Dr. Muriel Darmon, a sociologist, is a leading expert on the processes and dynamics of socialization. Having notably worked on anorexia and on post-stroke assessment and recovery—through immersive research in psychiatry, neurology, and rehabilitation units—she examines health inequalities, particularly in relation to gender and social class.Her work is highly relevant for anyone engaged in the field of mental and brain health. It was therefore both a pleasure and an honor to welcome her as a speaker for the 3rd exceptional seminar of INTERACTIONS, an event that drew a large audience from across the Lille research laboratories.

During the roundtable of the international working group on right temporal–predominant forms of frontotemporal degeneration, Maxime presented two brief tests designed to rapidly assess the social component of semantic memory—particularly through the understanding of social norms and emotional concepts. Many thanks to Hulya Ulugut, Yolande Pijnenburg, and Kate Rankin for the invitation!

Agnès presented her doctoral research during the session “Dementias and Frontotemporal Lobar Degenerations” at the 27th Neurology Meetings in Paris. She notably discussed the qualitative approach used in our studies, the multi-level approach to language, and the relevance of studying prosody—particularly when combined with artificial intelligence models of voice analysis. Congratulations, Agnès!

Coordinating a large consortium bringing together several internationally renowned universities, our team has just received a positive evaluation from the JPND, the largest international programme under the patronage of the European Union dedicated to funding research on neurodegenerative diseases. JPND intends to award us €1.8 million to harmonize social-cognition practices across Europe in neurocognitive disorders, issue international recommendations, develop new digital markers of social cognition—including through telemedicine and tele-neuropsychology—gain a better understanding of factors related to social isolation and withdrawal, and, finally, describe gender and socioeconomic inequalities in the expression of social-cognition impairments. Securing this European funding would be a remarkable step forward for our team and for social neuropsychology.

Prof. Maxime Montembeault has been one of the first researchers to bridge the fields of language and social cognition. During a special seminar organized with the support of UFR3S at the Faculty of Medicine, he travelled from Montreal to present his work on frontotemporal degeneration, aimed at both improving the diagnosis of rare FTD variants, such as the right temporal variant and primary progressive aphasias, and understanding the interactions between language and social cognition. As a visiting professor for three weeks, Maxime also took part in the national FTD-PSP day and spent some time with the INTERACTIONS team, where he contributed to the design of the DISCeRN project, coordinated by our group. 

Do you know what prosody is? It refers to the modulations of the voice that reflect our emotional states and intentions. We aimed to evaluate these modulations in the behavioral variant of frontotemporal degeneration (bvFTD), while also examining whether our prosodic measures could distinguish this neurodegenerative disease from late-onset psychiatric disorders, with which it is often confused. In bvFTD, we observed a reduction in the range and variability of prosody, correlated with frontotemporal brain regions involved in speech as well as semantic (meaning) and affective (emotion) integration. However, these measures did not allow us to discriminate bvFTD from psychiatric disorders. Assessing patients’ voices therefore represents a promising digital marker for clinical practice! This study has been accepted for publication in Neuropsychology.

This summer, Maxime spent some time in Montreal at the Douglas Mental Health Institute, affiliated with McGill University. The visit was an opportunity to discover the team of Maxime Montembeault, with whom we are developing exciting collaborations on social cognition and neurodegenerative diseases, and to learn more about their organization and research. It was an enriching experience in a fantastic city.

What an honor, for the first special seminar of our research laboratory, INTERACTIONS, to welcome Prof. Dana Samson from UCLouvain (Belgium), whose scientific contributions to the field of social cognition and neuropsychology are outstanding. During a 45-minute lecture, Dana presented the main lines of her new research project on social isolation, social motivation, and the unique insights that neuropsychology can bring to these topics, both scientifically and clinically. Dana and Maxime then met to lay the groundwork for a forthcoming collaboration within the framework of the international DISCeRN project, coordinated by our team.

Agnès delivered an outstanding presentation at the 2025 congress of the GREPACO in Lyon, focusing on the use of expressive prosody to differentiate behavioural variant frontotemporal degeneration (bvFTD) from late-onset atypical psychiatric disorders. At a congress themed “Social Interactions Put to the Test of Cognition,” our team simply couldn’t miss the opportunity—and we’re delighted that this oral communication was accepted!

Behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) is often mistaken for psychiatric disorders like depression or anxiety—especially in younger people. We were partner of an international study of over 600 patients that found that 1 patient in 3 was first diagnosed with a psychiatric condition before being correctly diagnosed with bvFTD. But only 13% were truly misdiagnosed. The good news: misdiagnoses are now less common, likely due to better awareness and understanding of the disease. Errors mostly happen in younger patients, especially those with mood or eating-related symptoms. This study, coordinated by Simon Ducharme (McGill University, Québec) was published in the Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences.

To better detect Alzheimer’s disease, doctors examine a fluid around the brain (called cerebrospinal fluid). They usually measure a protein called Aβ42. But sometimes, that’s not enough. Our study, coordinated by Thibaud Lebouvier, shows that using a ratio between two proteins (Aβ42 and Aβ40) helps identify some people with Alzheimer’s more accurately—even if their Aβ42 levels look normal. These patients show the same signs of the disease as others. This new approach could lead to more reliable and earlier diagnosis.

We participated in the international harmonization project on social cognition tools led under the patronage of the Schizophrenia International Research Society (SIRS) through the Research Harmonisation Award (RHA). As an expert, Maxime was invited to nominate and discuss the most relevant cognitive tests for cross-cultural assessment during several voting sessions. The results of this international consortium, the Social Cognition SIRS RHA group, coordinated by Professor Amy Pinkham, have been published in the journal Schizophrenia.

In France, the creation of a research laboratory involves assessing the expertise and trajectories of its members and their strategic vision for the next 5 years. This evaluation, organized by HCERES (High Council for Evaluation of Research and Higher Education), brought an international external panel to Lille to assess us, along with the other laboratories comprising the Lille Neuroscience & Cognition Center. This constructive evaluation marks another step toward the recognition of our laboratory, INTERACTIONS: INTegrative Research in Affective, CogniTive & sOcial NeuroscienceS.

The Romande Neuropsychology Days are a cornerstone event for Francophone neuropsychology in Switzerland. Agnès represented our team, as we were invited to present our research on the theme "Action, Cognition, Representation," alongside renowned experts such as Yves Rossetti, Gilles Allali, Fabienne Colette, Radek Ptak, and Andrea Serino.

Aurore and Agnès were invited to the inaugural Autumn University of the Médéric Alzheimer Foundation, dedicated to young researchers in the fields of humanities, social sciences, and public health, focusing on aging and Alzheimer’s disease. They had the opportunity to present their research in accessible terms and exchange ideas with other young researchers over two days in Paris. 

Le Parisien interviewed Maxime about FTD, Frontotemporal Degeneration. Symptoms, consequences, Bruce Willis, and France FTD are on the agenda. Coincidentally, the article was published on the day of the 9th French FTD Awareness Day. Find the article here.

An article by Francis Eustache, a podcast by Valentina La Corte, and a video interview with Maxime enhance the dossier "Memory: I think about it and then I forget" from the Health Observatory. Journalist Sidonie Bonnec interviews Maxime on the types of neurocognitive disorders, the difference between memory issues and concentration problems, and finally on individual actions everyone can take to reduce the risk. Also, discover how to take action against memory disorders...

Alongside specialists in emotions and cognition, such as Hervé Platel and Boris Chaumette, Maxime was invited by the Observatoire Santé to contribute to the dossier "Mental Health: Cultivate and Preserve Your Balance" by writing a small guide to emotions to better understand them. Discover a summary of major theories on emotions, the importance of predictions made by our brain, the role of semantics in our emotional experience, and the significance of storytelling in emotional life.

Congratulations to Agnès, who won the Best Poster Award at the FCM 2024 Scientific Days. This poster, the result of her thesis work, presented a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the language abilities of patients with behavioral FTD, compared to those with an atypical primary psychiatric disorder. It also presented preliminary neuroimaging results comparing the two groups of patients.

Congratulations to Aurore, whose work on a standardized procedure for the reclassification of Primary Progressive Aphasias (PPA) was selected as an oral communication during the scientific days of the FCM. At this conference, Aurore presented this work, carried out in collaboration with Jérémie Pariente's team in Toulouse, aimed at refining the diagnosis of patients suspected of having PPA based on their performance on language tests.

It's (almost!) official: the INTERACTIONS laboratory, for INTEgrative Research in Affective, CogniTIve and sOcial NeuroscienceS, which will be co-directed by Fabien D'Hondt and Maxime Bertoux and will bring together nearly 40 researchers, clinicians, and experimentalists, is on the launch pad. Our team has moved into new Inserm premises, and we are awaiting the upcoming evaluation by the Haut Conseil de l’Évaluation de la Recherche et de l'Enseignement Supérieur (HCERES). With international visibility, a substantial budget, high-level scientific production, and an interdisciplinary team focused on three research axes: emotions, social cognition, and environmental influences, our laboratory aims to study the processes that enable individuals to interact with their environment, especially the social one.

Maxime was invited by Julien Lagarde to review the evaluation of social cognition in France in La Revue du Neurologue, a didactic journal for neurology practitioners. Data from three different studies, which explored the practices of French neuropsychologists and specialists in neurodegenerative diseases in France and Europe, were synthesized. The results show that significant efforts are still needed to ensure these aspects are no longer neglected in clinical practice.

Every two years, the International Society on Frontotemporal Degeneration brings together specialists from around the world. In 2024, we had the pleasure of meeting in Amsterdam for a multi-day program of conferences and round tables. It was an opportunity to discuss collaborative projects, advances in fundamental and clinical research, and to showcase the productivity of our laboratory, involved in more than 10 studies presented.

Thanks to Licend, the Lille Centre of Excellence for Neurodegenerative Disease, for granting us 10,000 euros to fund the production of the FTD podcast we are preparing with Carl Cordonnier and Jean Thomé. Special thanks to Pulpy FTD, a young patient who shares his experience with the disease, his challenges, his likes, and how he continues to live. 

Our team contributed to a large international initiative: establishing the largest cohort of patients with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) with right anterior temporal predominance. The study was able to catalog real-life examples and cognitive performances, which allowed for the identification of specific symptoms previously neglected in diagnostic guidelines, such as mental rigidity or fixations. The results of this study will undoubtedly serve as a clinical guide for precise research diagnostics.

Congratulations to Sami Chaal, who has successfully defended his Master's thesis and has also completed his Master's degree. A young neurologist, Sami joined the team in 2022 to do his thesis with Thibaud and Maxime, and continued to work on the behavioral forms of Alzheimer's disease for his Master's research. Enthusiastic about his preliminary results, we are continuing this work!

Congratulations to François Quesque on his upcoming appointment as Associate Professor at the University of Paris Nanterre! François, who joined the team as a postdoctoral researcher with regional funding, has notably worked on the geographic variability of social cognition performance around the world during his two-year contract and participated in several projects related to social cognition. A well-deserved position after impressive publications!

Our team contributed to an innovative project to standardize key concepts for mental state attribution. This interdisciplinary collaboration resulted in a common lexicon that promises to streamline future research in social cognition. The study is published in Nature Communications Psychology.

Our team has been invited to participate in the Pint of Science event, a key event in Europe that allows scientists to discuss the results of their work with the general public in a relaxed setting. This year, Agnès will host a workshop on emotions for children at the Forum des Sciences in Villeneuve d'Ascq. Introducing children to the science of emotions is crucial for their well-being, and we are very excited to help them understand what emotions are for, and how to understand or recognize them. The event is free, but don't forget to book ahead!"

It is now India's turn to undertake the adaptation and validation of the mini-SEA, conducted by four colleagues with 770 individuals with schizophrenia and 150 control subjects without disorders. According to the authors, special attention was given to cultural adaptation, a crucial aspect for a country characterized by the diversity of its population.

Our team was invited to Times Square, New York, for the 2024 meeting of the International Neuropsychological Society, to showcase our preliminary findings regarding social cognition in frontotemporal degeneration. In a symposium chaired by Prof. Fiona Kumfor and Olivier Piguet, Agnès did a wonderful job presenting the first results of her thesis, while advocating for the integration of social cognition assessments into our daily practices and emphasizing the need to consider potential cultural variability. Through direct collaborations or the use of the mini-SEA, our team's findings were somehow presented in 4 out of 5 talks during the symposium dedicated to social cognition and FTD, and referenced in all the talks, something we are very proud of. Oh, and what a blast to be in New York !

Social diversity is a critical dimension for understanding brain health, the effects of aging, and neurodegenerative diseases. It must be considered in its various aspects: age, gender, social determinants of health, socioeconomic status, cultural background, education, quality of life, and levels of cognitive or affective abilities. For the first time, we have shown through a study involving 1063 individuals that diversity has a profound influence on social cognitive abilities. This study, conducted in 9 countries through the INSCD networks (which our team coordinates), the Chilean GERO, and RedLat, a Latin American consortium, has been published in Nature Mental Health. Congrats to Sol Fittipaldi & Agustin Ibanez for leading this study!

Maxime has been invited by the Society of Neuroscience to contribute to a special issue on emotions in their journal, "La Lettre des Neurosciences". Animal models (importance of positive emotions in birds, stress in mice), emotions and decision-making in non-human primates and humans, mechanisms of resilience to stress, hippocampal neurogenesis and conditioned fear, perception of emotions in infants, learning and emotions, affective disorders in adults and adolescents, emotional experience in Autism Spectrum Disorder are the topics accompanying Maxime's article on constructivist models and emotional disorders resulting from neurodegenerative diseases. Available to read on the Society of Neuroscience website.

Sami Chaal defended his thesis in medicine , supervised by Thibaud Lebouvier and Maxime Bertoux. Sami's thesis was focused on the clinical interest of using social cognition tests for the differential diagnosis behavioral variant of frontotemporal degeneration, behavioral variant of Alzheimer's disease, and primary psychiatric disorders. This research adventure comes to an end for Sami, but it allowed to initiate fantastic and longlasting interactions with the psychiaty department in Lille. 

For a long time underestimated, it is estimated that memory disorders would nevertheless affect 50% of patients with bvFTD (behavioral variant frontotemporal degeneration). So far, the only meta-analysis that delved into the subject had supported these results but had not sought to characterize the amnesic profile retrieved in bvFTD. The meta-analysis conducted by Giorgia Tosi (under the supervision of Daniele Luigi Romano) from the University of Milan, to which Maxime participated, shows that if patients with bvFTD have less severe memory disorders than those with Alzheimer's disease, they still exhibit significant impairments. These disorders result from both storage and strategic memory retrieval problems.

This Thursday 16th of February was the ceremony of the laureates 2023 of the Fondation Vaincre Alzheimer in France's National Medicine Academy. Maxime was awarded a 108 000 euros grant to cover the recruitment of a PhD student that will join our team to conduct our researches on social cognition & affective neurosciences.

Distinguishing behavioral frontotemporal degeneration (bvFTD) from psychiatric disorders is an important issue to orient patients toward adapted medical and psychological care programs. Common symptoms can exist across bvFTD, major depression, bipolar disorders or schizophrenia and complicate the differential diagnosis after 65 years old. Social cognition has been envisaged as a useful cognitive domain to help differentiate between bvFTD and other conditions, but no previous study had ever contrasted bipolar disorders from bvFTD on this measure. Our recent study, conducted in Brazil with the psychiatrist  Izabela Guimarães Barbosa and the neurologist Leonardo Cruz de Souza, and published in the Brazilian Journal of Psychiatry, shows that social cognition, as assessed by the mini-SEA, does not allow to distinguish both conditions, similarly to the other neuropsychological measures.

Did a free breakfast ever make you chose a hotel room rather than another one? The influence of gratuity on our decisions is well-known by economists. A free product is always better than a low price: this is what we call the zero price effect. In a new publication, accepted in Cortex and performed in collaboration with the Institut Jean Nicod (ENS, Paris) and the University of Sydney, we hypothesized that this effect could be attributed to the ventromedian prefrontal cortex's functioning and checked if this effect could be leveraged in clinical practices to assess the dysfunctions of this brain region.

After a selective process based on international expertises, our team has obtained a new grant from the Fondation Vaincre Alzheimer. The 106 183 euros grant will be dedicated to welcome Agnès during her PhD. Thanks to the donors and the Fondation!

The Joël Ménard award in Translational and clinical research has been attributed to Maxime by the international scientific committee of the French "Fondation Alzheimer" in 2021. The prize awards our studies conducted in social neuropsychology within the field of Alzheimer's disease and related disorders. Because of the pandemic, the ceremony took place this week, during the Fondation Alzheimer events, in Paris.

This week, Maxime gave a course on social cognition and its assessment as part of the Master Biology and Health of the University of Lille, a master dedicated through research in biological sciences applied to health. After the course, two students discussed the Cotter et al. 2018's review paper during a short journal club.

It has been a eminently awaited moment by the scientific and clinical community interested in FTLD: the ISFTD 2022 congress taking place in Lille. Thanks to the efforts of Florence Pasquier, who chaired the organizing committee, the congress went admirably well. It was a real pleasure to meet again all the specialists in the field and to those who will take over in the future. The program was rich, with a quality symposium in Paris, followed by 3 days of conferences in Lille. The meetings followed one another, making it finally possible to move forward on important subjects without Zoom or Teams, exchanging and preparing future collaborations. Our team presented 6 posters to inform the community about ongoing works in Lille, Belo Horizonte or through the consortiums NIC-FTD, RedLat and SIGNATURE.

In the past week, Lionel Trogneux defended his thesis in medicine at the University of Lille. This thesis was supervised by Thibaud Lebouvier and Maxime Bertoux and was focused on the characterisation of langage, neuropsychological, biomarkers and imaging aspects in primary progressive aphasia and on the automated classification of PPAs based on a specialized langage assessment. Congrats to Lionel, who brilliantly presented his study and answered to the jury's questions !

This week, the first symposium from the association of neuropsychologists in the North of France will take place. The topic is social cognition, and Maxime Nivet will present our published findings from the national survey conducted in France on the neuropsychologists' beliefs and practices associated to this domain.

This week, the review "Social cognition in neurodegenerative diseases" made the cover of Neurologies, a French medical journal. In this review, Maxime reviewed the definitions, functions, symptoms, neural bases and evaluation methods of this cognitive domain. Special thanks to Thibaud for his careful re-reading!

Invited to be a speaker at the XVII Congress of Latin-American Society of Neuropsychology, a prestigious congress that was taking place this year at Montevideo in Urugay, Maxime delivered a conference in the symposium "Social cognition: an emerging neuropsychological marker", in which he aimed to deconstruct three myths regarding this cognitive domain.

One year ago, during the International Alzheimer Day, ExpertScape contacted Maxime to let him know that he was considered by their company to be the leading expert of frontotemporal dementia in France. ExpertScape creates algorithms establishing experts ranking based on passed scientific publications. These rankings could be useful to media outlets or private companies needing an expertise on a particular topic. Maxime is present in the top 0.22% of international authors working in FTD, and present in other rankings (<1% international) linked to Alzheimer's disease, neurodegenerative diseases, neuropsychology, frontal lobe, psychological tests and theories, and theory of mind. Although no algorithm could prove the superiority of one expertise on another one, and if such rankings could be somehow unreliable, evidences of recognition are however very much appreciated !

Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, or PSP, is a neurodegenerative disease that causes problem in walking, balance and eye movement. Motor impairments being characteristics of this progressive disease, research has been late to describe the potential cognitive impairments that could occur too. However, in clinic, we retrieve numerous common symptoms in patients with PSP and patients with behavioral variant frontotemporal degeneration. These two conditions are often linked, including in the genetic and neuropathological levels, but they have been rarely contrasted regarding social cognition. With Paulo Caramelli's & Leonardo de Souza's team, we have compared the profile of these two diseases in social cognition as well as the brain atrophy correlating with this domain. We showed great similarities between these two conditions, demonstrating that PSP also leads to social cognition impairments, linked to a cortical atrophy.

To be cited allows a scientific team to have an idea of its impact and the relevancy of its studies. Citations from Skye McDonald are particularly appreciated given her importance in the field of social cognition. In a recent paper, her team shared our observation, notably through the mention of the results of our recent national survey. This observation is the disinterest of our colleagues, psychologists or physicians, for the assessment of social and emotional cognition, at the expense of patients and their relatives. A must-read review paper. 

Maxime answered to Sciences Humaines magazine, in the context of an article focused on the role of neurosciences in education. More specifically, he pointed out how some influencers, without any training in psychology or neurosciences, could sometimes use neuromyths in their writings on positive education. Reptilian brain, opposition between reason and emotion,  localisationism... the use of (bad) neurosciences to give credibility to unsourced non-evidenced based approaches is trendy.

Within the DIU MA2, the national transdisciplinary diploma opened to physicians wishing to specialize themselves in cognitive disorders, Maxime has been invited to give a conference on social cognition and the relevancy of its measure in neurodegenerative diseases. Concepts, definitions, approaches, revised theories and clinical results have been presented during an hour.

Maxime has been invited by the French Neurological Society to give a conference at the JNLF congress about his Brain paper providing clinical evidences of constructionnist models of emotions. He will talk about the interactions between affects and concepts for the recognition of emotions.

In 2020, we ran a national survey to identify the current practices, representations and needs linked to social cognition, from the perspective of professional neuropsychologists and graduate students. Responses from 502 participants were analyzed to determine the classical field conception of social cognition and its associated symptoms or notions. It also allowed us to quantify practice activities and the uses of the different clinical tools available. Finally, this study assessed neuropsychologists' confidence regarding social cognition assessment and its rehabilitation and student's training. The results will be soon published in Applied Neuropsychology: Adult and available in French here. You can also read the accepted paper.

More than 100 of collaborators were involved in this large international study that our team coordinated, which aimed to estimate the impact of participants' nationality in the neuropsychological assessment of social cognition. After 8 years of work, 587 participants included through 18 centres, in 12 countries, the study, revealing that more than 20% of variation in traditional assessment of social cognition could be attributed to cultural differences, will soon be published in Neuropsychology. Access the accepted (temporary) paper here.

The review article "Cognition sociale", published in 2016 in the EMC - Neurology (Surgery & Medical Encyclopedia) treatise has been read more than 12k time on ResearchGate, an accomplishment for a paper written in French. Maxime was therefore happy to write the 2022 version of the paper for EMC - Neurology, which is online today. Useful for a critical introduction on the domain, and its clinical assessment.

We are infinitely grateful to France Alzheimer, its selection committee and the foreign experts who awarded us, after a competitive evaluation, 93,000 euros to fund our research regarding the validation of new neuropsychological tools for the assessment of social & affective cognition. Thanks to this money, we will be able to fund neuropsychological and MRI examinations for the participants and carry out this research project. Thank you !

Florent's study, focalised on the prediction mechanisms at play in interoception and social cognition processes, has been accepted in the journal Pain Management. In this article, we showed a decrease ability to predict and identify the normal physiological signals in chronic low back pain, as compared to control participants, as well as a decrease of mentalisation abilities. We discussed the relevancy of these results for the management of chronic pain.

Maxime answered the questions of Liberation's fact-checkers journalists "CheckNews" regarding the recent controversy that has arisen en France after G. Deray's interview in the "C à vous" TV show, in which he compared the brain lesions of children with covid to the lesions we observe in Alzheimer's disease. An unfortunate comparison, contradicted by the most recent neuroimaging studies.

Interoception is an overlooked function allowing the evaluation and prediction of our physiological activity. It is involved in everything related to the internal body' sensation changes, and as such, in our emotional life. Maxime had the great pleasure to supervise Florent El Grabli for his medical and specialization theses, that were focused on the study of interoceptive abilities and their link with social cognition in chronic pain. The results of this study, conducted in the Pain centre of the Lille hospital, with patients suffering from chronic low back pain will be soon (hopefully!) published... While waiting for this news, bravo to Florent, now an algologist, for his exemplary work!

François and Maxime will soon publish, in "Les Cahiers de Neuropsychologie Clinique", an article for neuropsychologists and students in neuropsychology, in which they highlight the limits of the present neuropsychological approach and push for the developpement of a social neuropsychology, that would better account for the social impacts of cognitive impairment and better assess the specific psychological abilities that allow social interactions. In this didactic paper, they expose the way social cognition is conceptualized and operationalized, some theoretical contradictions that prevent its development, then discuss the limits and challenges associated to this field of research and practice.

A bit late, we discovered that the Fondation Alzheimer talked about our study focused on the ability of amnesia to predict Alzheimer pathology in the brain. On its website, under the News section, the Fondation relayed the recommendations we published at the end of our paper in Neurobiology of Aging in 2020, which is to widen and enrich the current neuropsychological assessment. 

In parallel, this paper is the subject of a mini podcast conducted by Prof. Philippe Amouyel, head of the Fondation Alzheimer:
https://www.fondation-alzheimer.org/la-perte-de-memoire-nest-pas-synonyme-dalzheimer/

Today, Khadija Hamouali finished her Master thesis, supervised by Maxime (and Thibaud Lebouvier), which was focused on an attempt to predict the underlying FTLD pathology through the analysis of the memory profile at first visit. To be able to predict the underlying brain pathology is to be able to prescribe the correct therapeutics early in the medical path of patients. This aim becomes more and more important as flourish clinical trials targeting specific proteins/pathologies. Retrospectively analysing the memory profile of 59 patients in which an autopsy confirmed FTLD pathology, Khadija looked for correspondences with different types of FTLD pathology: FUS, Tau 3R PiD, Tau 4R AGD, DCB, PSP and TDP-43 A, B and C. A great variability was observed regarding the impairment of long-term memory in those patients regardless of the pathology, which prevented any prediction of a specific pathology. Those results confirm our past results: numerous patients with FTLD suffer from memory impairments. They also suggest that to consider only a single cognitive test or symptom does not allow to predict a particular brain pathology, as we underlined before.

Bravo to Ana-Maria Dascalita, Laura Gaubert and Caroline Laborde who have written and defended with success their DIU thesis that Maxime had the pleasure to supervise. In this study, these neurologists tested the feasibility of the early assessment of spatial orientation in Alzheimer's disease and associated disorders through a novel screening task. Thanks to Ana-Maria, Laura and Caroline's (as well as Thierry Rosolacci's) efforts, we have administered this new task we developed to 67 participants and tested its limits, sensitivity and specificity to Alzheimer's disease. After this first step needed to validate this test, we look forward to continue the good work and to send it around!

Our team was involved in an international study that included 223 participants, aiming to increase the prediction and diagnosis classification of frontotemporal degeneration, Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease based on neuropsychological and neuroimaging data. Our paper, published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, shows that social cognition, measured with the mini-SEA, allows an accurate prediction and classification of these diseases, an accuracy confirmed by the brain atrophy and functional dysfunctions specific to each disease. Congrats to Agustin Ibanez, Sol Fittipaldi and Sandra Baez, the principal authors of this nice paper!

Organized and hosted by Florence Lebert, psychogeriatrician and FTLD specialist at the EPSM des Flandres (Bailleul, France) & Lille University Hospital, the training and support classes for carer & families of patients with Frontotemporal lobar degeneration allow to provide knowledge on FTLD, explain the behaviour changes that families have to face everyday, identify the concrete actions to deal with the disease, the way of communicating with patients, and present the aid and assistance available to them. Maxime will participate to the class in reviewing the neurocognitive explanations to the behavioural changes encountered, apathy as well as the lack of empathy. He will also participate in a Q/A session with the families.

Antoine Coutrot (Research Assoc Prof CNRS, LIRIS, Lyon), with whom the team is lucky to work for months, will present our cross-cultural study of social cognition at the Saxe Lab, Rebecca Saxe's lab at the MIT, where he is invited to speak about cultural differences in neuropsychology. Our study, performed within the INSCD, analysed the performance of control participants from 12 countries at two tests assessing facial emotion recognition & theory of mind. Highlighting important variations across countries, our study allows a significant criticism of the universalist approach and over generalization of results in neurosciences. Congrats Antoine, and thank you!

Developed from 2006 to 2016, the mini-SEA was initially published in 2012 in the Journal of Psychiatry, Neurology & Neurosurgery, then by de Boeck - Solal in 2014 after a free and massive distribution to french-speaking colleagues. Now being an essential clinical tool in numerous countries to quickly assess social cognition abilities, true normative data of the French population was missing so far. François and Maxime, with the collaboration of Sonia Michalon and Frédéric Blanc, published in La Revue de Neuropsychologie, the validation of the mini-SEA among 150 French participants.

 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03048281/document 

Created in 1989 and enriched to become Méotis, the Hauts de France's network was the first French Alzheimer network, pioneer in the collaborative organisation of cares and transdisciplinarity. In this paper, we participated in the analysis of the network's database, initiated by Thibaud Lebouvier, Florence Pasquier and Mélanie Leroy, in order to increase the characterization of  patients with FTLD. Within the network, FTLD represents 2.6% of cognitive neurodegeneration diseases. Compared with AD, patients with a language or behavioural variant FTD has a longer diagnosis wandering, are diagnosed with more delay, and receive more anti-depressive, anxiolytic and anti-psychotic treatments, while having an overall similar progression. 

https://alzres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13195-020-00753-9

Invited by "La Revue de Neuropsychologie" to write an editorial "Point of view" on emotions, Maxime mentions the transition, in the psychological field, between neo-Darwinist and constructivist theories of emotions. Without coming back to John Locke's tabula rasa, we progressively admit that culture plays a role in our perception of emotions.

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03032114/document 

The first work from the International Network on Social Cognition Disorders (INSCD) is now available in preprint! We, 57 researchers from the network, compared the social cognition performance from people originating from WEIRD and non WEIRD (Western Educated Industrialized Rich & Democratic) countries, within a large multicentric international study. We observed major differences across countries, explaining >20% of the total variance retrieved in two widely used social cognition tests, even after controlling for age, gender, education and language differences. Beyond interpreting these differences retrieved, we discuss the problem of universalism and overgeneralization of findings in neurosciences.

https://psyarxiv.com/tg2ay/ 

Since Darwin, it is generally admitted that emotions are distinct, innate and universal biological experiences. But the recent development of a constructivist vision of emotions, notably by Lisa F Barrett & Kristen Lindquist's work, has allow a revision of this theory. Maybe emotions are psychological states that enrich themselves during the entire lifespan, according to our experience and our environment? We tried to answer this question by the neuropsychological and neuroimaging assessment of a rare disease: the semantic variant of frontotemporal degeneration, characterised by a disintegration of conceptual knowledge. We observed an impairment in the recognition of emotions, some valence errors as well as a memory loss of emotional concepts. In addition, we revealed tight links between these dysfunctions, correlated to the joint role of a common neural "affective" and "semantic" network in the brain. We bring, in Brain, another evidence of the constructivist vision of emotions. To recognize an emotion implies the remembering of the meaning that we attribute to it. 

https://academic.oup.com/brain/advance-article/doi/10.1093/brain/awaa313/5998326?searchresult=1

This is what seems to be established since the last twenty years, which greatly facilitated the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease and its global recognition in media and the general public. We however wanted to answer this clinical question, by confronting the amnesia to the highest level of diagnosis certainty: the analysis of brain pathology. Our study, a national collaboration across the hospital of Paris Pitié-Salpêtrière, Marseille La Timone, Bordeaux, Rouen and Nantes, as well as the national brain bank Neuro CEB, shows a limited correspondence between amnesia and Alzheimer pathology in the brain.  Briefly, 1 patient out of 3 with Alzheimer's disease has no amnesia in the earliest stages of their diseases (without having an atypical presentation) and, by contrast, 1 out of 2 patients without Alzheimer's disease present with a moderate to severe amnesia. In conclusion, amnesia, when considered as an isolated symptom, does not allow to accurately orient the diagnosis. This has important consequences as the other neurodegenerative diseases are currently overlooked, under diagnosed, and less known from the general public and media. Our paper insists (1) on forgetting this simplistic clinical heuristic associating amnesia to Alzheimer, (2) on the necessity to perform a multidisciplinary and expert assessment, (3) on replacing the medical screening test for memory (i.e. 5 words) by a complete neuropsychological assessment, (4) and finally on the importance of brain donation to advance research.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2020.07.011

Coordinated by Vincent Florent, the LEPTOB study takes place at the hospital of Arras. The SCANN team delivered its expertise to design a specific cognitive assessment related to the topic of the study, who target the role of leptin, an hormone involved in the regulation of appetite within the brain, in a population of people with obesity. The study aims to see if Metformin, a treatment generally used in diabetes, allows to re-establish the circulation of leptin in the brain. A specialized neuropsychological testing as well as MRI examinations will help to achieve this aim.

SCANN is a parter of BioWATCH, the ERC funded research program of Vincent Prévot, within a clinical phase supervised by Thibaud Lebouvier. Never heard of tanycytes? Well, same for us before. Tanycytes are specialised brain cells taking care of the transport between the median eminence of the hypothalamus and the cerebrospinal fluid. Tanycytes are thought to be essential for metabolic hormones to access the brain. Mechanisms such as hunger and satiety depend of this good transport.  The study explore the possibility that this transport function is impaired in Alzheimer's disease and Frontotemporal degeneration, and if it plays any role in the eating disorders frequently reported in the last disease. The role of SCANN  was to design a specialised cognitive battery focused on reward processing, affective cognition and decision making, to explore other factors that could be at play in eating disorders. 

The fourth seminary of the InterUniversity Degree on Alzheimer's disease and Associated Disorders, focused on frontotemporal degeneration, is cancelled due to the covid-19 situation. Therefore, Maxime's course on social cognition is cancelled. 

François will give the conference : "What is social cognition? Theory and Practice" at the 6th Meeting Researchers-Clinicians in Neuropsychology, organized by the l'University of Lille (SCALAB & Master PPNSA). He will present some preliminary results from the national enquiry about social cognition, and other, more advanced, results that you definitely want to see ! Register online !

With the Organisation Française des Psychologues spécialisé·e·s en Neuropsychologie, our team officially starts the national enquiry targetting neuropsychologists and grad-students in neuropsychology, to assess the knowledge, belief and practice in social cognition. You'll be able to follow the results on our website later, before their publication.  

SCANN is partner of the CAFCA study, led by Thibaud Lebouvier and David Blum, aiming to study the effect of caffeine on the cognitive functioning of patients with Alzheimer's disease at a mild to moderate stage. Known to increase attentional functioning, caffeine has been tested in mouse models so far, with key results on regulating the corticotropic axis, dis-regulated in ageing and Alzheimer's disease. Rather than testing memory through word lists, as usual, we designed an assessment of social & affective aspects of memory.

What do you find between the gyri of the brain? Sulci! In a new study, Maxime and the teams from the CEA and Sainte-Anne Paris Hospital, showed that a widening of sulci and a diminution of cortical thickness in temporal and parietal sulci are characteristics of Alzheimer's disease. Sensitive to the severity of the disease, these morphological alterations are also correlated with the cognitive decline. In this "proof of concept" study, we showed the potential of brain sulci's morphological data extraction methods in the diagnosis prediction, follow-up and personalized medicine in neurodegeneration.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2019.07.015

Maxime paired with Andreas Johnen, a German neuropsychologist, to discuss practical difficulties and scientific, psychological and medical controversies relevant to the diagnosis of behavioural FTD. More than a diagnosis guide, we discussed the overlap between neurology and psychiatry, the last development about social cognition in the field, the interest of apraxia and interoception, as well as the principal challenges of modern neuropsychology in the field of neurodegeneration.

https://doi.org/10.3389/fneur.2019.00594

The Master thesis of Justine Piquet led to the creation of a Mooc on social cognition for speech-therapists. The video has been put online on the University website. Through a questionnaire, Justine has assessed the knowledge of speech-therapists about social cognition, notably in neurodegeneration, before and after the Mooc.