Research interests and current projects

I have always been fascinated by time (physical and subjective) and how we can perceive and conceptualize something so elusive, and yet essential to interaction with the environment.

I defended my PhD in May 2022 at Aix-Marseille University, where my work focused on the representation of temporal order, in relation with the mental timeline (i.e., where durations or temporal order are mapped from left to right). Drawing upon theoretical frameworks such as neural reuse and Hebbian learning, I investigated the functional role of the sensorimotor system in temporal cognition. To address this question, I developed innovative experimental protocols combining behavioral measures (e.g., movement initiation times, mouse tracking, eye-tracking) with large-scale online studies (involving more than a thousand participants). Overall, my PhD research suggested that the sensorimotor system plays a key role in processing temporal order.

After my PhD, I joined Virginie van Wassenhove’s group at NeuroSpin (CEA, Paris-Saclay) as a postdoctoral researcher involved in the EXPERIENCE Project. In one project, I combined immersive virtual reality with EEG to investigate how environmental constraints shape our sense of time. Participants produced short durations (1.45 and 2.9 seconds) in virtual rooms differing in size and ceiling height. Behaviorally, we replicated and extended earlier findings: durations were systematically over-produced in larger environments. Using multivariate decoding of EEG data, we further showed that both the produced duration and the room size could be decoded from neural activity as early as the first button press. These results suggest that environmental constraints influence temporal judgments at the very onset of duration production, providing new insights into how spatial context interacts with temporal cognition.

In a second project extending my PhD on the mental timeline, I explored the geometry of duration representations by combining behavioral similarity judgments and EEG recordings. Results revealed that subjective duration is not arranged along a simple linear timeline, but instead follows a three-dimensional, helical geometry. Computational modeling confirmed that a generalized helix best accounts for subjective and neural similarity structure.

Since September 2025, I have been a postdoctoral researcher at the Laboratoire de Psychologie et NeuroCognition (LPNC, Grenoble), under the supervision of Nathan Faivre, as part of the VOLTA project, which investigates the electrochemical and electrophysiological correlates of subjective experience and its temporal dynamics. I am currently based in the United States for a research stay at Wake Forest University, where I am training in voltammetry with Kenneth T. Kishida. Within this framework, my research aims to bridge cognitive, electrophysiological, and electrochemical levels of explanation to better understand the temporal dynamics of the duration of a conscious experience.

Starting in June 2026, I will pursue this line of research through a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship focused on the multiscale mechanisms of temporal cognition. More broadly, my goal is to develop an integrative research program bridging behavioral, electrophysiological, and electrochemical levels of explanation, in order to better understand how we perceive, feel, and represent subjective duration, both in typical development and in conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia, and ADHD.