Sarah Mondoloni awarded the 2026 FENS EJN Young Investigator Award

This year, Sarah Mondoloni set up her laboratory at the Mediterranean Institute of Neurobiology (INMED) in Marseille. Her team is studying the neural mechanisms linking emotional contagion – whether positive or negative – to behavioural adaptation, with a particular focus on the serotonin system as a key integrator of social and emotional information.

Beyond fundamental neuroscience, this work offers an insight into what happens when these processes are disrupted. Many neuropsychiatric disorders are characterised by impaired emotional resonance, and understanding their neural basis may help explain how social experiences shape vulnerability or resilience. In the end, her aim is to understand how the brain transforms shared emotions into actions: how empathising with others becomes a force that shapes the way individuals cope with adversity.

Sarah Mondoloni has been awarded the FENS-EJN Young Investigator Prize, as an early-career researcher, in recognition of her outstanding scientific contributions to neuroscience. The award, sponsored by Wiley (publisher of EJN), is also being presented to Roisin McMackin (Trinity College Dublin) and Felix Leroy (Instituto de Neurociencias de Alicante).