Seminar

Typical and atypical sensorimotor development, at the crossroads of developmental psychology and cognitive and integrative neuroscience, is the common thread running through my research. I have always viewed sensorimotor development from the broader perspective of exploratory behaviors in the surrounding world, including communication between social partners. Indeed, one of the essential characteristics of motor skills is to ensure dialogue between the individual and their environment from birth. In order to perceive and act in their environment, the characteristics of the individual's body and their interactions with their environment are represented in the brain. This internal representation of the body in action is called the body schema. Internal representations, which include both the body schema and representations of the outside world, develop throughout the different stages of life as new motor skills are learned and acquired during ontogenesis. These internal representations are constantly updated based on the different sensory information favored by the subject, depending on their stage of development. Early perception-action coupling plays an essential role in the construction of sensorimotor representations. My studies all share the common goal of highlighting the links between the development of sensorimotor representations and executive functions such as anticipation and learning. Based on concepts and experimental data from the literature, I emphasize the essential role played, from birth, by perception-action coupling in the construction of body schema in a developing brain. This line of research is crucial to understanding neurodevelopmental disorders. The importance of human movement perception and the quality of sensorimotor representations are discussed as sources of inspiration for developmental remediation in cases of learning disorders. Finally, systematic assessment of sensorimotor function is recommended from an early age as a window into the developing brain in order to implement sensorimotor remediation or reinforcement strategies as quickly as possible.