Research Director Emeritus at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and neuroscientist at the Institute of Systems Neuroscience (Inserm & Aix-Marseille University), his research investigates the neural mechanisms of perception, attention, learning, executive functions, and social behavior, integrating neurophysiology, systems neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, and computational approaches. Alongside his academic research career, he trained in clinical psychology and psychotherapy. His current clinical practice centers on neuropsychology, psychological trauma, EMDR, and integrative therapeutic frameworks. This dual foundation in basic and clinical science drives a translational initiative to bridge neuroscience with the underlying mechanisms of psychological functioning, psychological distress, and mental health. Deeply committed to international scientific cooperation, he coordinated the Franco-Moroccan Neuroscience Consortium (GDRI-CNRS) as well as the Euro-Mediterranean NEUROMED consortium, fostering extensive exchanges among laboratories, PhD candidates, and early-career researchers across the Mediterranean basin. He is also a co-founder and the inaugural President of the Mediterranean Neuroscience Society (MNS). Throughout his tenure, he has supervised numerous doctoral candidates, postdoctoral fellows, and junior researchers in both France and Morocco, actively shaping a new generation of neuroscientists. His recent investigations focus on the role of social presence in brain function. Following the discovery of social neurons in the primate prefrontal cortex (Demolliens et al., 2017), his work demonstrated that social presence modulates cognitive control (Bennani et al., 2023), influences specific learning mechanisms in schizophrenia (Charaf et al., 2024), and reorganizes attentional brain networks and synaptic efficacy (Esmaeili et al., 2025). Building on these findings, he currently leads the "Brain of Presence" research program, which seeks to lay the groundwork for a neuroscience of social presence and establish an integrative paradigm connecting basic neuroscience, psychology, human development, and psychotherapy. This theoretical framework is detailed in an open-access paper on OSF/PsyArXiv.