Symposium Imagination 2. Thursday 8 October.

Thursday 8 October. 9am – 5pm

Venue: Centre Broca

Free access.

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About the symposium

Human abilities such as guessing, imagining or being creative can lead after distortions to aberrant perceptions (hallucinations) and beliefs (delusions) characteristics of some psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia or psychosis. Such abilities are all based on the capacity to form associations between different stimuli, from perceptual learning to higher-order conditioning, which is central to guide adaptive behaviour in humans and animals. <

“Imagination 2” is a follow-up of our successful symposium “Imagination” held in Bordeaux in December 2023. It will draw together 9 researcherswith balanced gender (6 females and 3 males), career stage (PhD student, post-docs, young PIs and senior PIs) and geographical origins (3 french speakers and 6 foreign speakers, of which 4 are coming from Europe, 1 from North America and 1 from Oceania). Some of them will present in a first session the concept of higher-order mental processes as well as their ontogenetic and phylogenetic evidences (Dwyer, Avargues-Weber, Ducourneau, Bonardi, Mondino,) while, in a second session, others researchers will provide evidence in animal models of the neurobiological basis of higher-order conditioning and mental sensory representations (Barrera-Conde, Garcia-Manzanares, Holmes and Johansen).

This meeting is perfectly inscribed in the philosophy of GPR Brain 2030 and in particular of the subproject ADAPSY, by gathering experimental and clinical researchers allowing to form new translational links in the field of psychiatric and mental disorders. The formation of these new links is one of the highest priorities of our GPR.

Programme

Morning session: Concepts, ontogenetic and phylogenetic evidences of higher-order cognition

9h00 – Welcome coffee

9h30-10h05 – Dominic Dwyer (PI; Univ Cardiff, UK)
“Stimulus substitution and multiple response measures: A cautionary tale for studies of higher-order learning”

10h05-10h40 – Aurore Avargues-Weber (PI; Univ Toulouse, France)
“Number bias and symbolic representation in honeybees”

10h40-11h15 – Eva Ducourneau (NutriNeuro, Bordeaux, France)
“Higher-order conditioning in newborn rabbits: behavioural characteristics and neuromodulatory systems”

11h15-11h50 – Charlotte Bonardi (PI; Univ Nottingham,UK)
“A behavioural theory of recognition memory: Implications for Neuroscience”

11h50-12h25 – Marine Mondino (PI; CRNL, France)
“Brain correlates of distinguishing imagination from reality: evidence from non-invasive brain stimulation studies in humans”

Afternoon session: Neurobiological basis of higher-order conditioning

14h00 – Afternoon coffee

14h30-15h05 – Marta Barrera-Conde (Neurocentre Magendie, Bordeaux, France)
“Cannabinoid modulation of incidental associations engrams across sensory modalities”

15h05-15h40 – Irene Garcia Manzanares (IMIM Barcelona, Spain)
“Disentangling the link between cannabis and psychosis: from mediated learning to reality testing”

15h40-16h15 – Nathan Holmes (PI; UNSW Sydney, Australia)
“Mediated associations and their implications for theories of information processing”

16h15-16h50 – Joshua Johansen (PI; UC Irvine, USA)
“Prefrontal encoding of an internal model for emotional inference »

Scientific committee

• Guillaume Ferreira (NutriNeuro)
• Giovanni Marsicano (Neurocentre Magendie)
• Etienne Coutureau (INCIA)
• Mélie Talaron (INCIA)

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With the financial support of Bordeaux Neurocampus