Sophie Bagur, recipient of a 2026 ERC Starting Grant to explore the dialogue between the body and the brain

How does our brain know that our heart is beating faster, that our breathing is changing, or that our body is on high alert? And most importantly: Are these physical signals simply the result of our emotions, or do they directly influence our decisions and behaviors?

Sophie Bagur aims to address these questions through her project, “Visceral–Brain Interactions in the Regulation of Risk-Taking and Anxiety,” which was selected by the European Research Council (ERC) as part of the 2026 Starting Grants call.

Understanding How the Brain “Reads” the Body

Sophie Bagur’s research focuses on interoception—that is, the nervous system’s ability to perceive and integrate signals from within our bodies, such as heart rate, breathing, and other physiological variables.

It’s a phenomenon everyone can experience: our heart rate increases when we face a stressful situation, and our breathing changes when we’re afraid or when we’re anticipating an important event. But does this relationship also work the other way around? Can changes in our physiological state alter brain activity and influence our choices?

“Does our body merely express our emotions, or does it also alter brain activity to influence our decisions and behaviors?” Sophie Bagur summarized as she presented her research in 2024.

The ERC-funded project will continue this exploration of the interactions between the brain and organs, focusing specifically on their role in risk-taking and anxiety.

From Physiological Signals to Neuronal Activity

A CNRS research fellow at ESPCI Paris – PSL since 2024, Sophie Bagur is developing approaches that make it possible to simultaneously study the body’s physiological state and the activity of populations of neurons.

Her previous work has focused, in particular, on the links between breathing and emotional states. During her doctoral research at ESPCI, she and her colleagues demonstrated that respiratory rhythm can modulate prefrontal cortex activity and contribute to the maintenance of fear-related behavior in mice.

More recently, his research has focused on how the brain encodes information from the body. Through controlled manipulation of parameters such as breathing or heart activity, combined with large-scale neural recordings, the goal is to understand how these internal signals are represented and then integrated into the brain circuits involved in behavior.

Highly Selective European Funding

ERC Starting Grants are among the most prestigious European funding opportunities for early-career scientists. Awarded for a period of up to five years, they enable recipients to develop an independent research program and build their own team. A Starting Grant can be worth up to 1.5 million euros, to which certain additional funding may be added.

The 2026 call for proposals was particularly competitive: 4,807 projects were submitted and 421 were selected, representing a success rate of 8.8%. In total, the European Research Council will allocate 705 million euros to these new projects, 38 of which will be conducted at French institutions.

This ERC grant builds on a trend that began at ESPCI: in 2024, Sophie Bagur had already received a PSL Young Researcher Starting Grant, designed to enable young scientists to launch their own research programs and, in particular, to prepare applications for major international funding opportunities.