Thelma Landron

Current Position

I am currently starting my PhD under the supervision of Mathias Pessiglione thanks to the support of the Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale.

Project

I am working on the neuronal substrates of decision-making and motivation. The economic decision theory states that agents compute the net value of options, that is the benefit minus the cost of the options, when facing a choice between several of them. Then, agents adapt their behaviour so as to maximise the net value. 

From the neuroeconomic perspective, two theories are competing over whether the value of the benefit and the value of cost is underlain by opposed systems – the benefit-encoding system pushing into action and the cost-encoding one inhibiting it – or by integrated systems – a single system computing the net value.

To address this question and following on the work of previous PhD students, I am trying the disentangle how decision variables (benefit value, cost value, net value, confidence, etc.) are implanted in the brain, through two main projects: iEEG recordings in epileptic or deep-brain-stimulated patients and structural MRI in acute post-stroke patients.

More to come...

Background

I am originally a medical student but my curiosity made me take a still-undefined number of years off the medical track to research.

During the completion of my medical bachelor at the University of Bordeaux, I joined the early research training of the Ecole de l'INSERM Liliane Bettencourt in 2016 that allowed me to do research internships (e.g., in mice-experimental and computational neuroscience labs). After I earned my medical BSc, I completed the Cognitive Neuroscience MSc Programme at the University of Skövde, Sweden, writing a first master thesis on "Electroencephalographic frontal alpha asymmetry and immune markers" under the supervision of Dr Pilleriin Sikka (Consciousness Research Group, University of Turku, Finland). I then joined the Cogmaster at the Ecole Normale Supérieure and wrote a second master thesis entitled "Alterations of decision-making in Gilles de la Tourette patients with co-morbid obsessive-compulsive symptoms" under the supervision of Dr Valentin Wyart (Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognititves et Computationnelles, ENS, Paris, France).

Finally, I am planning to go back to medical school to earn a medical degree, I'd currently see myself in the future as a physician-researcher in psychiatry (or maybe neurology?) but the future will tell!