CV Science

Joëlle MARTINEAU PhD neurosciences

Course and current status

Current position : CR1 Inserm, Inserm Unit 930 "Imaging and Brain", Autism Team, Tours, France

Granted by an Interface Contract between Inserm and University of Tours

Scientific summary

My research work and my projects articulate around a general hypothesis: during the normal development of the child, the visual, hearing, sensory perceptive mechanisms allow the implementation of the internal representations of the body, of the outside world and their interactions. These representations intervene in the establishment of the basic cerebral functions and there even end in the social adaptation and in the communication. At the children affected by autism, the visual perceptive disorders and in particular the deficit of the visual perception of the movement and the emotional facial expressions would hamper the implementation on one hand internal representations of one and others in the action and on the other hand possibilities of action offered by the environment. It would result a deficit of the imitation, observed very prematurely and hampering the social learnings.