Biography
I have always been interested in animal cognition and began my scientific activity by working on the neural basis of spatial memory and object recognition in rats. The more my questioning on object recognition caracteristics was complex and the more I adressed the comparative aspect of perception and cognition, the more my research required to use a model closer to human. Therefore, I finally focused my work on the study of non-human primates abilities. I’m now mainly working with baboons (but also with macaques and Great Apes) on the perceptual and cognitive processes in object recognition tasks with two-dimensional stimuli, displayed on computers screen. I have the opportunity to use a very innovant facility at the primatology station of Rousset (close to Marseille). Indeed, our group has developped an automatic learning device for monkeys, unique in its concept and scale. A troup of 30 baboons maintained in a large enclosure (700m2) has a free access to a series of operant conditioning test systems, equiped with touch screens, adjacent to the compound. The baboons isolate themseves from the group to participate to the research program on a voluntary basis thus allowing research programs on a wide range of individuals (differing in age, sex, experience, social position…), while meeting the most stringent ethical standards in animal research.