Sebastien Royer

Biography

Sebastien Royer graduated in physics from Montreal university (Montreal, 1996) and pursued MSc and PhD degrees in neuroscience at Montreal university (Montreal, 1998) and Laval university (Quebec city, 2003). He then held postdoctoral positions at ESPCI (Paris, 2003-2005), Rutgers university (New Jersey, 2005-2008) and Janelia Farm Research Campus (Virginia, 2008-2011) before starting his research laboratory at KIST (Seoul, 2011-current). Throughout his graduate and postdoctoral years, he has investigated neural systems (sensorimotor synapse, amygdala, olfactory bulb and hippocampus) in various species (aplysia, guinea pig, rat and mouse), using single cell and large scale electrophysiological recording techniques and optogenetic. His main achievements were the discovery of a synaptic normalization process based on balanced synaptic depression and potentiation, the demonstration of fundamental difference in dorsal and ventral hippocampus encodings, the contribution of somatic and dendritic inhibition to spike rate, burst and timing of place cells, and the development of an optrode (silicon probe with integrated fibers) and cue-enriched treadmill apparatus largely effective at generating place cell activity. The research in his laboratory at KIST aims at understanding the underlying mechanisms of place cells and the various facets of episodic memory, taking advantage of the relative simplicity of the treadmill landscape and the combination of large scale recordings, optogenetic and neural network modeling. Studies from the lab have addressed various topics such as the functional organization of landmarks and path integration information along CA1 radial axis, the development of place cell maps associated with learning of an environment, and the mechanisms underlying spatial navigation and shift in navigation strategy. Innovative tools developed in the lab include a 3D-printed recoverable micro-drive for silicon probes, an automated variant of the Barnes maze, and competitive neural networks modeling the treadmill data.