Armelle Rancillac obtained her PhD in Neuroscience from Paris VI in 2003, under the supervision of Francis Crépel, where she was the first to describe multiple forms of synaptic plasticity between stellate cells and parallel fibers in cerebellar slices using patch-clamp recordings.
She then joined Jean Rossier’s laboratory at ESPCI as a postdoctoral fellow to investigate neurovascular coupling in the cerebellum. Her research revealed that the stimulation of stellate cells elicit local vasodilation, whereas thoose of Purkinje cells induce a constriction in nearby blood vessels.
In 2006, she obtained a permanent researcher position at Inserm and turned her focus to the vasomotor control of intracortical blood vessels by different interneuron subpopulations. Using patch-clamp, RT-PCR, videomicroscopy, and Neurolucida reconstructions, she delineated the distinct roles of these interneuron types in mediating neurovascular coupling within the mouse somatosensory cortex.
From 2011 to 2015, she explored how metabolic factors shape neuronal activity and vascular tone in the ventrolateral preoptic nucleus (VLPO), a critical region for regulating non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. She received her Habilitation de Drive Research (HDR) in 2014.
Currently, in the Rouach team at the Collège de France, Dr. Rancillac investigates how neuron–glia interactions contribute to regulating NREM sleep in the VLPO.
