Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
The human Parietal Lobe (PARIETALACTION)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: The Human Mind and its complexity
Countries involved: Italy
Call:  (ERC-2012-ADG_20120411, 2012)
Start date: 2013-04-01
End date: 2018-12-31
Duration (months): 69.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2475000.0
EU funding (EUR): 2475000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

We will use univariate and multivariate functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) techniques, surface and stereo EEG, and in depth single cell recording to investigate the role of human parietal lobe in the monocular or stereoscopic observation of actions performed by conspecifics either using their biological effectors or artificial implements (tools, spears, bicycle, microphone, etc). The fMRI techniques will provide evidence for segregated processing of different types of observed actions within the parietal cortex. The EEG techniques will provide the time course of the electric activity in the parietal regions in comparison to the events and dynamic changes in the video and the time course in other parts of the action observation network. The stereo EEG also provides a more precise localization than fMRI, serving as an important confirmation of the fMRI results. The single cell recordings are crucial to demonstrate the selectivity of the neuronal processes for actions observed, their postural or kinematic parameters or localization in the visual field. This selectivity is crucial to show the presence of mirror neurons for the different types of actions and the use of tools, to document the contribution of the parietal neurons to discrimination between actions, and to assess the benefits of stereoscopic viewing. This project should yield a comprehensive view of the role of parietal lobe in action planning and understanding, including using artificial implements, and pave the way for understanding how higher-order parietal cognitive processes are rooted in the simpler action planning and understanding capacities.

Keywords: vision,action observation,fmri,single cell recordings,mirror neurons,grasping,walking,climbing,reaching,tool use,strereopsis
Memory Mechanisms in Man and Machine (M4)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: The Human Mind and its complexity
Countries involved: France
Call:  (ERC-2012-ADG_20120411, 2012)
Start date: 2013-05-01
End date: 2019-04-30
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2499480.0
EU funding (EUR): 2499480.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The project aims to validate a set of 10 provocative claims. 1) Humans can recognize visual and auditory stimuli that they have not experienced for decades. 2) Recognition is possible without ever reactivating the memory trace in the intervening period. 3) During memorization, sensory memory strength increases roughly linearly with the number of exposures. 4) A few tens of presentations can be enough to form a memory that can last a lifetime. 5) Attention-related oscillatory brain activity helps store memories efficiently. 6) Storing such very long-term memories involves the creation of highly selective "Grandmother Cells" that only fire if the original training stimulus is experienced again. 7) The neocortex contains large numbers of totally silent cells ("Neocortical Dark Matter") that constitute the long-term memory store. 8) Grandmother Cells can be produced using simple spiking neural network models including Spike-Time Dependent Plasticity (STDP) and competitive inhibitory lateral connections. 9) This selectivity only requires binary synaptic weights that are either "on" or "off", greatly simplifying the problem of maintaining the memory over long periods. 10) Artificial systems using memristor-like devices can implement the same principles, allowing the development of powerful new processing architectures that could replace conventional computing hardware. We will test these claims with a highly interdisciplinary approach involving psychology, neuroscience, computational modeling and hardware development. Novel experimental paradigms will study the formation and maintenance of very long term sensory memories. They will be combined with imaging techniques including fMRI imaging, EEG recording, and intracerebral recording from epileptic patients. In parallel, computer simulations using networks of spiking neurons with Spike-Time Dependent Plasticity will model the experimental results, and develop bio-inspired hardware that mimics the brains memory systems.

Keywords: neural coding,long-term memory,neocortical dark matter,grandmother cells,fmri,eeg
Comparative Pathways to Agriculture: the archaeobotany of parallel and divergent plant domestications across world regions (COMPAG)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: The study of the human past
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (ERC-2012-ADG_20120411, 2012)
Start date: 2013-06-01
End date: 2018-05-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2041992.0
EU funding (EUR): 2041992.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The ComPAg research program will produce the first global comparative synthesis of the convergent evolution of domesticated plants and early agricultural systems based primarily on empirical archaeobotanical data. We will produce ground-breaking data on the earliest crop packages across large parts of Eurasia and Africa, comparisons of the nature of early cultivation inferred from associated weed floras, quantified time series data on evolution of domestication traits for over 30 crops, including both primary and secondary domestications. This program will pursue primary archaeobotanical research in East and Southeast Asia, India, and parts of Africa, with synthesis of existing evidence from Southwest Asia and Europe. We aim to achieve a new framework for explaining the multiple routes from foraging to agriculture on a global scale. The origins of agriculture is widely regarded as the most significant ecological and economic change in the history of human populations, constituting the basis of a fundamental demographic transition towards higher and denser human populations. Plant cultivation is common to all instances of food production that supported sedentism, and thus the origins of crop agriculture is a core issue of socioeconomic evolution in long-term human history. This program will pursue cutting edge research to produce a new critical understanding of early agricultural transformations.

Keywords: domestication,archaeobotany,neolithic
Cheap, textile based whole body sensor sensing system for interaction, physiological monitoring and activity recognition (SIMPLESKIN)

Framework: FP7 — Cooperation
Programme: Information and Communication Technologies
Destination: Future and Emerging Technologies
Action type: Collaborative project
Countries involved: Germany,Germany,Germany,Netherlands,Switzerland,Germany,Sweden
Call:  (FP7-ICT-2013-C, 2013)
Start date: 2013-07-01
End date: 2016-06-30
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2722087.0
EU funding (EUR): 1996028.0
Participants: 8
Project status: CLOSED

We propose a fundamentally new approach for creating smart textiles and functional garments. The basic idea is to separate sensing textile production, garment manufacturing, the hardware platform, and the software implementation by well-defined abstractions and interfaces. A major innovation is the development of a mass-producible generic sensing fabric, which will allow capacitive, resistive or inductive modes, to measure movement, electrical body signals, activities, and change in body capacity. The sensor density and intelligent signal processing will compensate the simplicity of single sensors. Based on these fabrics “sensing ready” garments can be produced, that are with respect to their properties, looks, production process and price virtually undistinguishable from today’s standard garments. We expect that in the long term this will lead to functional clothes becoming the default, much like today smart, sensor-enabled phones have become the mainstream. The “sensor ready” garments become part of a wearable computing system, by adding hardware, that allows self-organizing, dynamic and adaptive processing of input signals converting the specific garment into a general wearable sensor with a dedicated high-level sensing interface. By these means we create an abstraction layer and platform on which application developers can create wearable sensing application, than are independent of the actual hardware they run on. For example, this will allow an application developer to create a sports monitoring application, that includes body posture, movement, and heard rate, which can be deployed to any available “sensing ready” shirt. This will empower a larger number of potential developers to contribute their creativity. The approach taken in SimpleSkin has great potential to build up the foundation for a new era in smart clothing. It aims at moving personal wearable monitoring from a niche topic into major industry with the potential of revolutionizing what we wear.

Keywords: smart textiles,activity recognition,hci,lifestyle monitoring,mobile systems
Personal Perception (PEPE)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: The Human Mind and its complexity
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (ERC-2012-ADG_20120411, 2012)
Start date: 2013-04-01
End date: 2017-01-31
Duration (months): 46.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1105449.24
EU funding (EUR): 1105449.24
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The project aims to open-up a new research field concerned with how human visual perception operates in a social context, and involves an innovative link between cognitive and social psychology. In particular, the project assesses how personal social interests permeate the functional and neural processes supporting human visual perception. The proposal is built around emerging findings from my laboratory showing that it is possible to experimentally ‘tag’ stimuli with personal-related (e.g., self-linked) associations, which enhance subsequent stimulus processing. The tagged stimuli can then be used to probe specific functional stages and brain mechanisms mediating visual perception, taking us beyond the view of perception as a purely bottom-up module to a new view of perception as tuned to personal self-interest. The project will provide a coherent programme of research using inter-disciplinary and state-of-the-art methods to assess (i) which functional processes in perception are affected by self-related biases, (ii) whether the effects occur automatically and even prior to the engagement of visual attention; (iii) the neural substrates of these effects (the neural localization, connectivity and necessary role of different brain regions); (iv) how self-prioritization is modulated by culture, (v) the developmental trajectory of self-prioritization in perception (when does self-prioritized perception occur in children? are the critical factors the same as in adults? does self-prioritization in perception increase in older adults?) and (vi) what factors determine the effects (what are the causal drivers of self-prioritized perception? reward? shared values? empathy?). By marrying together research from perceptual and social psychology, the project will offer a new over-arching framework for conceptualising human perception in a social context, enabling us to understand for the first time how social salience can modulate the perceptual salience of stimuli.

Keywords: self prioritization perceptual and social salience social cognitive neuroscience
Phonon-Assisted Processes for Energy Transfer and Sensing (PAPETS)

Framework: FP7 — Cooperation
Programme: Information and Communication Technologies
Destination: Future and Emerging Technologies
Action type: Collaborative project
Countries involved: Portugal,Germany,Netherlands,Italy,Greece,France,United Kingdom
Call:  (FP7-ICT-2013-C, 2013)
Start date: 2013-09-01
End date: 2016-11-30
Duration (months): 39.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2503347.0
EU funding (EUR): 1834424.0
Participants: 7
Project status: CLOSED

There is mounting experimental and theoretical evidence that suggests that coherent electronic and vibrational dynamics are essential to understand physiological processes. This project addresses this newly emerging frontier between biology and quantum physics by aiming to determine the role of coherent vibrational dynamics in the efficiency of energy storage in natural and artificial light harvesting systems, as well as in odour recognition. Although these are at first sight two very different biological processes, in both cases their effectiveness is now believed to rely on phonon-assisted mechanisms. In fact, more generally, it is becoming increasingly clear that vibrational dynamics plays a key role in establishing the fundamental connection between structure and function of protein complexes. In this project we not only plan to experimentally demonstrate the crucial role of the phonon-assisted dynamics in facilitating efficient energy transfer in chromophoric complexes and odour recognition, but also to develop a general theoretical framework to describe and understand the role coherent vibrations play in the dynamics of biomolecular systems, as well as to develop methods to identify the presence and properties of such vibrations. Furthermore, we aim at controlling the vibrational dynamics for the development of efficient artificial light harvesting systems. To attain these goals we develop a truly multidisciplinary and original approach. The project will be developed in close collaboration between theorists and experimentalists, and is expected to yield an understanding of photosynthesis and olfaction at the most fundamental level, thus contributing in a unique way to such important challenges as the development of more efficient light harvesting technologies or artificial odour sensors. Furthermore, the understanding and control of environment-assisted coherent dynamics could potentially lead to new forms of robust quantum information processing in the future

Keywords: open quantum systems,quantum biology,phonon-assisted processes,photosynthesis,olfaction,quantum information.
Reassessing Ageing from a Population Perspective (RE-AGEING)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Environment and society
Countries involved: Austria
Call:  (ERC-2012-ADG_20120411, 2012)
Start date: 2013-04-01
End date: 2019-03-31
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2249996.24
EU funding (EUR): 2249996.24
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Life expectancies in the EU have increased significantly over the past decades and are expected to continue increasing. Age-specific health statuses have also generally been improving. In contrast to these profound changes, the concepts that demographers have used to analyze ageing on a population level have remained largely static. The substantial changes in life expectancy and health status have rendered these traditional demographic measures inadequate for the analysis of ageing at the population level in the 21st century. A better understanding of age and ageing, for both science and policy, requires new approaches. This project will comprehensively reassess population ageing based on innovative alternative definitions of age and ageing as pioneered by the PI. The project will develop new approaches to the study of age and ageing that are appropriate for 21st century conditions. It will produce new scientific knowledge that is useful in policy formulation and that can educate the public about population ageing and its consequences. Among other things, the proposed project will ascertain the extent to which advanced societies are actually ageing in multiple dimensions, including health, cognitive abilities, and longevity. By addressing such fundamental issues this project will likely have a pronounced impact on future population ageing research. The new tools and measures developed in the project will facilitate evaluation of the impacts of future changes in public policies, such as increases in statutory pension ages. Applications will be primarily to the EU, but also selected countries experiencing rapid population ageing will be included. The results will be of utmost socioeconomic and political importance for the necessary future restructuring of European pension and health systems in the context of maintaining Europe’s global competitiveness.

Keywords: ageing,age inflation,prospective age,life expectancy,disability,pension age
The macroeconomic effects of microeconomic inaction (MEF)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Individuals, institutions and markets
Countries involved: Italy
Call:  (ERC-2012-ADG_20120411, 2012)
Start date: 2013-06-01
End date: 2018-05-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1946788.0
EU funding (EUR): 1946788.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

A large part of macroeconomics embeds some form of inertial behavior by firms and/or house- holds. Whether it is in price or wage setting, real or financial investment choices, saving or consumption decisions, some element of stickiness leading to inaction ranges in individuals’ choices (in prices, consumption, investment) is often included to reconcile the model with observed individual data. Yet the specific assumptions to model this inertia mostly reflect tractability concerns, while less attention is paid to consistency with observations at the micro level. This issue is important for macroeconomics because different frictions, generating the same individual stickiness, imply different size and persistence in the response of the aggregate economy to macro shocks. Depending on modeling assumptions, the aggregate effects of stickiness range from being negligible to being substantial. We will propose methods so that the frictions will be structurally identified, and their consequences analytically explored. This project has two broad goals. The first one is to construct tractable macroeconomic models, based on individual behavior, that will yield substantial improvements in matching the patterns on the infrequent and heterogeneous adjustment recently documented in the micro data. In our structural models the micro evidence will serve as an identification device for the proper modeling of the frictions faced by the agents. The second goal is to produce analytical tools to study the transmission of aggregate shocks (in money, interest rates, productivity, asset prices) in economies characterized by adjustment costs and cross-section heterogeneity. In particular, we will develop useful analytical methods to approximate the steady state behavior of an economy with stickiness, and to characterize the economy’s response to aggregate shocks.

Keywords: adjustment costs,heterogeneous agents,propagation of shocks
Predictive Position Coding (POSITION)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: The Human Mind and its complexity
Countries involved: France
Call:  (ERC-2012-ADG_20120411, 2012)
Start date: 2013-10-01
End date: 2017-09-30
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1988160.0
EU funding (EUR): 1988160.0
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

Vision gives us enormous adaptive advantage because it allows us to see and react to events before they reach us. This predictive advantage is most obvious for an object in motion where the current trajectory predicts future location. It is equally important when the object’s motion results from the movement of our own eyes. Here our visual system uses knowledge about the upcoming motion of the eyes to predict the future location of the object. In this proposal, we will analyze both instances as two sides of a common predictive process that operates on the maps that control eye movements and spatial attention. We propose that this predictive positioning is involved not only in the guidance of eye movements and the deployment of attention to expected target locations but also for the location at which the target is perceived, including when a target is seen at a predicted location even though it is never there. This framework of a “master map” of target locations for perception as well as overt and covert orienting is a radical departure from the standard “labeled-line” model in which active neurons throughout the visual system specify the position of a target by virtue of their receptive field locations. The predictive shifts of location for moving stimuli and moving eyes, often deviating far from the retinal input, provide a powerful means for evaluating this proposal on many fronts. We will test these predictions with behavioral, fMRI and TMS techniques in healthy and neurological patients, and neurophysiological techniques in non-human primates. According to our working hypothesis, predictive position coding is a core function of the eye movement control system and its companion spatial attention system. The results of the proposed experiments will have the potential to show that it is the properties of action that determine the perception of position, reversing the common assumption that perception guides action.

Keywords: attention,visual attention,eye movements