Integrative Neuroscience and Cognition Center (INCC) https://incc-paris.fr

The INCC brings together research groups that address the question of how the brain generates its integrative functions, i.e., how it creates the mind and behavior. It gathers researchers who work on all three main targets of neuroscientific research: healthy humans (both adults and infants), patients, (with perceptual, motor, cognitive, psychiatric or neurologic impairments) and animal models.

Almost all teams of the INCC are involved in research on how humans perceive, understand and interact with the environment. We investigate perceptual processing and how it interacts with other cognitive functions such as action, attention and decision making. It will also study how the cognitive system takes action decisions, choses appropriate actions and automatizes behaviour. This is complemented by investigating low-level motor functions like multisensory integration, gaze and posture control as well as, not surprisingly, spatial orientation. 

Moreover, we study the acquisition of spoken language and cognitive functions like the representations of space and quantities, as well as the interaction between language and cognition during development, and the development and plasticity of perception-action and cognition in typical and atypical populations.

Several INCC teams study the neural and glial basis of integrative brain functions as well as their cellular and molecular underpinnings, partially with a particular focus on pathological conditions. Here we investigate amongst others the role of astrocytes and SGC signaling in sensory processing, dynamics and information processing in visual cortex, functions and computations of the cerebellum and the basal ganglia. On the pathological side, they study notably Parkinson’s disease, autism, schizophrenia and depression with the goal of unraveling the synaptic and neural processes that are involved in the diseases.