Experience-Dependent Plasticity in Insects

Jean-Marc Devaud

Martin Giurfa


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Team members

  Research engineer
  • Gabriela De Brito Sanchez
  • Isabelle Massou
  • Gregory Lafon
  Researcher  Associate professor
  • Jean-Marc Devaud
  • Martin Giurfa
  • Guillaume Isabel
  Technical staff
  • Alexandre Durand
  Postdoctoral fellow
  • Marco Paoli
  • Catherine Tait
  • Luigi Baciadonna
  • Rafael Carvalho Da Silva
  PhD student
  • Yuan Lai
  • Ines Noureddine
  • Elena Kerjean
  • Catherine Macri
  • Zhaonan Zhang
  Master student
  • Melodie Delobelle
  • Manon Izard
  --
  • Lucie Fournil
  • Eugénie Rahier

Presentation

The objective of our team is the integrative study of experience-dependent plasticity in insects, with a particular focus on cognitive functions, such as visual and olfactory learning and memory. Three model species (honeybee, bumblebee, Drosophila), for which detailed descriptions of brain anatomy and genome are now available, are used to explore behavioral plasticity in ecologically relevant tasks and to track down their genetic, molecular and neural mechanisms bases. The comparative analysis between species exhibiting various levels of social complexities provides a unique opportunity to consider experience-dependent plasticity in a social context.


Our multidisciplinary approach is poised at the interface between experimental psychology, neurobiology, molecular biology, behavioral genetics and cognitive ecology. We use state-of the-art techniques spanning from behavioral observations of free-flying bees foraging on computer-controlled flowers, to the conditioning of harnessed individuals presented with tightly controlled stimuli, the identification of neural circuits involved in memory formation using transgenes, and the detailed tracking of neurotransmission processes in targeted brain structures.

 

Projets

BEE-MATURATION: Individual experience and plasticity

MOLECULTURE: Multiscale study of social learning and memory in Drosophila melanogaster: from genes to animal culture

APITASTE: Taste Perception and Modulation in a Miniature Brain

BEE NUMBER: The Biological Bases of Bee Numerosity

ERC Advanced Grant COGNIBRAINS: Cognition in an Insect Brain

Publications

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Funding

           

Université Paul Sabatier
118 Route de Narbonne

31062 TOULOUSE Cedex
France

Annuaire général