Yseult Héjja-Brichard

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• PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience
• PostDoc Position at University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna

The sensory drive hypothesis of animal signal evolution describes how animal communication signals and preferences evolve as adaptations to local environments. While classical approaches to testing this hypothesis often focus on preference for one aspect of a signal, deep learning techniques like generative models can create and manipulate stimuli...

Since its inception, the concept of neurodiversity has been defined in a number of different ways, which can cause confusion among those hoping to educate themselves about the topic. Learning about neurodiversity can also be challenging because there is a lack of well-curated, appropriately contextualized information on the topic. To address such b...

A preference for mating with conspecifics over heterospecifics is fundamental to the maintenance of species diversity in sexually reproducing organisms. This type of positive assortative preference results in sexual isolation, and a reduction in gene flow between species due to differences in mate choice. The proximate and ultimate causes of sexual...

Since its inception, the concept of neurodiversity has been variably defined and widely discussed, which may cause confusion among those unfamiliar with the topic. Further, learning about neurodiversity is challenging given the lack of well-curated, appropriately contextualized information and the prevalence of misinformation on the topic. To addre...

Natural and sexual selection can be in conflict in driving the evolution of sexual ornamentation. Sexual selection favours detectability to potential mates, whereas natural selection penalises detectability to avoid predators. Focusing on signal efficiency rather than detectability, however, suggests that natural and sexual selection need not be an...

A preference for mating with conspecifics over heterospecifics is fundamental to the maintenance of species diversity in sexually reproducing organisms. This type of positive assortative mating results in sexual isolation, a reduction in gene flow between species due to differences in mate choice. Sexual isolation is often stronger between closely...

The sensory drive hypothesis of animal signal evolution describes how animal communication signals and preferences evolve as adaptations to local environments. While classical approaches to testing this hypothesis often focus on preference for one aspect of a signal, deep learning techniques like generative models can create and manipulate stimuli...

Short-term memory is implicated in a range of cognitive abilities and is critical for understanding primate cognitive evolution. To investigate the effects of phylogeny, ecology and sociality on short-term memory, we tested the largest and most diverse primate sample to date (421 non-human primates across 41 species) in an experimental delayed-resp...

Studies investigating mate preference in Darters (Percidea: Etheostoma) usually find that species demonstrate a varying degree of preference for conspecifics over heterospecifics. To better understand what drives such trends, we conducted a meta-analysis of 12 published papers and three unpublished datasets from the Mendelson lab, representing 20 d...

Good Scientific Practice (GSP) refers to both explicit and implicit rules, recommendations, and guidelines that help scientists to produce work that is of the highest quality at any given time, and to efficiently share that work with the community for further scrutiny or utilization. For experimental research using magneto- and electroencephalograp...

Symmetry is a highly salient feature of the natural world that is perceived by many species. In humans, the cerebral areas processing symmetry are now well identified from neuroimaging measurements. Macaque could constitute a good animal model to explore the underlying neural mechanisms, but a previous comparative study concluded that functional ma...

Good Scientific Practice (GSP) refers to both explicit and implicit rules or guidelines that help scientists to produce work that is of the highest quality at any given time, and to efficiently share that work with the community for further scrutiny or utilization. For experimental research using magneto- and electroencephalography (MEEG), GSP inc...

Symmetry is a highly salient feature of the natural world that is perceived by many species of the animal kingdom and that impacts a large array of behaviours such as partner selection or food choice. In humans, the cerebral areas processing symmetry are now well identified from neuroimaging measurements. However, we currently lack an animal model...

The statistics of our environment impact not only our behavior, but also the selectivity and connectivity of the early sensory cortices. Over the last fifty years, powerful theories such as efficient coding, sparse coding, and the infomax principle have been proposed to explain the nature of this influence. Numerous computational and theoretical st...

We investigated the visuotopic organization of macaque posterior parietal cortex (PPC) by combining functional imaging (fMRI) and wide-field retinotopic mapping in two macaque monkeys. Whole brain blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) signal was recorded while monkeys maintained central fixation during the presentation of large rotating wedges and ex...

In humans, the posterior cingulate cortex contains an area sensitive to visual cues to self-motion. This cingulate sulcus visual area (CSv) is structurally and functionally connected with several (multi)sensory and (pre)motor areas recruited during locomotion. In nonhuman primates, electrophysiology has shown that the cingulate cortex is also relat...

The cortical areas that process disparity-defined motion-in-depth (i.e., cyclopean stereomotion [CSM]) were characterized with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in two awake, behaving macaques. The experimental protocol was similar to previous human neuroimaging studies. We contrasted the responses to dynamic random-dot patterns that con...

The primate visual system strongly relies on the small differences between the two retinal projections to perceive depth. However, it is not fully understood how those binocular disparities are computed and integrated by the nervous system. On the one hand, single-unit recordings in macaque give access to neuronal encoding of disparity at a very lo...

The cortical network that processes disparity-defined motion-in-depth (i.e. cyclopean stereomotion) was characterised with functional magnetic resonance imaging in two awake, behaving macaques. The experimental protocol was similar to previous human neuroimaging studies. We contrasted the responses to dynamic random-dot patterns that continuously c...

We conducted a functional imaging study in two macaque monkeys to characterize the cortical responses to motion in depth defined from changing disparity over time. We found that an extended network including the superior temporal sulcus but also the parietal cortex responded specifically to stereomotion.

The cortical network that processes visual cues to self-motion was characterized with functional magnetic resonance imaging in 3 awake behaving macaques. The experimental protocol was similar to previous human studies in which the responses to a single large optic flow patch were contrasted with responses to an array of 9 similar flow patches. This...

Stereoscopic vision has emerged in various species of the animal kingdom notably in primate where it supports very fine motor skills, based on the extraction of the 3D properties (positions, orientations in depth...) of the surrounding space. A recent study suggested that stereopsis is adaptive to natural environment. From a meta-analysis of single...