award
Brice Bathellier and Elisa Gomez-Perdiguero, winners of the 2026 Pasteur Vallery-Radot Prize
On June 4, Elisa Gomez-Perdiguero, Head of the Macrophages and Endothelial Cells Unit, and Brice Bathellier, Head of the Neural Codes and Dynamics Unit at the Hearing Institute, were presented with the 2026 Pasteur Vallery-Radot Prize at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, at a ceremony attended by BnF President Gilles Pécout, Félix Rey, representing Antoine Triller, Permanent Secretary of the Academy of Sciences, and Moshe Yaniv, representing Yasmine Belkaid, President of the Institut Pasteur.
- Brice Bathellier, CNRS Director of Research
Brice Bathellier's team is simultaneously recording the activity of thousands of neurons through the auditory system to study how the processing of auditory information in the brain gives meaning to sound. The team's research shows that as we move further through the auditory system, neuronal population activity becomes more specific to precise types of sounds. A similar shift is observed in the algorithms used in artificial intelligence to recognize auditory objects. These findings pave the way for the development of a brain implant to treat profound deafness, and also for research into how sound memory changes over time.
- Elisa Gomez-Perdiguero, Director of Research at the Institut Pasteur.
Elisa Gomez-Perdiguero's research has significantly contributed to the notion that there are transient embryonic progenitors other than hematopoietic stem cells which serve as the main producers of red and white blood cells during fetal development and generate the macrophages that reside in tissues.