CerCo
Centre de Recherche Cerveau & Cognition

C3P-Crossmodal Compensation and Cortical Plasticity

Head : Pascal GIRARD

The team’s main focus is how the brain adapts in a plastic way to the richness of our sensory environment or its degradation. The world around us is essentially multi-sensory and we must integrate information from the different senses in order to have an adapted behaviour. We are studying this multisensory integration using different imaging techniques (MRI, PET), electrophysiology (EEG, unit electrophysiology) and behavioural assessments, both in humans and non-human primates. Our level of analysis is both cortical and thalamic, especially in poorly studied areas such as the median pulvinar. Our fundamental research approach is also patient-oriented. Through our close interactions with clinical research, we study the brain mechanisms involved in deafness, how the brain compensates for this disability and how it reorganizes itself during rehabilitation with the cochlear implant. Our studies are rooted in everyday situations such as the understanding of speech in noise that affects unilateral deaf patients or the understanding of environmental sounds by cochlear implant patients. Finally, these themes are applied throughout the life of the deaf child to the hearing impaired elderly patient. We have also developed a model of cognitive aging in the marmoset in social conditions, in which we seek to understand how environmental sounds disturb the elderly subject when performing behavioural tasks.


Research themes

Deafness: Pascal Barone, Olivier Deguine, Mathieu Marx
Binaurality and spatial hearing
Presbycusis, unilateral or profound deafness.
Sound categorization in cochlear implant patients.
Multisensory interactions and prosody

Multimodality: Céline Cappe, Pascal Girard, Pascal Barone
Behavioural and electrophysiological approaches to multisensory integration in humans and non-human primates
Visuo-auditory interactions at the cortical and subcortical level

Social or age-related pathologies: Céline Cappe, Pascal Girard, Pascal Barone
Clinical aspects of perception, schizotypy and schizophrenia
Processing of social communication information in Prader Willi syndrome
The marmoset as a model of cognitive aging.


Permanent research staff
  • Pascal BARONE
  • Céline CAPPE
  • Olivier DEGUINE
  • Pascal GIRARD
  • Mathieu MARX
Post-Doctoral fellows
  • Kuzma STRELNIKOV (Project Manager)
  • Manuel MERCIER
PhD students
  • Mariam ALZAHER
  • Anne LASFARGUES
  • Anne-Laure VITTEK
  • Yifan ZHANG
Some selected publications
  • Marx, M., James, C., Foxton, J., Capber, A., Fraysse, B., Barone, P., Deguine, O. (2015). Speech prosody perception in cochlear implant users with and without residual hearing. Ear and Hearing, 36(2): 239-248. http://doi.org/10.1097/AUD.0000000000000105 Article
  • Strelnikov, K., Marx, M., Lagleyre, S., Fraysse, B., Deguine, O., Barone, P. (2015). PET-imaging of brain plasticity after cochlear implantation. Hearing Research, 322(-): 180-187. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.heares.2014.10.001 Review
  • Barone, P., Chambaudie, L., Strelnikov, K., Fraysse, B., Marx, M., Belin, P., Deguine, O. (2016). Crossmodal interactions during non-linguistic auditory processing in cochlear-implanted deaf patients. Cortex, 83(-): 259-270. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2016.08.005 Article
  • Salles, J., Strelnikov, K., Carine, M., Denise, T., Laurier, V., Molinas, C., Tauber, M., Barone, P. (2016). Deficits in voice and multisensory processing in patients with Prader-Willi syndrome. Neuropsychologia, 85(-): 137-147. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2016.03.015 Article
  • Favrod, O., Sierro, G., Roinishvili, M., Chkonia, E., Mohr, C., Herzog, M.H., Cappe, C. (2017). Electrophysiological correlates of visual backward masking in high schizotypic personality traits participants. Psychiatry Research, 254(-): 251-257. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2017.04.051 Article
  • Juan, C., Cappe, C., Alric, B., Roby, B., Gilardeau, S., Barone, P., Girard, P. (2017). The variability of multisensory processes of natural stimuli in human and non-human primates in a detection task. PLoS ONE, 12(2): e0172480. http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0172480 Article
  • Vannson, N., James, C.J., Fraysse, B., Lescure, B., Strelnikov, K., Deguine, O., Barone, P., Marx, M. (2017). Speech-in-noise perception in unilateral hearing loss: Relation to pure-tone thresholds and brainstem plasticity. Neuropsychologia, 102(-): 135-143. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2017.06.013 Article
  • Marx, M., Younes, E., Chandrasekhar, S.S., Ito, J., Plontke, S., O’Leary, S., Sterkers, O. (2018). International consensus (ICON) on treatment of sudden sensorineural hearing loss. European Annals of Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck Diseases, 135(1): S23-S28. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.anorl.2017.12.011 Article
  • Strelnikov, K., Collett, E., Gaillard, P., Truy, E., Déguine, O., Marx, M., Barone, P. (2018). Categorisation of natural sounds at different stages of auditory recovery in cochlear implant adult deaf patients. Hearing Research, 367(-): 182-194. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.heares.2018.06.006 Article
  • Berland, A., Collett, E., Gaillard, P., Guidetti, M., Strelnikov, K., Cochard, N., Barone, P., Deguine, O. (2019). Categorization of everyday sounds by cochlear implanted children. Scientific Reports, 9(1): 3532. http://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-39991-9 Article
  • Karoui, C., James, C., Barone, P., Bakhos, D., Marx, M.., Macherey, O. (2019). Looking for the sound of a cochlear implant: Qualitative evaluation of different vocoder parameters by CI users with single-sided deafnes. Trends in Hearing: in press. Extra
  • Marx, M., Costa, N., Lepage, B., Taoui, S., Molinier, L., Deguine, O., Fraysse, B. (2019). Cochlear implantation as a treatment for single-sided deafness and asymmetric hearing loss: A randomized controlled evaluation of cost-utility. BMC Ear, Nose and Throat Disorders, 19(1): -. http://doi.org/10.1186/s12901-019-0066-7 Article
  • Sadoun, A., Rosito, M., Fonta, C., Girard, P. (2019). Key periods of cognitive decline in a nonhuman primate model of cognitive aging, the common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus). Neurobiology of Aging, 74(-): 1-14. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2018.10.003 Article
  • Cappe C., Thelen A., Thut G., Romei V., & Murray M.M. (2012) Looming signals reveal synergistic principles of multisensory integration. Journal of Neuroscience, 32: 1171-82.
  • Cappe C, Rouiller EM, Barone P. (2012) Cortical and Thalamic Pathways for Multisensory and Sensorimotor Interplay. In: Murray MM, Wallace MT, editors. The Neural Bases of Multisensory Processes. Boca Raton (FL): CRC Press/Taylor & Francis; 2012. Chapter 2.
  • Debladis J., Valette M., Strelnikov K., Mantoulan C., Thuilleaux D., Laurier V., Molinas C., Barone P. and Tauber M. Face Processing and Exploration of Social Signals in Prader-Willi Syndrome: A Genetic Signature. Orphanet JORD (2019)