Contact & Infos

Prof. Barbara Demeneix
Switchbox Coordinator
+ 33 1 40 79 36 07

Ms. Joanne Burden
Switchbox Project Manager


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Successive ages of man :
François Lachiver
CNRS scientist, born in 1921

 

The Project :

Homeostasis, the ability to dynamically adapt to environmental challenge whilst maintaining the composition of the ‘milieu intérieur’ within certain limits, is central to healthy lifespan. All aspects of mental and physical health are critically dependent upon appropriate reception, processing and integration of internal and external signals and the capacity to mount adaptive responses.

The overall objective of Switchbox is to exploit better knowledge of homeostatic mechanisms to facilitate maintenance of health from early life through to aging. Focus will be on metabolic homeostasis integrated by the hypothalamus, which via its reciprocal projections to other brain regions and the periphery, regulates both metabolic and mental health. Our hypothesis is that sub-optimal aging results from drifts in one or more, hierarchically organized, signal generator and/or signal detection mechanisms in the brain-periphery dialogue. Such drift may be random and lead to variations in individual patterns of aging, or result from predictable/pre-determined domino-like cascades. The latter can be analysed experimentally and are highly relevant to population aging. Switchbox will explore ways to reset critical hypothalamic set points so as to regain or improve whole body homeostasis.