Alexandre Frédéric

Biography

 He tries to understand the emergence of intelligent behaviors by a calculation distributed from real or artificial neural networks. This research is carried out in the fields of computational neuroscience and cognitive modeling, in close interaction with neurosciences and the medical field. As far as computational neuroscience is concerned, he explores the structures / functions relations in the brain and the links, at different levels of description, between bio-inspired neuronal architectures and principles of functioning and learning. At the level of the neuronal population, he studies appropriate elementary mechanisms of neuronal functioning and learning. In terms of information flows, he develop models of cerebral structures including posterior and frontal cortex, cerebellum, basal ganglia, thalamus, amygdala, hippocampus, with application to the interpretation of perceptual scenes, planning and associated memory aspects. A major challenge is the exchange of information and the transfer of learning between these neural structures. As far as cognitive modeling is concerned, he is interested in adaptive behavior for autonomous robots. His main frameworks of reference are embodied cognition and enaction and his goal is to construct a global model of cognitive architecture in order to study how a set of functions ranging from perceptual analysis and sensorimotor coordination up to, to executive functions and consciousness are constructed by interaction with the internal (emotional) and external (physical) worlds. These studies exploit the aforementioned models of neural systems as well as his other areas of expertise in automatic learning, shape recognition, data processing, image and signal processing and neuro-control. As far as the neurosciences and the medical field are concerned, he work on the Neurocampus of Bordeaux and he has other national and international collaborations to feed the loop of interactions consisting of building models from data and knowledge of these domains and to validate and exploit them by studying neuronal mechanisms and structures.

Research Interest

 Neurology