Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : MidFrontalTheta2.0 (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : Radboud University Nijmegen — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

While reading this text, pat your head and rub your stomach (if someone sees you, tell them it's OK; you're doing science). Right now you are engaging in an action that must be actively monitored and quickly adjusted to avoid making mistakes. Over the past five years, my collaborators and I discovered that there is a specific pattern of brain electrical activity that occurs during response conflict—competition between multiple conflicting actions when a mistake could be made. This brain activity is observed over the midfrontal cortex (MFC) and is characterized by oscillations at around 6 cycles per second (the theta band). MFC theta is a highly statistically robust marker of the neural networks involved in action monitoring and behavior adjustments, correlates with single-trial reaction time, and predicts how well people learn from mistakes. Despite these robust findings linking MFC theta to action monitoring, the significance of MFC theta for how neural microcircuits actually implement action monitoring and adjustments is unknown. In the ERC research we will use computer simulations and rodent models to understand how different types of neurons in different cortical layers might use action potentials and oscillations to implement action monitoring. The results will help us understand how the brain monitors behavior and avoids mistakes, and will also give insight into neural microcircuit organization as it relates to higher cognitive function. While developing these computer simulations and rodent models, we will also take our human research to the next level by asking: If action monitoring in the MFC is supported by theta oscillations, does this mean that our actions, and our ability to monitor and adjust them, occur with theta rhythmicity? To answer this question, we will develop new tasks combining data-gloves and EEG to test how the timing of human sequenced actions during keyboard typing (typists type in “theta”) corresponds to temporal dynamics of MFC theta.

Mots-clés : cognitive control,oscillations,theta band,action monitoring,microcircuits,neurophysiology,modeling
Projet ERC : SIBMOB (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Social World and Its Diversity
Entité participante : University of Copenhagen — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UCPH
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1478601.0 €

While sociologists studying how social class positions are passed on from parents to children emphasize the family as the basic theoretical unit of intergenerational transmission processes, the comparative literature on social class mobility has paid no attention to how and why siblings from the same family end up in the same or in different classes. Indeed, all existing class mobility studies examine the mobility of individuals, thereby neglecting the key question of how societal differences in class mobility patterns result from social processes operating at the level of families. SIBMOB will fill this puzzling gap in the class mobility literature by developing a comprehensive approach to and conducting a large-scale comparative study of the class mobility of siblings. The project argues that insofar as we want to understand how class mobility is generated and why societies differ in their class mobility patterns, the total pattern of class mobility in a society needs to be viewed as a sum of different types of families with distinct class mobility patterns. SIBMOB offers a novel statistical approach to analyzing these family types, including describing how and explaining why they differ both within and between countries. The project hypothesizes that cross-national and temporal variation in class mobility results from institutional and sociodemographic factors affecting families’ overall mobility opportunities in a given society. In a comparative study, the project will apply its novel approach to data on siblings born during the 20th century in 10 countries to test this and related hypotheses about why countries, or different birth cohorts within countries, differ in their overall class mobility patterns. Key outcomes of SIBMOB will be a deeper understanding of families’ role in mobility processes, a comprehensive statistical methodology with wide applicability, and new comparative evidence on class mobility that is much richer than the existing evidence.

Mots-clés : siblings,comparative research,quantitative methods
Projet ERC : DEBUNKER (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : University of Exeter — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1931730.0 €

While some people may simply lack relevant factual knowledge, others may actively hold incorrect beliefs. These factual beliefs that are not supported by clear evidence and expert opinion are what scholars call misperceptions (Nyhan and Reifler 2010). This project is principally about misperceptions—the “facts” that people believe that simply are not true. What misperceptions do Europeans hold on issues like immigration, vaccines, and climate change? Who holds these misperceptions? What demographic and attitudinal variables are correlated with holding misperceptions? And ultimately, what can be done to help reduce misperceptions? Misperceptions are an important topic for study because they distort public preferences and outcomes. This research program investigating misperceptions is currently at the state of the art in political science. To date, only a handful of published studies by political scientists have examined how corrective information changes underlying factual beliefs. The results of these studies are uniformly troubling—among those vulnerable to holding a given misperception, corrective efforts often make misperceptions worse or decrease the likelihood to engage in desired behaviors. This ambitious project has three primary objectives. First, the project will assess levels of misperceptions in Europe on three specific issues (immigration, vaccines, and climate change) that represent three different substantive domains of knowledge (politics, health, and science). Second, the project will examine a variety of approaches and techniques for combatting misperceptions and generating effective corrections. Third, the project will take what is learned from the first two stages and transmit the findings back to relevant academic and policy-maker audiences in order to aid policy design and communication efforts on important policy issues.

Mots-clés : knowledge,misperceptions,public opinion
Projet ERC : ALLOCHRONY (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Cellular, Developmental and Regenerative Biology
Entité participante : European Molecular Biology Laboratory — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : EMBL
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 944047.0 €

While the mechanisms of embryonic development are well conserved, the progression speed differs among animal species. The molecular cause of ‘allochrony’, interspecies differences in developmental tempo, remains unclear due to lack of an appropriate experimental model. In vitro differentiation of pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) offers unique opportunities to compare the same cell type among diverse species in a similar condition. We have previously recapitulated the oscillatory gene expression of the segmentation clock with PSCs, demonstrating ~2 hour and ~5 hour oscillation periods in murine and human induced presomitic mesoderm (PSM) cells, respectively. We have further found that the period difference stems from differential biochemical reaction speeds of HES7, a core segmentation clock gene, between the species: human PSM cells show slower degradation rates of HES7 and longer delays in its production processes than mouse cells. Here we aim to investigate the deeper origin of developmental allochrony, the molecular mechanism by which human cells exhibit slower biochemical reactions. We will systematically and quantitatively measure the degradation rates and delays to reveal commonalities of the genes that show differential reaction speeds between murine and human cells (Aim 1). In parallel, we will test two working hypotheses that nuclear/cytoplasmic transport rates or metabolic rates might be lower in human cells, which should lead to slower biochemical reactions (Aim 2). The other objective is to test the universality of the mechanism of allochrony. We will create gastruloids, organoids mimicking early embryogenesis, from PSCs of diverse mammalian species to investigate what cell types, in addition to PSM cells, and what species exhibit the differential biochemical reaction speeds (Aim 3). This study will tackle a fundamental question in biology by using quantitative, cutting-edge technologies, ultimately enabling manipulation of developmental time.

Mots-clés : interspecies difference,developmental tempo
Projet ERC : RoboExNovo (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer science and informatics
Entité participante : Italian Institute of Technology — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1084873.0 €

While today’s robots are able to perform sophisticated tasks, they can only act on objects they have been trained to recognize. This is a severe limitation: any robot will inevitably face novel situations in unconstrained settings, and thus will always have knowledge gaps. This calls for robots able to learn continuously about objects by themselves. The learning paradigm of state-of-the-art robots is the sensorimotor toil, i.e. the process of acquiring knowledge by generalization over observed stimuli. This is in line with cognitive theories that claim that cognition is embodied and situated, so that all knowledge acquired by a robot is specific to its sensorimotor capabilities and to the situation in which it has been acquired. Still, humans are also capable of learning from externalized sources – like books, illustrations, etc – containing knowledge that is necessarily unembodied and unsituated. To overcome this gap, RoboExNovo proposes a paradigm shift. I will develop a new generation of robots able to acquire perceptual and semantic knowledge about object from externalized, unembodied resources, to be used in situated settings. As the largest existing body of externalized knowledge, I will consider the Web as the source from which to learn from. To achieve this, I propose to build a translation framework between the representations used by robots in their situated experience and those used on the Web, based on relational structures establishing links between related percepts and between percepts and the semantics they support. My leading expertise in machine learning applied to multi modal data and robot vision puts me in a strong position to realize this project. By enabling robots to use knowledge resources on the Web that were not explicitly designed to be accessed for this purpose, RoboExNovo will pave the way for ground-breaking technological advances in home and service robotics, driver assistant systems, and in general any Web-connected situated device.

Mots-clés : life long learning,autonomous robot systems,visual and multi modal learning
Projet ERC : CRIMETIME (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Social World and Its Diversity
Entité participante : Max Planck Society — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : MPG
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 373750.0 €

Why are some people more likely to commit crime than others? Answers to this question, which is at the heart of criminology, can be grouped into two broad views. On the one hand, dispositional perspectives argue that stable factors within the individual, such as lack of self-control, lie at the roots of criminal conduct. Sociogenic perspectives, on the other hand, put the locus of study outside the individual and point towards factors such as rough neighborhoods, parental unemployment, and deviant peers, as the main causes of crime. In spite of ample empirical support for both views, there has been relatively little constructive engagement with each other. Capitalizing on my multidisciplinary background and drawing on social psychology and evolutionary theory, I outline a new perspective on criminal behavior –Time Frame Theory (TFT)– that integrates both views. TFT is premised on the idea that short-term mindsets encourage crime and specifies how both individual dispositions and sociogenic variables can encourage such mindsets. I test this theory using a combination of longitudinal research and behavioral field experiments. Besides aiming to mend the current theoretical disconnect in criminology and providing the foundation for a common paradigm, the proposed research program goes a step further by using TFT as the basis for a behavioral intervention to reduce crime. Building on recent pilot research, I use virtual reality technology in combination with a smartphone application to instill a future-oriented mindset in offenders. I am convinced that this combination of novel theory and innovative methodology may lead not only to a breakthrough in our understanding of delinquency but can also provide a blueprint for a scalable and evidence-based intervention to reduce it.

Mots-clés : crime,delinquency,future self,self control
Projet ERC : CRIMETIME (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Social World and Its Diversity
Entité participante : University of Twente — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 511566.68 €

Why are some people more likely to commit crime than others? Answers to this question, which is at the heart of criminology, can be grouped into two broad views. On the one hand, dispositional perspectives argue that stable factors within the individual, such as lack of self-control, lie at the roots of criminal conduct. Sociogenic perspectives, on the other hand, put the locus of study outside the individual and point towards factors such as rough neighborhoods, parental unemployment, and deviant peers, as the main causes of crime. In spite of ample empirical support for both views, there has been relatively little constructive engagement with each other. Capitalizing on my multidisciplinary background and drawing on social psychology and evolutionary theory, I outline a new perspective on criminal behavior –Time Frame Theory (TFT)– that integrates both views. TFT is premised on the idea that short-term mindsets encourage crime and specifies how both individual dispositions and sociogenic variables can encourage such mindsets. I test this theory using a combination of longitudinal research and behavioral field experiments. Besides aiming to mend the current theoretical disconnect in criminology and providing the foundation for a common paradigm, the proposed research program goes a step further by using TFT as the basis for a behavioral intervention to reduce crime. Building on recent pilot research, I use virtual reality technology in combination with a smartphone application to instill a future-oriented mindset in offenders. I am convinced that this combination of novel theory and innovative methodology may lead not only to a breakthrough in our understanding of delinquency but can also provide a blueprint for a scalable and evidence-based intervention to reduce it.

Mots-clés : crime,delinquency,future self,self control
Projet ERC : VARIKIN (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Complexity
Entité participante : University of Bristol — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1233672.0 €

Why do human societies differ in whom they class as family? Why are cousins classed with siblings in some societies but not others? Accounting for the variable ways that cultures classify kin is an enduring puzzle. The VARIKIN project takes a cultural evolutionary approach to variety and unity and engages different fields–cultural phylogenetics, corpus linguistics, and cross-cultural child development. VARIKIN-Evolution asks how and why does kinship diversity evolve across cultures and over time? Using comparative phylogenetic modeling of cultural evolution we investigate the dynamics of how kinship terminologies and family norms change in eight language families. Are there “universal” patterns of change, or does local cultural history and context determine changes in family organisation? How do social norms drive change in kinship terminology? VARIKIN-Usage investigates how people use kinship language by using corpus linguistics, surveys, and interviews to quantify patterns of usage in spoken and written language. How frequently are kinship terms used in different contexts and what meanings are more prevalent? Do patterns vary between languages, and can the patterns of usage at the individual level be linked to historical processes of change? VARIKIN-Development investigates how children acquire and understand kinship across cultures. Using participant observation and elicitation tasks, we characterise children’s social learning of kinship in a small-scale, non-Western community. Are there cross-cultural patterns of acquisition? Can socialisation produce constraints on the kinds of kinship children can learn? These three research directions are united by a coherent framework for the integration of macro- and micro-evolutionary processes. With a highly multidisciplinary background, the Applicant is uniquely positioned to direct this vanguard project towards a comprehensive understanding of diversity in how we classify our social worlds.

Mots-clés : evolutionary anthropology,cultural evolution,kinship,social cognition,phylogenetics
Projet ERC : TEA (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Individuals, Markets and Organisations
Entité participante : Bilkent University — Pays : Turquie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1276640.0 €

Why is there a Volcker disinflation but no Bernanke re-inflation? It is not only because of the zero lower bound as a nascent literature is suggesting that monetary policy is more potent in a contractionary stance than in an expansionary stance away from the ZLB as well. But why? Why is it that central banks cut interest rates much faster than they raise them? Why does it seem like financial markets give much different responses to seemingly similar macroeconomic news at different times? Are these all related? This research project is about asymmetries in macroeconomics and finance. I will be working on these questions because our current understanding of these issues hints at some facets of asymmetries but is a long way from providing broad evidence and matching theories. I find these questions thoroughly interesting because the theory and empirical evidence we now have lets us ask the questions and understand their research and policy relevance but not yet satisfactorily answer them. Most of our macroeconomic models are linearized and linear models (with exceptions that effectively make the model piece-wise linear) do not generate asymmetric anything. But the issue is not in the solution method: nonlinear solutions of standard models also do not produce asymmetric responses in noticeable ways. Hence, although by experience we understand there are likely sizable asymmetries in macroeconomic and financial outcomes, we have neither extensively documented these nor understood what brings them about. This research program, then, will consist of five distinct but related questions: 1. Are there asymmetries due to the state of the business cycle and the nature of the shock? 2. Do financial markets behave as if market participants perceive the world to be asymmetric? 3. Do policymakers behave asymmetrically and if so why? 4. To the extent that there are asymmetries, what brings them about? 5. What kinds of policies should we be thinking of in a world with asymmetries?

Mots-clés : business cycle asymmetry,monetary policy,financial markets
Projet ERC : APOLLO (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and communication engineering
Entité participante : University of Cyprus — Pays : Chypre — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UCY
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1930625.0 €

Wireless power transfer (WPT), pioneered by Tesla, is an idea at least as old as radio communications. However, on the one hand, due to health concerns and the large antenna dimensions required for transmission of high energy levels, until recently WPT has been limited mostly to very short distance applications. On the other hand, recent advances in silicon technology have significantly reduced the energy needs of electronic systems, making WPT over radio waves a potential source of energy for low power devices. Although WPT through radio waves has already found various short-range applications (such as the radio-frequency identification technology, healthcare monitoring etc.), its integration as a building block in the operation of wireless communications systems is still unexploited. On the other hand, conventional radio wave based information and energy transmissions have largely been designed separately. However, many applications can benefit from simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT). The overall objective of the APOLLO project is to study the integration of WPT/SWIPT technology into future wireless communication systems. Compared to past and current research efforts in this area, our technical approach is deeply interdisciplinary and more comprehensive, combining the expertise of wireless communications, control theory, information theory, optimization, and electronics/microwave engineering. The key outcomes of the project include: 1) a rigorous and complete mathematical theory for WPT/SWIPT via information/communication/control theoretic studies; 2) new physical and cross-layer mechanisms that will enable the integration of WPT/SWIPT into future communication systems; 3) new network architectures that will fully exploit potential benefits of WPT/SWIPT; and 4) development of a proof-of-concept by implementing highly-efficient and multi-band metamaterial energy harvesting sensors for SWIPT.

Mots-clés : wireless power transfer,energy harvesting,multiple antenna systems,cellular networks,sensor networks