Inter-regional communication and cell assembly computation in emotional processing circuits and beyond
Marco Pompili
Physiology & Physiopathology of Brain Networks – INS, Marseille
https://ins-amu.fr/physionet

Abstract
Understanding how distributed neural populations coordinate to encode experience and guide adaptive behaviour remains a central challenge in systems neuroscience. In this talk, I will present the questions that have driven my research from my PhD to my current work. Using fear memory as a primary model system, together with high-density electrophysiological recordings in freely moving rodents, we investigated how communication between brain regions gives rise to coordinated neuronal population dynamics during learning. I will first briefly discuss how the ventral hippocampus gates prefrontal control of contextual fear after extinction, and how more naturalistic behavioural paradigms reveal individual differences in vulnerability to fear relapse that remain invisible in standard protocols. I will then present evidence that the dorsal and ventral hippocampus form mixed cell assemblies during fear conditioning, providing a potential mechanism through which contextual and emotional information become jointly encoded. Building on this work, I will show how neural assemblies behave as genuine computational units by driving selective, supralinear, and learning-dependent responses in downstream neurons.
Studying memory circuits at the population level naturally led us to a broader interest in the computational principles governing inter-regional communication and large-scale network dynamics in both healthy and pathological neural networks. In the last part of the talk, I will briefly present ongoing work from my group on improved methods for assembly detection, the temporal organisation of epileptic dynamics across slow excitability cycles, and infra-slow population avalanches in thalamo-cortical circuits during memory consolidation.

Selected references:
● Pompili, Eckmier, Tirole, Todorova, Godsil, & Jay (2025) Ventral Hippocampus Modulates Prefrontal Control of Background Contextual Fear After Cued Extinction. EJN
● Demars, Todorova, Makdah, Forestier, Krebs, Godsil, Jay, Wiener, & Pompili (2022) Post-trauma behavioral phenotype predicts the degree of vulnerability to fear relapse after extinction in male rats. Current Biology
● Pompili, Hamou, & Wiener (2026) Integration of fear learning and fear expression across the dorsoventral axis of the hippocampus. PNAS
● Pompili, Todorova, Boucly, Leroux, Wiener, & Zugaro (2025) Adaptive communication between cell assemblies and “reader” neurons shapes flexible brain dynamics. PLoS biology
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=fQR_hLgAAAAJ&hl=en

Invited by Rosa Cossart
Monday 15 June 2026 at 11am – Inmed conference room