Publications

This paper investigates the advantage of using the kinematic theory of rapid human movements as a complementary approach to those based on classical dynamical features to characterize and analyze kindergarten children's ability to engage in graphomotor activities as a preparation for handwriting learning. This study analyzes nine different movements taken from 48 children evenly distributed among three different school grades corresponding to pupils aged 3, 4, and 5 years. On the one hand, our results show that the ability to perform graphomotor activities depends on kindergarten grades. More importantly, this study shows which performance criteria, from sophisticated neuromotor modeling as well as more classical kinematic parameters, can differentiate children of different school grades. These criteria provide a valuable tool for studying children's graphomotor control learning strategies. On the other hand, from a practical point of view, it is observed that school grades do not clearly reflect pupils' graphomotor performances. This calls for a large-scale investigation, using a more efficient experimental design based on the various observations made throughout this study regarding the choice of the graphic shapes, the number of repetitions and the features to analyze.

Memory consolidation is associated with sleep physiology but the contribution of specific sleep stages remains controversial. To clarify the contribution of REM sleep, participants were administered two REM sleep-sensitive tasks to determine if associated changes occurred only in REM sleep. Twenty-two participants (7 men) were administered the Corsi Block Tapping and Tower of Hanoi tasks prior to and again after a night of sleep. Task improvers and non-improvers were compared for sleep structure, sleep spindles, and dream recall. Control participants (N = 15) completed the tasks twice during the day without intervening sleep. Overnight Corsi Block improvement was associated with more REM sleep whereas Tower of Hanoi improvement was associated with more N2 sleep. Corsi Block improvement correlated positively with %REM sleep and Tower of Hanoi improvement with %N2 sleep. Post-hoc analyses suggest Tower of Hanoi effects-but not Corsi Block effects-are due to trait differences. Sleep spindle density was associated with Tower of Hanoi improvement whereas spindle amplitude correlated with Corsi Block improvement. Number of REM awakenings for dream reporting (but not dream recall per se) was associated with Corsi Block, but not Tower of Hanoi, improvement but was confounded with REM sleep time. This non-replication of one of 2 REM-sensitive task effects challenges both 'dual-process' and 'sequential' or 'sleep organization' models of sleep-dependent learning and points rather to capacity limitations on REM sleep. Experimental awakenings for sampling dream mentation may not perturb sleep-dependent learning effects; they may even enhance them.

To investigate differences in sleep spindle properties and scalp topography between patients with rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder (RBD) and healthy controls, whole-night polysomnograms of 35 patients diagnosed with RBD and 35 healthy control subjects matched for age and sex were compared. Recordings included a 19-lead 10-20 electroencephalogram montage and standard electromyogram, electrooculogram, electrocardiogram and respiratory leads. Sleep spindles were automatically detected using a standard algorithm, and their characteristics (amplitude, duration, density, frequency and frequency slope) compared between groups. Topological analyses of group-discriminative features were conducted. Sleep spindles occurred at a significantly (e.g. t34 = -4.49; P = 0.00008 for C3) lower density (spindles ∙ min(-1) ) for RBD (mean ± SD: 1.61 ± 0.56 for C3) than for control (2.19 ± 0.61 for C3) participants. However, when distinguishing slow and fast spindles using thresholds individually adapted to the electroencephalogram spectrum of each participant, densities smaller (31-96%) for fast but larger (20-120%) for slow spindles were observed in RBD in all derivations. Maximal differences were in more posterior regions for slow spindles, but over the entire scalp for fast spindles. Results suggest that the density of sleep spindles is altered in patients with RBD and should therefore be investigated as a potential marker of future neurodegeneration in these patients.