Construction de l’espace religieux dans les diocèses de Rennes, Dol et Alet/Saint-Malo. Approches historique et archéologique de la formation des territoires ecclésiastiques – diocèse, paroisse et cadres intermédiaires – entre le ve et le xiiie siècle

Au Moyen Âge, un réseau ecclésiastique, échelonné de la paroisse au diocèse, en passant par les doyennés et les archidiaconés, fut mis en place à l’échelle de la Chrétienté. Cette hiérarchie territoriale constitue l’aboutissement d’un long processus de spatialisation des structures ecclésiales, que nous avons tenté de suivre et d’analyser en haute Bretagne, dans le diocèse de Rennes, de tradition gallo-franque, ainsi que dans les diocèses bretons de Dol et d’Alet/Saint-Malo . L’étude s’étend ..

Sébastien Legros, Moines et seigneurs dans le Bas-Maine. Les prieurés bénédictins du xe au xiiie siècle

L’essaimage des moines bénédictins à travers leurs prieurés constitue un phénomène majeur de l’histoire occidentale des xie-xiie siècles qui surprend tant par la soudaineté avec laquelle il se manifeste que par celle avec laquelle il s’interrompt, les dernières fondations prieurales datant de la première moitié du xiie siècle. Les prieurés n’ont pourtant pas suscité une abondante recherche. Pendant longtemps, l’exceptionnelle production écrite qui accompagne leur floraison a en effet été parc..

Naissance de la paroisse « territoriale »

Contrairement à l’idée qui a longtemps prévalu, la paroisse n’est pas apparue en même temps que le christianisme est devenu religion officielle. L’étude des trois plus anciens actes de Bretagne attestant de l’existence d’une hiérarchie ecclésiale, organisée entre des églises-mères et des édifices secondaires, permet en effet de conclure que le réseau paroissial ne découle pas d’un démembrement croissant de grandes paroisses primitives. Ce fut seulement au xie siècle que les rapports sacramentels et matériels liant les fidèles à un lieu de culte furent strictement réglementés selon le lieu de domiciliation, entraînant de fait la reconnaissance d’un « territoire », appelé la parochia. Celle-ci ne correspondait pas toutefois à une circonscription stricto sensu, avec des limites linéaires et continues, mais plutôt à un semis d’âmes, rayonnant autour d’une église principale.Contrary to the idea that has long prevailed, the parish did not appear when Christianity became the official religion. The study of the three oldest Breton acts bearing witness to a Church hierarchy between mother churches and secondary structures allows us to conclude that the parish network was not the result of the increasing division of large primitive parishes. It was only during the eleventh century that the material and sacramental relations linking believers to a church were strictly regulated by place of domicile, which entailed a de facto recognition of a dependent territory, called parochia. It did not correspond to a constituency, strictly speaking, with linear and continuous boundaries, but rather to a scattering of souls spread around a main church

Zadora-Rio, Élizabeth (dir.), Des paroisses de Touraine aux communes d’Indre-et-Loire : la formation des territoires

Pendant longtemps, on considéra que la paroisse était apparue dès l’époque mérovingienne, le réseau paroissial se densifiant progressivement et ses mailles se resserrant tout au long du Moyen Âge pour donner naissance aux communes actuelles. L’ouvrage collectif, dirigé par l’archéologue médiéviste Élisabeth Zadora-Rio et édité dans les suppléments de la Revue archéologique du Centre de la France, remet totalement en cause ce modèle de développement paroissial et l’apparition d’un découpage te..

Spring-neap tidal and circadian variability in the distribution of two groups of Pseudo-nitzschia species in an upwelling influenced estuary

High-resolution physical and biological measurements were carried out in the Ría de Pontevedra (NW Spain) in late spring during the ‘HABIT Pontevedra 2007’ survey, which utilized high vertical resolution instruments. Cell maxima of P. delicatissima (6 x 105 cells L-1) and P. seriata (2 x 106 cells L-1) groups were observed during the first half of the cruise during downwelling and a significant decrease in cell numbers occurred during subsequent upwelling conditions. The effect of tidal (both semidiurnal and spring-neap) and event driven (upwelling-downwelling cycle) variability were evident. The observed sequence of events suggests that Pseudo-nitzschia populations were advected from the shelf. The circadian variability was regulated by tidal forcing and Pseudo-nitzschia spp. maxima were observed at low tide. From results presented here we conclude that the magnitude of spring-neap tidal and circadian variability has to be considered when designing and implementing harmful algal bloom monitoring programmesEn prens

Welcoming back my arm: Affective touch increases body ownership following right hemisphere stroke

© The Author(s) (2020). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Guarantors of Brain.Right-hemisphere stroke can impair the ability to recognize one's contralesional body parts as belonging to one's self. The study of this so-called 'disturbed sense of limb ownership' can provide unique insights into the neurocognitive mechanisms of body ownership. In this study, we address a hypothesis built upon experimental studies on body ownership in healthy volunteers. These studies have shown that affective (pleasant) touch, an interoceptive modality associated with unmyelinated, slow-conducting C-tactile afferents, has a unique role in the sense of body ownership. In this study, we systematically investigated whether affective touch stimulation could increase body ownership in patients with a disturbed sense of limb ownership following right-hemisphere stroke. An initial feasibility study in 16 adult patients with acute stroke enabled us to optimize and calibrate an affective touch protocol to be administered by the bedside. The main experiment, conducted with a different sample of 26 right hemisphere patients, assessed changes in limb ownership elicited following self- (patient) versus other- (experimenter) generated tactile stimulation, using a velocity known to optimally activate C-tactile fibres (i.e. 3 cm/s), and a second velocity that is suboptimal for C-tactile activation (i.e. 18 cm/s). We further examined the specificity and mechanism of observed changes in limb ownership in secondary analyses looking at (i) the influence of perceived intensity and pleasantness of touch, (ii) touch laterality and (iii) level of disturbed sense of limb ownership on ownership change and (iv) changes in unilateral neglect arising from touch. Findings indicated a significant increase in limb ownership following experimenter-administered, C-tactile-optimal touch. Voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping identified damage to the right insula and, more substantially, the right corpus callosum, associated with a failure to increase body ownership following experimenter-administered, affective touch. Our findings suggest that affective touch can increase the sense of body-part ownership following right-hemisphere stroke, potentially due to its unique role in the multisensory integration processes that underlie the sense of body ownership.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Cognitive decline in Huntington's disease in the Digitalized Arithmetic Task (DAT)

Background Efficient cognitive tasks sensitive to longitudinal deterioration in small cohorts of Huntington’s disease (HD) patients are lacking in HD research. We thus developed and assessed the digitized arithmetic task (DAT), which combines inner language and executive functions in approximately 4 minutes. Methods We assessed the psychometric properties of DAT in three languages, across four European sites, in 77 early-stage HD patients (age: 52 ± 11 years; 27 females), and 57 controls (age: 50 ± 10, 31 females). Forty-eight HD patients and 34 controls were followed up to one year with 96 participants who underwent MRI brain imaging (HD patients = 46) at baseline and 50 participants (HD patients = 22) at one year. Linear mixed models and Pearson correlations were used to assess associations with clinical assessment. Results At baseline, HD patients were less accurate (p = 0.0002) with increased response time (p<0.0001) when compared to DAT in controls. Test-retest reliability in HD patients ranged from good to excellent for response time (range: 0.63–0.79) and from questionable to acceptable for accuracy (range: r = 0.52–0.69). Only DAT, the Mattis Dementia Rating Scale, the Symbol Digit Modalities Test, and Total Functional Capacity scores were able to detect a decline within a one-year follow-up in HD patients (all p< 0.05). In contrast with all the other cognitive tasks, DAT correlated with striatal atrophy over time (p = 0.037) but not with motor impairment. Conclusions DAT is fast, reliable, motor-free, applicable in several languages, and able to unmask cognitive decline correlated with striatal atrophy in small cohorts of HD patients. This likely makes it a useful endpoint in future trials for HD and other neurodegenerative diseases

A new approach to digitized cognitive monitoring: validity of the SelfCog in Huntington's disease

Cognitive deficits represent a hallmark of neurodegenerative diseases, but evaluating their progression is complex. Most current evaluations involve lengthy paper-and-pencil tasks which are subject to learning effects dependent on the mode of response (motor or verbal), the countries’ language or the examiners. To address these limitations, we hypothesized that applying neuroscience principles may offer a fruitful alternative. We thus developed the SelfCog, a digitized battery that tests motor, executive, visuospatial, language and memory functions in 15 min. All cognitive functions are tested according to the same paradigm, and a randomization algorithm provides a new test at each assessment with a constant level of difficulty. Here, we assessed its validity, reliability and sensitivity to detect decline in early-stage Huntington’s disease in a prospective and international multilingual study (France, the UK and Germany). Fifty-one out of 85 participants with Huntington’s disease and 40 of 52 healthy controls included at baseline were followed up for 1 year. Assessments included a comprehensive clinical assessment battery including currently standard cognitive assessments alongside the SelfCog. We estimated associations between each of the clinical assessments and SelfCog using Spearman’s correlation and proneness to retest effects and sensitivity to decline through linear mixed models. Longitudinal effect sizes were estimated for each cognitive score. Voxel-based morphometry and tract-based spatial statistics analyses were conducted to assess the consistency between performance on the SelfCog and MRI 3D-T1 and diffusion-weighted imaging in a subgroup that underwent MRI at baseline and after 12 months. The SelfCog detected the decline of patients with Huntington’s disease in a 1-year follow-up period with satisfactory psychometric properties. Huntington’s disease patients are correctly differentiated from controls. The SelfCog showed larger effect sizes than the classical cognitive assessments. Its scores were associated with grey and white matter damage at baseline and over 1 year. Given its good performance in longitudinal analyses of the Huntington’s disease cohort, it should likely become a very useful tool for measuring cognition in Huntington’s disease in the future. It highlights the value of moving the field along the neuroscience principles and eventually applying them to the evaluation of all neurodegenerative diseases