Cisek’s lab at the University of Montreal in 2015, and in Prof. Rich Ivry's lab at UC Berkeley in 2019. Gerard earned his PhD through an international program between the University of Montpellier in France and the National University of Ireland. Throughout his academic background, he has developed an interest for the interplay between Cognition and Action and for the brain circuits that integrate these processes.

We are looking for a motivated postdoc to work on a project on motivation! The position is fully funded for at least 2.5 years. Please go to the Positions page for more details.

Nam is a third-year PhD student, funded by the Centre for Research Training in Machine Learning (ML-Labs) at Dublin City University (DCU) in Ireland. He is co-supervised by Prof. Tomas Ward (who previously supervised Gerard Derosiere’s PhD!). Nam's research is centred on utilizing machine learning to enhance our understanding of human decision-making processes in the context of subclinical apathy and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. In addition to his primary research work for his PhD, Nam actively engages in numerous software hackathons and machine learning challenges as a hobby for major companies, including Zalando and Huawei. His exceptional problem-solving skills in machine learning, particularly in the areas of large language models and computer vision, have earned him several first and second prizes.

Margaux is a first-year PhD student, funded by a French Ministry PhD grant, which she earned through a selective competition process at the doctoral school in Neuroscience and Cognition (NSCo). Her PhD (co-supervised with Dr. Pierre Vassiliadis) leverages advances in effective connectivity quantification to investigate the role of recurrent circuits between the fronto-striatal structures and the motor cortex in effort-based decision-making and apathy. Margaux exploits a multimodal approach, combining fMRI with brain stimulation to address this issue. Her project has two parts, with the following specific goals: 1. Test the causal role of SMA-vStriatum and OFC-vStriatum circuits in generating effort- and reward-dependent modulations of M1 activity during effort-based decisions. 2. Determine the contribution of connectivity alterations within these circuits to apathy in Parkinson’s disease patients.

Sanchari, also known as Sana, is a first-year PhD student supported by the Marie Sklodowska-Curie actions through the ArchiFun network. Her research, in close collaboration with Dr. Franziska Knolle from TUM in Munich, centers on apathy in schizophrenia. The project includes international mobility between France and Germany, where Sana will conduct neuroimaging experiments with patients during research stays. In the initial phase of her PhD, she plans to develop neuro-computational biomarkers to objectively identify the unique neural and computational mechanisms associated with apathy in schizophrenia, while the second phase will explore how striatal stimulation affects effort-based decision-making and apathy in patients.

Norlan is a second-year Master student in biomedical engineering at UCLouvain funded by an Erasmus+ grant, doing an internship in the lab in 2024-2025. He is co-supervised with Dr. Frederic Crevecoeur at UCLouvain. Norlan is working on a project entitled "DeepStimSim", which explores the possibility of stimulating non-invasively dopaminergic structures of the brainstem involved in reward processing high-density transcranial Electrical Stimulation (HD-tES). To do so, Norlan uses advanced electric field simulations over magnetic resonance imaging data acquired in humans.