CanoP

Cognition Affective Neurodéveloppement Ontogénèse Psychiatrie

Elucidating the underlying mechanisms involved in the development and maintenance of an individual’s social and emotional skills from a neurodevelopmental perspective, with a multidisciplinary approach ranging from cognitive neuroscience to neuroimaging and molecular biology

ResearchMembersPublications

Adapting our abilities to perceive the world around us and to act within it in interaction with others is a real challenge. These socio emotional abilities emerge during development and are based on brain maturation processes that remain to be elucidated. Genetic factors and epigenetic mechanisms, themselves dependent on environmental factors, regulate a delicate balance between vulnerability and resilience and guide this developmental process.

Socio-emotional skills are severely impaired in many psychiatric disorders when vulnerability factors outweigh compensatory abilities. On one hand, Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are characterized by a profound impairment in social interactions, evident from the first months of life. On the other hand, recurrent mood disorders are associated with significant disturbances in affect regulation starting in adolescence (including bipolar disorders, BD). These two conditions, which have a recognized neurodevelopmental origin, are therefore particularly relevant and convergent models for understanding the normal development of socio-emotional functions in healthy individuals through the study of these early disturbances

The main projects of the team are:

Characterizing socio-emotional deficits at the behavioral level in Autism Spectrum Disorders and in mood disorders and their impact on clinical prognosis,

• Identifying brain morpho-structural anomalies, particularly morphological anomalies of cortical sulci, notably through the characterization and monitoring of sulcal pits in these neurodevelopmental deficits,

• Understanding the relationship between these morphological anomalies, changes in structural connectivity, and brain functioning, particularly in terms of the resting-state network,

• Understanding the relationships between socio-emotional deficits that are stable over time (trait) and variable (state) and their biological substrate, particularly the regulation of the immune system and the regulation of GPR56 and its molecular network at the genetic and epigenetic levels, as well as genes jointly involved in neurodevelopment and the pathophysiology of psychiatric disorders,

• Identifying the effects of variations in GPR56 functioning and its molecular cascade and regulation on brain maturation, particularly on cortical gyrification.

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