Category Archives: Health technologies

L’imagerie ultrasonore ultrarapide a récemment été proposée pour suivre l’activité cérébrale dans la profondeur du cerveau.

When it comes to recognizing a melody or understanding a spoken sentence, the human brain does not mobilize its hemispheres in an equivalent way. A team of researchers has been able to show that, due to different receptivities to the components of sound, the left auditory cortex neurons participate in the recognition of speech, whereas the right auditory cortex neurons participate in that of music.

Using cerebral imaging, connections between the various brain regions can be visualized. These connections form a veritable “map” of its structure, specific to each individual. Knowledge of these “maps” is enough to predict not just brain function but also the potential development and treatment of neurological diseases.

One hypothesis put forward to explain the repetitive behaviors of people with Autism Spectrum Disorder is a lack of cognitive flexibility. However, this may well not be the case. A recent study used MRI to track the brain activity of autistic and non-autistic subjects faced with situations similar to those that cause problems in the daily lives of people with the disorder. Their findings, published in Brain and Cognition, suggest that the inflexibility of autistic individuals is actually the result of a strategy used to avoid socio-emotional situations. This research, which suggests now considering the cognitive and socio-emotional domains as closely linked rather than dissociated, opens up new avenues in the understanding and management of autism.