INC Open Mind Seminar Series
Friday, December 14, 2012 at 11:00 am
Salle des Conférences (R229), Centre Universitaire des Saints-Pères, 45 rue des Saints-Pères, 75006 Paris
Ghislaine Dehaene-Lambertz, INSERM U992, Neurospin/CEA, Saclay
Nature and Nurture in language acquisition: Anatomical and functional brain-imaging studies in infants
The first months of life are the “terra incognita” of our knowledge on child development. Although research in psychology showed that the child is the prime actor of his learning from the first days of life on, we have difficult access to what the child of this age thinks, feels, and learns. Thanks to the development of non invasive brain imaging techniques, we can now study the cerebral bases of infant cognition. I will present studies combining structural and functional brain imaging techniques to understand what are the main features of the human infant brain that can explain language learning.