The €40,000 prize is intended to fund research into Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.

Caroline Rouaux and her team have identified an atypical brainwave profile in patients, associated with noradrenaline deficiency. This discovery could pave the way for early diagnosis, and could be a clue to future treatment.

As for Solène, she responded to a call for applications from the Institut pour la Recherche en Santé Publique (IReSP) and the Institut National du Cancer (INCa) for a doctoral grant, which she was awarded. We are therefore delighted to announce that she will be joining us in October to begin her thesis on the role of opiate-sensitive neurons in the control of hedonic mechanisms and food intake.

https://savoirs.unistra.fr/innovation/un-nouveau-pas-dans-la-caracterisation-des-consequences-emotionnelles-du-sevrage-aux-opiaces

10 years after the viral phenomenon of the Ice Bucket Challenge, designed to raise media awareness and funds for the fight against Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig’s disease (known in France as Charcot's disease), the challenge is back in France, on the initiative of Les Invincibles led by Olivier Goy and the Association pour la Recherche sur la SLA (ARSLA). The Défi Givré 2024 is being passed on among well-known media and social network personalities, as well as in the ALS research community.

After Dr Séverine Boillée's team at the Institut du Cerveau in Paris, Dr Caroline Rouaux's team at the Centre de Recherche en Biomédecine in Strasbourg took up the challenge on Thursday June 13, challenging in turn Dr Cédric Raoul's team at the Institut des Neurosciences in Montpellier, as well as influencer Hugo Décrypte and comedian and humorist Nicole Ferroni.

The study investigated three patterns of negative affect due to precipitated naloxone withdrawal:

• Withdrawal following acute morphine treatment
• Withdrawal following constant chronic morphine treatment
• Withdrawal following increasing chronic morphine treatment

The team demonstrated that chronic morphine treatment was necessary to observe a deficit in social interaction and desper-like behaviour. In addition, all three models induced anxiety-like behaviour.

Overall, these models will contribute to the study of the behavioural and neural circuits involved in the various negative affective signs characterising opioid use disorders.

The FG-COALS project - French-German cohort study on factors associated with weight loss in ALS* - led by Luc Dupuis (CRBS - INSERM Unit 1118) and Philippe Couratier (CHU Limoges) has been awarded €1.3M in funding from the Programme Investissements d'avenir (PIA 3).

This project will enable the establishment of a French-German cohort of 2,000 ALS patients.

The aim is to provide a better understanding of the natural history of the disease, the genetic basis of its symptoms and to understand the factors associated with massive weight loss during the course of the disease.

The unit contributes mainly to the genetic aspects of this project and to the study of weight loss factors.

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* French-German cohort study to determine the factors associated with weight loss in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: pathophysiological significance and resulting therapeutic targets

Two squares move towards each other. The participants indicated whether or not they were in contact before they disappeared. When two objects move towards each other, we expect them to meet. However, this is not what the participants in our study reported. A strong illusion of a large gap between the squares occurs when the edges of the squares briefly touch.

We have carried out several experimental studies with healthy volunteers, and the results consistently suggest that the origin of the effects lies in the initial visual processing of the basic features of the squares. The results rule out an explanation in terms of decision bias, attentional effects or masking. We propose an explanation in the context of 'predictive coding'; violations of the extrapolation of the figure-ground contrast have strong perceptual consequences, as if the subject saw his or her prediction (although not consciously) about the figure-ground contrast, rather than the disappearance of the contrast on contact.

This new illusion constitutes a tool for exploring the mechanisms of elementary visual prediction in autism and schizophrenia in our laboratory.