At any given instant, billions of neurons in our brains are lighting up in a complicated yet highly coordinated manner to give rise to our thoughts, percepts, and movements. A single neuron may be connected to thousands of other cells, sending out and receiving information through electrical impulses called “spikes” that may be viewed as “ones and zeros” rapidly unfolding in time. Ultimately, this underlying activity reflects the ongoing computations taking place inside the central nervous system, and as such, constitutes a window into the brain’s inner workings. The leading goal of the M!ND Lab is to decipher the logic by which these complex patterns of activity support our complex behaviors, such as planning an action, learning from our mistakes, or even formulating a lie.

Our goal is to understand how the intricacies of our “mental life” – our thoughts, plans and expectations – emerge from biology

We follow a multidisciplinary approach, combining behavioral experiments in humans and animals with hypothesis-driven analyses and modeling of the underlying neural dynamics. In practice, we use various techniques from linear algebra and machine learning to relate high-dimensional neural activity recorded at a very fine spatiotemporal resolution to the underlying cognitive processes sollicited by carefully-designed experimental conditions. When relevant, we also turn to artificial models to gain further insight into how “intelligent” systems, be it biological or synthetic, function at the algorithmic and implementation level.

More details about our research and past/ongoing projects.

About the lab

The M!ND Lab is based at the Institut de Neurosciences de la Timone, on the campus of Aix-Marseille University, and is affiliated with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS).

News

January 2026: the lab website is finally up and running!

January 2026: we are selected to give a talk at NCM this year! See you in Japan!

December 2025: we are selected to present a poster at COSYNE this year! See you in Portugal!

December 2025: congrats to Salvatore Giancani, incoming member of the M!ND Lab, for winning a postdoctoral fellowship from Neuroschool to work on his neuro-AI project!