Les neurosciences cognitives du langage, de l'autisme et des styles cognitifs

VERSION ANGLAISE DISPONIBLE AU DÉPARTEMENT; THÈSE RÉALISÉE CONJOINTEMENT AVEC L'ÉCOLE DES SCIENCES DE LA COMMUNICATION DE L'UNIVERSITÉ MCGILL (DRS. K. STEINHAUER ET J.E. DRURY).La présente thèse reprend trois articles de recherche (deux études et un article de revue) portant sur les neurosciences cognitives du langage, chacun desquels a été écrit en vue d’identifier les bénéfices que la théorie (neuro)linguistique contemporaine pourrait tirer d’une étude exhaustive des processus cognitifs et neuraux sous-tendant les troubles du spectre autistique (TSA) et inversement. Deux études y sont présentées, utilisant la méthode des potentiels évoqués, lesquelles fournissent des preuves préliminaires, chez des individus typiques, de deux aspects de la compréhension de phrases nécessitant une recherche approfondie chez des personnes autistes : (1) Les corrélats neuraux de la nature syntaxique et sémantique particulière des verbes d’expérience (par exemple The girl has feared the storm) contrairement aux verbes d’action (par exemple The kids have eaten the fries) et leur interface potentielle avec la Théorie de l’Esprit – la capacité d’attribuer des états mentaux à soi et à autrui – pour laquelle les personnes autistes semble accuser un retard et/ou un déficit, et (2) les corrélats neuraux des compétences en « imagerie visuelle », telles quelles sont identifiées à l’aide des Matrices de Raven, sur les processus de détection de violations de catégories grammaticales (par exemple He made the meal to enjoy with friends/He made the enjoy to meal with friends) dans un paradigme expérimental “équilibré” et en modalité visuelle. L’article de revue cherche à fournir une perspective plus large du rôle que les neurosciences cognitives des TSA peuvent jouer dans l’étude biologique du langage. L’importance de considérer l’autisme comme un « style cognitif » plutôt qu’un trouble en soi y est défendue, en particulier contre la notion commune d’autisme en tant que déficit de Théorie de l’Esprit. Au delà de leurs perspectives potentielles de recherche future auprès de populations autistes, ces trois articles cherchent à répondre à plusieurs questions de recherche cruciales sur le développement et la compréhension du langage (c’est à dire le débat sur la «P600 sémantique», les théorie d’échantillonnage asymétrique de la perception de la parole et de la musique, le rôle de la vision dans le langage, la modularité, les styles cognitifs et l’inférence Bayesienne).The present thesis comprises a set of three research articles (two studies and one review article) on the cognitive neuroscience of language, all of which were written with the purpose of understanding the benefits that contemporary (neuro)linguistic theory may draw from an extensive study of the cognitive and neural processes underlying Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and vice versa. Two studies are presented, using event-related brain potentials, which provide preliminary evidence in typical individuals for two aspects of sentence processing in need of future investigation in ASD participants: (1) The neural correlates of the peculiar syntactic and semantic nature of verbs of experience (Experiencer Subject verbs, i.e., The girl has feared the storm) as opposed to verbs of action (Agent Subject verbs, i.e., The boys have eaten the fries) and their potential interface with Theory of Mind – the ability to attribute mental states to self and others – known to present delays and impairments in autism, and (2) the neural correlates of “visual imagery” skills, as assessed through the Raven Matrices, on comprehenders’ ability to detect word category violations (e.g., He made the meal to enjoy with friends/He made the enjoy to meal with friends) in a balanced visual paradigm and their potential insights into the role of visual imagery in language comprehension, known to play a potentially predominant role in ASD. The review article attempts to provide a larger perspective on the role of the cognitive neuroscience of ASD in the biology of language, in which the importance of considering autism as a “cognitive style” rather than as a disorder is given greater value, especially relative to the common notion of autism solely as a Theory of Mind impairment. Aside from their potential prospects for future research in autistic populations, these three articles also attempt to frame their topic of inquiry into the broader context of contemporary research questions on language development and language comprehension, such as the role of animacy in language processing (the “semantic P600” debate), asymmetric sampling theories of speech and music perception, the role of vision in language, modularity, cognitive styles or Bayesian inference

The Biolinguistics of Autism: Emergent Perspectives

This contribution attempts to import the study of autism into the biolinguistics program by reviewing the current state of knowledge on its neurobiology, physiology and verbal phenotypes from a comparative vantage point. A closer look at alternative approaches to the primacy of social cognition impairments in autism spectrum disorders suggests fundamental differences in every aspect of language comprehension and production, suggesting productive directions of research in auditory and visual speech processing as well as executive control. Strong emphasis is put on the great heterogeneity of autism phenotypes, raising important caveats towards an all-or-nothing classification of autism. The study of autism brings interesting clues about the nature and evolution of language, in particular its ontological connections with musical and visual perception as well as executive functions and generativity. Success in this endeavor hinges upon expanding beyond the received wisdom of autism as a purely social disorder and favoring a “cognitive style” approach increasingly called for both inside and outside the autistic community

Is Bigger Better? Corpus and Dictionary Use in the Search for Compounds, Collocations, Derived Forms and Fixed Expressions

In the course of the development of a bilingual dictionary, a number of monolingual source language and target language dictionaries, bilingual dictionaries, and text corpora are typically used as tools to create entries. When dealing with words that occur at a high frequency in the corpus, determining which collocations, compounds, derived forms and fixed expressions are to be included in the dictionary is an additional complication. This paper presents the relative merits of using dictionary and corpus sources for searching for this type of information. We present frequency searching as an efficient and useful tool for corpus analysis, especially in the case of high-frequency words.La création d’entrées dans le cadre de l’élaboration d’un dictionnaire bilingue mobilise habituellement des dictionnaires unilingues dans les langues source et cible, des dictionnaires bilingues ainsi que des corpus textuels. En outre, la fréquence élevée de certains mots dans le corpus impose une sélection des collocations, des mots composés, des formes dérivées et des expressions figées à inclure dans le dictionnaire. Le présent article offre un aperçu des avantages découlant de la combinaison de l’usage des sources dictionnairiques et des corpus de données. Nous proposons que la recherche par fréquence est un paramètre particulièrement utile pour résoudre les difficultés posées par l’étude de mots présents dans le corpus à une fréquence élevée

The temporal dynamics of inflected word recognition: a masked ERP priming study of French verbs

Morphological aspects of human language processing have been suggested by some to be reducible to the combination of orthographic and semantic effects, while others propose that morphological structure is represented separately from semantics and orthography and involves distinct neuro-cognitive processing mechanisms. Here we used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to investigate semantic, morphological and formal (orthographic) processing conjointly in a masked priming paradigm. We directly compared morphological to both semantic and formal/orthographic priming (shared letters) on verbs. Masked priming was used to reduce strategic effects related to prime perception and to suppress semantic priming effects. The three types of priming led to distinct ERP and behavioural patterns: semantic priming was not found, while formal and morphological priming resulted in diverging ERP patterns. These results are consistent with models of lexical processing that make reference to morphological structure. We discuss how they fit in with the existing literature and how unresolved issues could be addressed in further studies

L'accord de l'adjectif chez les enfants francophones avec un trouble spécifique du langage

En dépit du fait que l’étude de la production du syntagme nominal puisse fournir des données riches sur les phénomènes d’accord et de concordance, cette structure demeure peu étudiée. L’étude rapportée ici décrit l’accord intra-nominal, - c’est-à-dire l’accord en genre et en nombre entre les différents éléments qui composent le syntagme nominal (déterminant, nom, adjectif) - chez huit enfants francophones avec un trouble spécifique du langage (TSL) et des enfants témoins appariés selon l’âge, le niveau de langage, ou les capacités mnésiques. Quatre tâches induisent la production de noms de couleurs et de syntagmes avec des adjectifs de grandeur ou de couleur. Malgré l’absence de difficultés apparentes à dénommer les couleurs et les syntagmes avec des adjectifs de grandeur, les enfants TSL présentent plus de difficultés que les témoins à produire les adjectifs variables dans le genre approprié au syntagme nominal. Ces résultats suggèrent des difficultés de vérification de l’accord.Although the study of noun phrase production can provide us with a wealth of information on concord, this structure is quite rarely studied. We present a production study for nominal concord – that is, gender and number agreement between the different elements in a noun phrase (determiner, noun, adjective) - in eight French-speaking children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and their age-, language- and memory-matched controls. Fours tasks elicit color words and noun-phrases with color or size adjectives. Despite the fact that children with SLI do not present major difficulties in naming colors or size nouns-phrases, children exhibit more difficulties than controls in producing variable adjectives in gender agreeing with the noun phrase. This suggests that these children have concord verification difficulties.A pesar de que el estudio de la producción del sintagma nominal proporcione datos interesantes sobre la concordancia, esta estructura ha sido muy poco estudiada. Presentamos un experimento sobre la producción de la concordancia intra-nominal – es decir la concordancia entre los elementos del sintagma nominal (determinante, nombre, adjetivo), - en ocho niños francófonos con trastorno específico del lenguaje (TEL) apareados con niños con desarrollo típico, según la edad, el nivel de lenguaje o las capacidades mnémicas. Cuatro actividades elicitan la producción de palabras de color y de sintagmas nominales con adjetivos de tamaño y de color. Los niños con TEL no muestran dificultades evidentes en la denominación de colores ni en los sintagmas nominales de tamaño, pero presentan más dificultades que los niños típicos en la producción de adjetivos variables con el género apropiado al sintagma nominal. Los resultados sugieren que estos niños tienen dificultades en la verificación de la concordancia

CHA2DS2-VASc Score for Predicting Stroke and Thromboembolism in Patients With AF and Biological Valve Prosthesis

International audienc

Synchrony, metastability, dynamic integration, and competition in the spontaneous functional connectivity of the human brain

Available online 3 June 2019.The human brain is functionally organized into large-scale neural networks that are dynamically interconnected. Multiple short-lived states of resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) identified transiently synchronized networks and cross-network integration. However, little is known about the way brain couplings covary as rsFC states wax and wane. In this magnetoencephalography study, we explore the synchronization structure among the spontaneous interactions of well-known resting-state networks (RSNs). To do so, we extracted modes of dynamic coupling that reflect rsFC synchrony and analyzed their spatio-temporal features. These modes identified transient, sporadic rsFC changes characterized by the widespread integration of RSNs across the brain, most prominently in the β band. This is in line with the metastable rsFC state model of resting-state dynamics, wherein our modes fit as state transition processes. Furthermore, the default-mode network (DMN) stood out as being structured into competitive cross-network couplings with widespread DMN-RSN interactions, especially among the β-band modes. These results substantiate the theory that the DMN is a core network enabling dynamic global brain integration in the β band.This work was supported by the Action de Recherche Concert ee (ARC Consolidation 2015–2019, “Characterization of the electrophysiological bases, the temporal dynamics and the functional relevance of resting state network” attributed to X.D.T.) and by the research convention “Les Voies du Savoir” (Fonds Erasme, Brussels, Belgium). M.B. benefited from the program Attract of Innoviris (grant 2015-BB2B-10), the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (grant PSI2016-77175-P), and theMarie Skłodowska-Curie Action of the European Commission (grant 743562). M.V.G. and G.N.were supported by the Fonds Erasme. N.C. benefited from a research grant from the ARC Consolidation (2014–2017, “Characterization of the electrophysiological bases, the temporal dynamics and the functional relevance of resting state network” attributed to X.D.T.) and from the Fonds Erasme (research convention “Les Voies du Savoir”). X.D.T. is Post-doctorate Clinical Master Specialist at the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (F.R.S.-FNRS, Brussels, Belgium). The MEG project at the CUB – H^opital Erasme is financially supported by the Fonds Erasme (research convention “Les Voies du Savoir”)

África Occidental. Mapas generales. 1751

Copia digital. Madrid : Ministerio de Cultura. Dirección General del Libro, Archivos y Bibliotecas, 20101 mapa en 2 hoja

América del Norte. Mapas generales. 1746

Inserta: Mapa del Océano ÁrticoCopia digital. Madrid : Ministerio de Cultura. Dirección General del Libro, Archivos y Bibliotecas, 20101 mapa en 2 hoja

Mar Caspio. Mapas generales. 1754

Copia digital. Madrid : Ministerio de Cultura. Dirección General del Libro, Archivos y Bibliotecas, 201