Neuroscience Talk: From Learned Significance to Action: Prefrontal Control of Adaptive Behavior

Biosketch:
Daniel Jercog is a systems neuroscientist with a background in computational neuroscience, studying the neurobiology of associative learning, affective and motivated behavior, decision-making and motor control. He obtained his PhD in Biomedicine from the University of Barcelona and, following postdoctoral training at Inserm in Bordeaux, joined the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Copenhagen, where he is currently an Assistant Professor.

His research combines behavioral experiments in freely moving mice with in vivo electrophysiological and imaging recordings, optogenetic and pharmacological circuit manipulations, computational analyses including machine learning and modeling. By studying neural population dynamics, he has investigated how prefrontal circuits represent learned threats and organize defensive actions. His contributions have been recognized with an award from the French National Academy of Sciences.

His current research investigates neural and neuromodulatory mechanisms across cortical and subcortical circuits, with a particular interest in how emotional processing, uncertainty, and action-motor information are integrated to support behavioral flexibility. Ultimately, his work seeks to understand how disruptions of these fundamental processes contribute to maladaptive behavior and to neurological and psychiatric disorders.