David Hansel (CNPP) has been awarded one of the highly competitive Program Grant Awards 2015 by the Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP). He will share his award with Valery Grinevich (University of Heidelberg), Joseph Buxbaum (Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York) and Shlomo Wagner (University of Haifal).
Their comprehensive multidisciplinary project entitled “Deciphering brain oxytocin circuits controlling social behavior” is aiming to identify, analyze and model functional oxytocin modules activated by various forms of social behavior, from aggression towards intruders to cooperative behavior.
For more information press-release-hfsp
Last year, Judit Gervain (LPP), was awarded a HFSP Young Investigator Grant in collaboration with Maria Neimark Geffen (University of Pennsylvania) for their project “Development of brain mechanisms underlying speech preference in infants: Is speech special?” Combining cognitive neuropsychology and computational and systems neuroscience, they seek to elucidate what sounds are special for the auditory system and why, and how they are processed in the developing brain. The project assesses how neural circuitry is reorganized through experience from a broad sensitivity to a specialization for the native language.