The 2019 Bettencourt Young Researchers Prize was awarded to Raphaël le Bouc, a post-doctoral fellow in neuroscience, for his research on the neural mechanisms of decision-making.

How does the brain help us make choices?

“My aim is to show how the brain constructs and represents value signals and adapts them to the context: how does it help us make the right decisions and how do certain pathologies lead to decision-making disorders? I am working on improving management of behavioral and motivational disorders by combining clinical studies and research.”We regularly make complex decisions. Understanding how our brain helps us make choices is a fundamental question in neuroscience. If we start with the central hypothesis that the brain represents and compares the options of a choice on a motivational scale through value signals, it remains to be discovered how the brain builds these signals. The neural code that represents them has yet to be deciphered.

A neuro-computational approach to value coding in the human brain

Raphaël le Bouc uses functional imaging, computational modeling and transcranial magnetic stimulation to test the hypothesis that value signals are constructed by integrating the attributes of different choice options. Modeling allows him to establish a statistical link between the integrity of motivational brain areas and patient behavior.

Dr. Le Bouc is currently pursuing research in the field of neuro-economics. His second post-doctorate focuses on the neural mechanisms by which the brain transforms sensory information into motivational signals. His findings can be applied to economic choices, but they will also allow clinicians, based on behavioral observations, to deduce the patient’s neuronal dysfunctions, thereby helping to identify appropriate treatments.

Raphaël le Bouc in a few words

2000: Graduate of the École Normale Supérieure de Paris, Biology Department

2011: Doctorate in medicine: "What I think or what you think? Neuropsychological and functional imaging characterization of two distinct ‘theory of mind’ components selectively affected in frontal-temporal dementia and Alzheimer's disease", under the supervision of Professor Florence Pasquier, University of Lille 2 -Specialization in Neurology

2014: Doctoral dissertation: “Motivation as a cost-benefit calculation: neuroimaging, modeling, pharmacological manipulations and clinical investigations", under the direction of Dr. Mathias Pessiglione, Brain and Spinal Cord Institute, Sorbonne University (Paris), Brain, Cognition, Behavior Graduate School - Specialization in Cognitive Neurosciences

2018: Inter-university degree in neurovascular pathology, Sorbonne University (Paris)

Post-doctorate under the supervision of Professor Christian Ruff, Zurich Center for Neuroeconomics, University of Zurich, Switzerland

Bettencourt Prize for Young Researchers

Created in 1990, the Bettencourt Prize for Young Researchers is one of the first initiatives of the Fondation Bettencourt Schueller. Until 2021, this prize was awarded each year to 14 young doctors of science or doctors of medicine, to enable them to carry out their post-doctoral stay in the best foreign laboratories. 349 young researchers were distinguished. The prize endowment was €25,000.

All the award-winners