Amaury François

Institut de Génomique Fonctionelle, CNRS

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Title

Central integration of social touch

Abstract

Touch is more than a means of physical perception, it plays a vital role in shaping emotional and social behaviors, such as bonding and affiliation. While the neural circuits for tactile discrimination are well defined, the pathways mediating the emotional and motivational impact of touch remain largely uncharted. To bridge this gap, we employed genetic and viral tools to selectively manipulate tactile afferents in mice. We pinpointed a specific class of sensory neurons—C-LTMRs—whose activation makes touch rewarding and enhances social interaction. Conversely, dampening C-LTMR activity led to a marked reduction in social behaviors. We further mapped key integrative hubs and cortical circuits activated by pleasant touch, revealing that C-LTMR-driven pathways modulate appetitive behaviour and social motivation in unexpected ways. These findings highlight the multimodal nature of sensory processing and its influence on behavior. These findings advance our understanding of how affective somatosensory signals are integrated into reward circuits and how their dysregulation may contribute to deficits in motivation and social functioning in pathological conditions.

Biosketch

Amaury François is a Research Fellow at the Montpellier Institute of Functional Genomics. Trained as an electrophysiologist and behaviorist, he quickly developed a passion for the study of the somatosensory system and the integration of tactile information.
After defending his thesis in 2013 on the excitability of neurons responsible for pain transmission in Montpellier, he spent 4 years working on top-down pain control and endogenous opioids at Stanford University in Gregory Scherrer's team.
The research team he has been leading since 2023 focuses on the role of touch in social behavior. His team has demonstrated the existence of sensory neurons innervating the skin, the C-LTMRs, responsible for pleasant touch. These same neurons, when artificially activated, reinforce social interactions in mice, and vice versa when inhibited. The team also demonstrated a link between C-LTMR activity and sensory phenotypes associated with autism spectrum disorder. Since then, his research team has focused on identifying how the information carried by these neurons converges with social information to influence animal behavior. He is particularly interested in the somato-sensory system and the integration of tactile information in cortical areas. He is seeking to identify the neural networks linking touch to emotions