Postdoctoral researcher in behavioural ecology. PhD in cognitive neuroscience. I'm also learning to engage in and promote a better science: open, inclusive, accessible; slow.

Research projects

Ongoing projects

Rifle birds - ongoing project 🪶

 I am exploring the visual properties of the magnificent rifle birds' displays to investigate their detectability, comparing immature (picture below) with adult males.
Immature Rifle Bird

Manakin birds - ongoing project 🐦

 Are manakins learning their nuptial parade from each other or is it genetically pre-determined?
Stavenn Manacus vitellinus

Past projects

Mate preference and natural statistics in darters 🐟

 We designed and conducted several behavioural experiments to understand how natural statistics influence mate preferences in the Darter fish (Etheostoma). We relied on artificial neural networks to create novel visual stimuli that mimic natural statistics and investigated their relationship with preferences.
The main idea relies on the principle that more frequent stimuli are easier (faster, more efficient) to process because the visual system has adapted to them. Could this 'ease' of processing some visual properties influence preference towards those properties? We use mate preference as a proxy to test this idea. For example, a potential mate whose appearance reflects to some extent the visual properties of their environment might be preferred over another mate that wouldn't or would less. This has interesting evolutionary implications in terms of mechanisms that could explain mate choice and/or mate preference.
We have recently published our paper in Ecological Informatics presented our results and highlighting the benefit of using deep learning tools to study animal behaviour. You can find the paper [here].

Strength of preference for conspecifics in darters 📈

 We conducted a meta-analysis of all the past Mendelson Lab's studies that investigated the strength of preference for conspecifics over heterospecifics in darters. We wanted to have a better idea of the effect sizes and factors that might influence mate preference across species.
We found an overall effect size of medium strength, confirming assortative mating and revealed that this mate preferences is independent of sympatry and sex. Our paper is published in Ecology and Evolution and can be accessed [here].

Attractiveness of visual patterns in humans 💻

 We ran an online experiment to test the hypothesis that camouflage patterns can be attractive once made detectable. You can still access the experiment if you want to see what it looks like: http://isemsurvey.mbb.univ-montp2.fr/pattern/. It takes no more than 15 min to complete it.
Our paper is currently under review but its preprint version is on bioRxiv: [here].

Understanding how the primate brain processes tridimensional visual information that is extracted from binocular disparities 🧠


Binocular disparities are the small differences between the eye's projections of a visual scene that underlie binocular depth perception

During my PhD studies, we conducted a functional neuroimaging (fMRI) study in macaques 🐒 to identify brain areas that would respond more strongly to natural motion-in-depth compared to scrambled motion. We found a set of areas that we described in this [paper]. This highlighted the need to do more research involving 3D motion, as most studies on motion are done with planar or 2D motion, which limits our understanding of visual processing.

In another fMRI study, we asked whether some brain areas would be more strongly activated when the subject perceives a stimulus that is made of visual properties that are more frequent in natural scenes. We showed surfaces that were either slanted or tilted in depth and compared brain responses to those different configurations. Our macaque subjects showed different responses, making the results difficult to interprete. We wondered whether the angle of the surface inclination we used should be more personalised to reflect individual differences. This requires testing the visual threshold of depth perception of our subjects using a psychophysics paradigm. Spoiler: This is a very long procedure and we are still collecting the data! In the meanwhile, we could already compare the data we obtained from one macaque subject to our human participants and, great news, they are similar! Check the poster we presented at the Predictive Brain Conference to know more: [Poster].