Emanuela De Falco | EPFL Graph Search

I am a physicist by training, and I have been a researcher in the neuroscience field since 2014. During my neuroscience training, I worked with intracranial recordings from patients suffering from epilepsy. Here, I investigated declarative memory and the encoding of concepts in the human medial temporal lobes. Afterwards, I spent two years as a postdoctoral researcher working on high-density electrophysiological recordings from the medial prefrontal cortex of rodents and investigating neuronal population dynamics underlying complex behaviors.I am currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and a member of the Laboratory of Congitive Neuroscience (LNCO). My current research projects are centered around the investigation of the neural basis of bodily self-consciousness and its link to cognitive processes.

Impaired cognitive flexibility and heightened urgency are associated with increased alcohol consumption in rodent models of excessive drinking

Emanuela De Falco

Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is characterized by impairments in decision-making that can exist as stable traits or transient states. Cognitive inflexibility reflects an inability to update information that guides decision-making and is thought to contribute to the inability to abstain from drinking. While several studies have reported evidence of impaired cognitive flexibility following chronic alcohol exposure, evidence that a pre-existing impairment in cognitive flexibility is a heritable risk factor for AUD is scarce. Here, we found that cognitive flexibility was impaired in rodents selectively bred for excessive alcohol consumption (alcohol preferring (P) rats), on the attentional set-shifting task (ASST). Further, the degree of impairment is predictive of future ethanol consumption, thus suggesting that cognitive inflexibility is a stable trait capable of predisposing one for drinking. In a second set of experiments, we observed an impairment in the ability of P rats to use a previously learned rule to guide foraging in a simple discrimination task. Convergence across several behavioral measures suggested that this impairment reflected a state of heightened urgency that interfered with decision-making. A similar impairment on a simple discrimination task was observed in Wistar rats with a history of alcohol consumption. These findings indicate how trait and state variables-in this case, impaired cognitive flexibility and heightened urgency, respectively-may influence the risk for excessive drinking. Furthermore, our results suggest that cognitive inflexibility and urgency can exist as both risk factors for and the result of alcohol exposure.

WILEY2021

When shared concept cells support associations: Theory of overlapping memory engrams

Emanuela De Falco, Chiara Gastaldi, Wulfram Gerstner, Tilo Schwalger

Assemblies of neurons, called concepts cells, encode acquired concepts in human Medial Temporal Lobe. Those concept cells that are shared between two assemblies have been hypothesized to encode associations between concepts. Here we test this hypothesis in a computational model of attractor neural networks. We find that for concepts encoded in sparse neural assemblies there is a minimal fraction cmin of neurons shared between assemblies below which associations cannot be reliably implemented; and a maximal fraction cmax of shared neurons above which single concepts can no longer be retrieved. In the presence of a periodically modulated background signal, such as hippocampal oscillations, recall takes the form of association chains reminiscent of those postulated by theories of free recall of words. Predictions of an iterative overlap-generating model match experimental data on the number of concepts to which a neuron responds.

2021