Mathias Pessiglione

Research interests

My research aims at understanding the determinants of human behavior (why we do what we do), in both normal and pathological conditions. To this aim I combine concepts and methods from different scientific fields: neuroscience, psychology, economics and computational modeling. My fundamental objective is to elucidate the brain mechanisms that select actions based on their costs and benefits, and understand how the cost/benefit trade-off may be affected by psychological states such as mood, confidence and fatigue. Clinical application of my work might provide insight into a variety of psychiatric and neurological diseases in which motivation is deficient or uncontrollable.

Selected key publications

Neuro-computational account of how mood fluctuations arise and affect decision making.

Vinckier F, Rigoux L, Oudiette D, Pessiglione M.

Nat Commun. 2018 Apr 26;9(1):1708.

Why not try harder? Computational approach to motivation deficits in neuro-psychiatric diseases.

Pessiglione M, Vinckier F, Bouret S, Daunizeau J, Le Bouc R.

Brain. 2017 Nov 29.

Four core properties of the human brain valuation system demonstrated in intracranial signals

Lopez-Persem A, Julien Bastin, Mathilde Petton, Raphaëlle Abitbol, Katia Lehongre, Claude Adam, Vincent Navarro, Sylvain Rheims, Philippe Kahane, Philippe Domenech, Pessiglione M

Nature Neuroscience. 2020 Apr 13.

Neuro-computational Impact of Physical Training Overload on Economic Decision-Making.

Blain B, Schmidt L, Aubry A, Hausswirth C, Le Meur Y, Pessiglione M.

Curr. Bio. 2019 Oct 7.

Automatic integration of confidence in the brain valuation signal.

Lebreton M, Abitbol R, Daunizeau J, Pessiglione M.

Nat Neurosci. 2015 Aug;18(8):1159-67.