On February 13, 2019, Nicolas Torquet¹ and Philippe Faure¹ received the 2019 La Recherche Award in Neuroscience for their work on the individuality of mice².

Their very original work relied on the specific tracking of individual animals maintained in a special house which they called “souris-city”. Their results, published in August 2018, determined that the social environment of mice was a determining factor in their behaviour and that it led to a modulation of the activity level of some neuron populations.

Each year, the La Recherche prize rewards French-speaking works in twelve disciplines and highlights results that constitute a breakthrough in the field of research and have been the subject of a peer-reviewed communication.

Their work appeared in August 2018 in the journal Nature Communication and was the subject of a press release from the CNRS and Inserm, a brief on the IBPS website and an article in Science et Avenir.

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¹ Team Neurophysiology and Behavior of the Neuroscience Unit (UMR 8246) and Brain Development, Repair and Ageing of the Biological and Adaptaion and Ageing (UMR 8256)

² Torquet, N., Marti, F., Campart, C., Tolu, S., Nguyen, C., Oberto, V., Benallaoua, M., Naudé, J., Didienne, S., Debray, N., et al. (2018). Social interactions impact on the dopaminergic system and drive individuality. Nat. Commun. doi:10.1038/s41467-018-05526-5.