The limbic system shapes how animals respond to the world and to their own internal states. Our lab investigates how limbic circuits are organised, how they drive behaviour, and what makes them selectively vulnerable to neurodegenerative disease, with a particular focus on Parkinson's disease, in which limbic dysfunction is an early and debilitating, but poorly understood, feature.

Understanding the functional logic of the structures within the limbic system — and the factors that render them resilient or susceptible to pathology — is central to our research.

To address these questions, we combine in vivo calcium imaging in behaving animals, electrophysiology, and transcriptomics, allowing us to resolve the dynamics of specific cell populations, their connectivity, and their molecular identity.

This integrated approach lets us ask which circuits are active during a given behaviour, and how the physiological and molecular state of those circuits, as well as connectivity, change with disease progression.

Noëmie Mermet-Joret is a DANDRITE Team Leader, and Associate Professor at the Department of Clinical Medicine, PACE - Lundbeck Foundation Parkinson's Disease Research Center.