Abstract
After completing his PhD in Montpellier on the molecular determinants of synaptic plasticity in the ventral striatum, David Robbe did his postdoc in Gyorgy Buzsaki's lab where is studied study the relationship between neuronal population dynamics in the hippocampus and spatial memory. David Robbe then led a research team in Barcelona as part of the Ramon-y-Cajal program before joining INMED in 2012.
His current research aims to understand how economic constraints, such as time, effort, and expected rewards, influence both decision-making and movement speed, and how these modulations evolve depending on the animals' internal state and environment. Additionally, he investigates the role of the striatum in these behavioural modulations. To this end, his team develops ethologically inspired behavioural tests (e.g., foraging in freely moving rodents) and combines modeling with neurophysiological techniques (acute/chronic recording of neural ensembles, global/circuit-specific perturbation). His long-term goal is to better understand how motivational factors and neurobiological determinants interact to shape behaviour and how they may dysfunction in certain pathological conditions (depression, Parkinson’s disease, etc.), while avoiding as much as possible reductionism and the "brain a computing device" analogy.
Biography
David Robbe is an INSERM research director and leads the "Cortico-Basal Ganglia Circuits and Behaviour" team at the Institute of Neurobiology of the Mediterranean (INMED, Marseille). After completing his PhD in Montpellier on the molecular determinants of synaptic plasticity in the ventral striatum, David Robbe did his postdoc in Gyorgy Buzsaki's lab where is studied study the relationship between neuronal population dynamics in the hippocampus and spatial memory. David Robbe then led a research team in Barcelona as part of the Ramon-y-Cajal program before joining INMED in 2012.
His current research aims to understand how economic constraints, such as time, effort, and expected rewards, influence both decision-making and movement speed, and how these modulations evolve depending on the animals' internal state and environment. Additionally, he investigates the role of the striatum in these behavioural modulations. To this end, his team develops ethologically inspired behavioural tests (e.g., foraging in freely moving rodents) and combines modeling with neurophysiological techniques (acute/chronic recording of neural ensembles, global/circuit-specific perturbation). His long-term goal is to better understand how motivational factors and neurobiological determinants interact to shape behaviour and how they may dysfunction in certain pathological conditions (depression, Parkinson’s disease, etc.), while avoiding as much as possible reductionism and the "brain a computing device" analogy.