Jade Seguin

Current Position

I am a first-year PhD student under the supervision of Mathias Pessiglione (ICM -MBB), affiliated with the Ecole Doctorale Cerveau Cognition Comportement.

Project
Motivation is an essential factor in performing cognitive tasks, however, to  date it is evaluated in the clinic by questionnaires which do not give any insight into the underlying mechanisms and rely solely upon the patients' introspective abilities. As an alternative, the computational approach proposes to analyze behavior in objective motor tasks and Pessiglione et al. have developed a theoretical framework, based on decision theory, allowing to objectively characterize the motivation. However, it  remains focused only on the type of motivation induced by extrinsic rewards, e.g, money, points etc. The goal is now to extend this framework to include intrinsic motivation, i.e, when the task to be accomplished has value in itself. The objective of this project is therefore to first validate a new behavioral test assessing the impact of intrinsic motivation on cognitive performance and to develop the corresponding computational model. These tools will then allow us to 1) identify the underlying brain mechanisms using functional MRI for spatial localization and intracerebral EEG for temporal dynamics, 2) establish links between parameters and clinical dimensions (such as apathy and fatigue) in the general population, through repeated online testing, 3) establish causal links between neuronal damage and computational parameters, and test the predictive value of the parameters on the clinical course, both in a population of patients operated on for a brain tumor and a population with mood disorders.

Background

I am a Normalienne Student at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) Ulm where I completed my Bachelor’s degree in Biology and the Master’s 1 IMALIS in cellular neuroscience. During this period, I conducted a 6 month FMRI study of the neural circuits altered by fear renewal in people with PTSD, in Boston at the Harvard Medical School / Massachusetts General Hospital, under the supervision of Edward Pace-Schott. I then completed the Dual Master in Brain and Mind Sciences (a selective 2-year program): the first year I obtained a Master of Science (MSc) from the Queen Square Institute of Neurology at the University College London (UCL). I completed a 6-month internship there with Steve Kennerley where I investigated the Communication Through Coherence theory (CTC) on a reward-guided decision-making task. Finally, the second year I did my Master’s 2 between the Cogmaster (ENS Ulm) and the Bip Master (Sorbonne) and conducted a 6-month internship with Mathias Pessiglione at the Brain Institute (ICM), working on the basis of my thesis. 

You can reach to me at : jade.seguin@ens.fr