Ana Zappa, Deirdre Bolger, Jean-Marie Pergandi, Raphael Fargier, Daniel Mestre, Cheryl Frenck-Mestre
article
2022
annee_publi
2022
resume
The present study aims to investigate how naturalistic actions in a highly immersive, multimodal, interactive 3D virtual reality (VR) environment may enhance word encoding by recording EEG in a pre/post-test learning paradigm. Both imaging and electrophysiological data have established motor activation during language processing, and behavioral data has shown that coupling word encoding with gestures enhances learning. However, the neural underpinnings of facilitated action language learning have yet to be elucidated. Herein, we couple EEG recording with virtual reality to examine whether “embodied learning”, or learning that occurs using specific physical movements that are coherent with the meaning of new verbs, creates linguistic representations that produce greater motor resonance (a decrease in power in the mu and beta frequency bands), due to stronger motor traces, compared to learning without accompanying specific gestures. We will also investigate whether greater motor resonance while listening to learned action verbs post-learning correlates with improved retention.
Tatjana A. Nazir, Raphael Fargier, Evgueni Douissembekov, Yves Paulignan
article
Language, Evolution and Mind: Essays in Honour of Anne Reboul, Pierre Saint-Germier, pp.203-217, 2018, 978-1848902824
annee_publi
2018
resume
This volume gathers essays offered as a Festschrift to the French linguist, cognitive scientist and philosopher Anne Reboul. She has made throughout her career important contributions to many topics such as the pragmatics of fiction, the experimental study of implicatures, the relationship between language and cognition and the evolution of language. This collection gathers contributions in linguistics, philosophy, cognitive science and biology from students, colleagues and friends. It covers her main themes of research and related ones. The diversity and scope of this volume reflects the diversity and scope of her contribution to the study of language, evolution and mind.
Electrophysiological research using verbal response paradigms faces the problem of muscle artifacts that occur during speech production or in the period preceding articulation. In this context, this paper has two related aims. The first is to show how the nature of the first phoneme influences the alignment of the ERPs. The second is to further characterize the EEG signal around the onset of articulation, both in temporal and frequency domains. Participants were asked to name aloud pictures of common objects. We applied microstate analyses and time-frequency transformations of ERPs locked to vocal onset to compare the EEG signal between voiced and unvoiced labial plosive word onset consonants. We found a delay of about 40 ms in the set of stable topographic patterns for /b/ relative to /p/ onset words. A similar shift was observed in the power increase of gamma oscillations (30-50 Hz), which had an earlier onset for /p/ trials (similar to 150 ms before vocal onset). This 40-ms shift is consistent with the length of the voiced proportion of the acoustic signal prior to the release of the closure in the vocal responses. These results demonstrate that phonetic features are an important parameter affecting response-locked ERPs, and hence that the onset of the acoustic energy may not be an optimal trigger for synchronizing the EEG activity to the response in vocal paradigms. The indexes explored in this study provide a step forward in the characterization of muscle-related artifacts in electrophysiological studies of speech and language production.
: Growing evidence suggests that semantic knowledge is represented in distributed neural networks that include modality-specific structures. Here, we examined the processes underlying the acquisition of words from different semantic categories to determine whether the emergence of visual- and action-based categories could be tracked back to their acquisition. For this, we applied correspondence analysis (CA) to ERPs recorded at various moments during acquisition. CA is a multivariate statistical technique typically used to reveal distance relationships between words of a corpus. Applied to ERPs, it allows isolating factors that best explain variations in the data across time and electrodes. Participants were asked to learn new action and visual words by associating novel pseudowords with the execution of hand movements or the observation of visual images. Words were probed before and after training on two consecutive days. To capture processes that unfold during lexical access, CA was applied on the 100-400 msec post-word onset interval. CA isolated two factors that organized the data as a function of test sessions and word categories. Conventional ERP analyses further revealed a category-specific increase in the negativity of the ERPs to action and visual words at the frontal and occipital electrodes, respectively. The distinct neural processes underlying action and visual words can thus be tracked back to the acquisition of word-referent relationships and may have its origin in association learning. Given current evidence for the flexibility of language-induced sensory-motor activity, we argue that these associative links may serve functions beyond word understanding, that is, the elaboration of situation models.
Successful non-verbal social interaction between human beings requires dynamic and efficient encoding of others' gestures. Our study aimed at identifying neural markers of social interaction and goal variations in a non-verbal task. For this, we recorded simultaneously the electroencephalogram from two participants (dual-EEG), an actor and an observer, and their arm/hand kinematics in a real face-to-face paradigm. The observer watched "biological actions" performed by the human actor and "non-biological actions" performed by a robot. All actions occurred within an interactive or non-interactive context depending on whether the observer had to perform a complementary action or not (e.g., the actor presents a saucer and the observer either places the corresponding cup or does nothing). We analysed the EEG signals of both participants (i.e., beta (~20 Hz) oscillations as an index of cortical motor activity and motor related potentials (MRPs)). We identified markers of social interactions by synchronising EEG to the onset of the actor's movement. Movement kinematics did not differ in the two context conditions and the MRPs of the actor were similar in the two conditions. For the observer, however, an observation-related MRP was measured in all conditions but was more negative in the interactive context over fronto-central electrodes. Moreover, this feature was specific to biological actions. Concurrently, the suppression of beta oscillations was observed in the actor's EEG and the observer's EEG rapidly after the onset of the actor's movement. Critically, this suppression was stronger in the interactive than in the non-interactive context despite the fact that movement kinematics did not differ in the two context conditions. For the observer, this modulation was observed independently of whether the actor was a human or a robot. Our results suggest that acting in a social context induced analogous modulations of motor and sensorimotor regions in observer and actor. Sharing a common goal during an interaction seems thus to evoke a common representation of the global action that includes both actor and observer movements.
Neurosciences [q-bio.NC]. Université Claude Bernard - Lyon I, 2013. Français. ⟨NNT : 2013LYO10050⟩
annee_publi
2013
resume
Dans ce travail de thèse, nous nous sommes intéressés à la contribution des régions sensori- motrices dans la représentation de nouveaux mots. Dans un premier temps et au travers d’une analyse des oscillations cérébrales, nous avons observé que l’écoute seule de mots d’action (mais pas de mots de « vision ») récemment acquis, conduisait après apprentissage à une activation des régions motrices. Si l’écoute des mots d’action déclenchait une activité motrice similaire à l’observation d’actions, elle était néanmoins associée à une activité supplémentaire semblant refléter le recrutement d’une « zone de convergence » entre les structures motrices et celles du langage, permettant la récupération d’informations motrices plus abstraites. Par la suite, nous avons pu montrer que les divergences entre nouveaux mots d’action et de vision émergeaient rapidement puisqu’associés à des activités spécifiques sur les électrodes fronto-centrales et occipito-pariétales respectivement. Une autre étude EEG nous a permis d’observer que les items lexicaux (pseudo-mots) semblaient fournir un substrat unique pour associer les attributs sensori-moteurs liés au référent. Enfin, au travers d’une analyse fine des paramètres cinématiques d’un mouvement de préhension, nous avons observé que la verbalisation d’un mot d'action (i.e. « attraper ») entraînait une facilitation de l’exécution de l’action. Nos résultats indiquent que la représentation du sens des mots dans le cerveau associe à la fois les régions à modalité spécifique et des « zones de convergence » notamment entre les structures motrices et langagières, permettant la récupération d’informations plus abstraites ; tandis que la spécificité vis-à-vis du stimulus verbal tend à indiquer un pré-câblage de ces réseaux neuronaux pour le langage. Si les représentations sémantiques reflètent en partie les expériences perceptuo- motrices associées à l’apprentissage, nos travaux soulignent un phénomène toujours présumé : un certain degré d’abstraction du sens des mots