Our research project is focused on patients' dysfunctions. Our translational research is circular: from patients' needs (Patients Advisory Board) to research and back for the improving of patients' autonomy, activity and social participation. Our objectives are the understanding of the underlying mechanisms and the developing of diagnosis, prognosis, screening and rehabilitation tools.
Our methodological and technical contributions include the functional evaluation of motor, perceptual and social behaviour ("Mouvement et Handicap" and "Cognitoscope" platforms). We develop behavioural measures such as movement kinematics recording, gait and postural analysis, eye movement recording and gaze-contingent protocols psychophysical and neuropsychological assessments. Our projects also involve physiological measures such as neuroimaging (PET, PET-MRI, MRI, fMRI, MEG), EEG (simple or dual), and neurostimulation (TDCS, TMS) technics used both as research and therapeutic tools, as well as pharmacological treatment.
Our team’s research interests are centred around handicap and patient rehabilitation and the theme common to all of our research projects is behavioural and brain plasticity. We will adopt an “reverse-translational” stance whereby impairments and handicap will provide the starting points of basic and clinical research projects aimed at a better understanding of physiology and functional pathophysiology, a more accurate evaluation of functional deficits, the refinement of diagnosis and prognosis, the development of new, non-invasive therapeutic strategies and new technology through multiple scale clinical trials, and the functional evaluation of rehabilitation techniques. Expertise in the evaluation of performance and functional independence will be further developed along three main axes. (1) The main cause of handicap is motor deficit, and we will investigate the physiology of normal and pathological sensori-motor plasticity as well as develop new technological means to remediate motor deficits. (2) The second cause of handicap is related to sensory integration and we will explore the link between misperception of elementary visual feature and misrepresentations as well as the plasticity of spatial cognition, with an extension to neurosensory diseases involving other sensory systems. (3) Another important but neglected domain is social handicap and we will further extend our expertise in coma prognosis and rehabilitation as well as human perspective taking and communication. These three axes will be used to classify the functional disabilities encountered in the patients and seek advice from appropriate patients’ organisations.