P3 - Perception, Attention, Impairments, and Rehabilitation

People

• Coordinator : Aurélie BIDET-CAULET Researcher, Anne CACLIN Researcher
• Permanent staff : Olivier BERTRAND Researcher, Head of the lab, Pierre FONLUPT Researcher, Lesly FORNONI Research Technician, Marie-Hélène GIARD Researcher, Pierre KROLAK-SALMON University Professor and Hospital MD, Dominique MORLET Researcher
• Post-Doc : Yohana LEVEQUE, Catherine PADOVAN
• PhD student : Philippe ALBOUY, Ludovic BELLIER, Françoise LECAIGNARD, Alix THILLAY

External collaborations

• Julien BESLE, Davide BOTTARI, Sarang DALAL, Nathan WEISZ

• F. Bonnet-Brilhault, N. Bruneau, M. Gomot (INSERM U930, Tours), G. Demarquay (Hospices Civils de Lyon), R.T. Knight (UC Berkeley, USA), N. Malfait (UMR 6149, Marseille), F. Pavani (Univ. Trento, Italy), H. Thai-Van (Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, CASH group), B. Tillmann (Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, CAP team).

Approaches

• Behaviour, EEG, intra-cranial EEG, MEG, fMRI

Keywords

• BehaviourAudition, Tonotopy, Timbre, Multisensory interactions, Selective attention, Attentional capture, Anticipation, Sensory memory, MMN, Perceptual learning, Congenital amusia, Migraine, Alzheimer disease, Bipolar syndrome, Autism, Brain lesions

Research Theme

We are interested in the following general questions:

• How are auditory and audiovisual information processed in human perceptual systems?
• Through which neurophysiological mechanisms does attention influence perception?
• How are sensory information processed in perceptual disorders and in neurological and psychiatric diseases?
• How are perceptual and attentional processes modified by training? What are the impacts for rehabilitation strategies?

Perception and attention in healthy subjects

Here we are mostly interested in auditory perception and attention, as well as in audiovisual interactions.

In recent years, regarding auditory perception, we have studied the cerebral mechanisms of auditory scene analysis, in particular those involving moving stimuli (artificial noises, Bidet-Caulet and Bertrand, 2005; human footsteps, Bidet-Caulet et al., 2005) and the segregation of concurrent auditory streams (Bidet-Caulet et al., 2007, see following figure). We have also studied the perception of the timbre of sound sources (Caclin et al., 2006, 2007, 2008).

Regarding auditory attention, we have been interested in:

• Selective attention, in particular to dissociate the neurophysiological mechanisms of the facilitation of processing of relevant information and the inhibition of distractors (Bidet-Caulet et al., 2007, 2010);
• Anticipation, showing a pre-activation of sensory cortices when a stimulus was expected to occur (Voisin et al., 2006; Weisz et al., 2011 ; Bidet-Caulet et al., in revision).

We have also started to analyse the neurophysiological substrates of inter-individual variability in perceptual performance (Foxton et al., 2009), and how this inter-individual variability influence multisensory interactions (Caclin et al., 2011).

Current projects aim at:

• Studying tonotopic organisation of auditory cortices in child development;
• Analysing timbre representation in auditory cortices using fMRI;
• Studying how auditory representations are built in sensory memory, using the MMN (Mismatch Negativity) ;
• Studying the competitions and cooperations between various attentional mechanisms (inhibition and facilitation, early and late selections, capture, and anticipation);
• Exploring cerebral interactions within oscillatory networks involved in attentional processes.

Perception and attention in perceptual, neurological, and psychiatric disorders

We have recently studied :

• The processing of auditory information in migraine patients, showing an increase of auditory automatic attention orienting in migraine (Demarquay et al., 2011);
• The processing of visual information in profound deafness, showing modified early visual ERPs (Bottari et al., in press);
• Deficits in the processing (extraction, identification, memorizing, etc.) of environmental sounds in natural scenes in patients afflicted with drug-resistant temporal epilepsy, before and after unilateral surgical removal of the anterior temporal lobe (Bidet-Caulet et al., 2009);
• Alterations in attentional facilitation and inhibition mechanisms in patients with unilateral prefrontal lesions.

Current projects aim at :

• Exploring behavioural and neurophysiological correlates of congenital amusia, a specific disorder of music perception and memory;
• Studying the processing of speech sounds in peripheral deafness;
• Dissociating attentional deficits linked to the engagement of attention, attentional inhibition, or a reduction of attentional resources in Alzheimer disease and bipolar disorder;
• Dissociating perceptual from attentional deficits in patients with autism.

Perceptual training and rehabilitation

We are interested in how different cortical levels of perceptual processing (auditory or visual) can be affected by intensive perceptual training, and how such training can impact on attentional capacities. MEG studies could inform about neurophysiological foundations for rehabilitation strategies in perceptual and attentional deficits.

Publications since 2010

• Albouy P, Mattout J, Bouet R, Maby E, Sanchez G, Aguera PE, Daligault S, Delpuech C, Bertrand O, Caclin A, Tillmann B (In press) Impaired pitch perception and memory in congenital amusia: The deficit starts in the auditory cortex, Brain
• Caclin A, Paradis AL, Lamirel C, Thirion B, Artiges E, Poline JB, Lorenceau J (2012) Perceptual alternations between unbound moving contours and a bound shape motion engage a ventral/dorsal interplay, Journal of Vision 12(7): 11
• Bottari D, Caclin A, Giard MH, Pavani F. (2011) Changes in early cortical visual processing predict enhanced reactivity in deaf individuals., PLoS One 6(9): e25607
• Caclin A, Bouchet P, Djoulah F, Pirat E, Pernier J, Giard MH. (2011) Auditory enhancement of visual perception at threshold depends on visual abilities., Brain Res. 1396: 35-44
• Giard MH, Besle J (2010) Methodological considerations: Electrophysiology of multisensory interactions in humans, In: Multisensory Object Perception in the Primate Brain. Eds : M.J. Naumer & J. Kaiser, Springer 0: 55-70
• Jacquin-Courtois S, Rode G, Pavani F, Giard MH, Fischer C, Boisson D, Rossetti Y (2010) Effect of prism adaptation on left dichotic listening deficit in neglect patients: Glasses to hear better ?, Brain 133(3): 895-908
• Bidet-Caulet A., Mikyska C., Knight R.T. (2010) Load effects in auditory selective attention: evidence for distinct facilitation and inhibition mechanisms, Neuroimage 50(1): 277-284
• Voytek B., Secundo L., Bidet-Caulet A., Scabini D., Stiver S.I., Gean A.D., Manley G.T., Knight R.T. (2010) Hemicraniectomy: A New Model for Human Electrophysiology with High Spatio-temporal Resolution, J Cogn Neurosci 22(11): 2491-2502