Yann Pelloux, winner of the Junior Professorship on the MOOD-COG Project on the study of cognitive alterations in depression

Yann Pelloux is the winner of the Junior Professor Chair (JPC) of the MOODS team of the Centre de Recherche en Epidémiologie et Santé des Populations (CESP Inserm/UVSQ/UPSaclay). His specialization in cognitive processes will complete the range of clinical and preclinical approaches implemented in the team.

During his training, his research activities have evolved from the study of addictive processes to the broader study of cognitive mechanisms of decision making in rodents.

PhD: University of Rouen (1999-2003): During his doctoral training, he investigated the respective influence of some behavioral factors of vulnerability to addictive agents. He showed that stress reactivity, novelty seeking, anxiety and resignation constitute different factors of vulnerability to addictive agents whose impact depends on gender and conditions of accessibility to the drug.

Department of Experimental Psychology, Cambridge, UK (2003 to 2011): During an initial postdoctoral fellowship, Dr. Pelloux developed a relevant animal model of compulsive drug seeking. He showed that this behavioral disorder results from alterations in serotonergic transmission and subcortical rather than cortical neuronal activity.

Timone Neuroscience Institute, Marseille (2011 to 2015): During his second post-doctoral fellowship in the Basal Ganglia and Motivation Laboratory at the Timone Neuroscience Institute in Marseille, Dr. Pelloux evaluated the efficacy of high frequency stimulation of one of the subcortical nuclei, the subthalamic nucleus (STN), in the treatment of drug addiction. He determined that the loss of control of cocaine use is associated with the development of pathological low frequency oscillations of the STN neurons, especially in vulnerable animals. Furthermore, he showed that STN manipulations prevented the loss of drug control, relapse into excessive use after deprivation and compulsive cocaine seeking. These results demonstrate that deep stimulation of the STN could represent an effective and flexible strategy for treating drug addiction.

National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), Baltimore, USA (2015 to 2017): In order to determine the neural mechanisms involved in relapse, he developed a test to study relapse in cocaine seeking induced by re-exposure to the drug taking context, after abstinence imposed by its punishment. He was thus able to show the usefulness of this test in the characterization of new potential therapeutic strategies against relapse in drug addiction.

New York University Department of Physiology (2017 to 2019), then Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genoa, Italy (2019 to 2022): During his postdoctoral fellowship in New York, Dr. Pelloux studied the role of attentional processes in nicotine use. He also began studying the fundamental cognitive mechanisms governing decision making. In Italy, he pursued this topic by focusing on the involvement of serotonergic neurons in the dorsal raphe nucleus (DRN). After validating his innovative approach in pathological and physiological conditions, he demonstrated that central serotonergic transmission is generally involved in reinforcement. However, by acting on different receptors in one of the key structures of reinforcement, the dorsolateral striatum, serotonin regulates differently the reinforcements that are beneficial and those that are less beneficial in the long term. In the framework of the MOOD-COG project of the CPJ, this approach is currently being pursued and applied to the study of cognitive alterations in depression. The project proposes to characterize, using a translational approach, whether cognitive alterations in depression can constitute a marker or endophenotype of the therapeutic response. The project will strengthen the collaboration between the clinical component of the Faculty of Medicine and the preclinical component of the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Paris-Saclay, by going from the patient’s bed to the laboratory mice, and vice versa. The ambition of this project will allow, in the long term, the development of new diagnostic tools and personalized therapeutic monitoring, as well as the characterization of new therapeutic avenues for the prevention of relapse in depression. Dr. Pelloux will conduct his translational research at the Faculty of Medicine Paris Saclay, at the Kremlin-Bicêtre hospital.

Contact: yann.pelloux@universite-paris-saclay.fr