Thèse

Supervisors
- Céline SOUCHAY - celine.souchayuniv-grenoble-alpes.fr (celine[dot]souchay[at]univ-grenoble-alpes[dot]fr) -
- Aïna CHALABAEV - aina.chalabaevuniv-grenoble-alpes.fr (aina[dot]chalabaev[at]univ-grenoble-alpes[dot]fr) -
- Estelle PALLUEL  - estelle.pallueluniv-grenoble-alpes.fr (estelle[dot]palluel[at]univ-grenoble-alpes[dot]fr) -

Keywords : Metacognition,Judgments,Motricity,

• Read more about Thesis Lise BRUN

Supervisors :
Benoit LEMAIRE benoit.lemaireuniv-grenoble-alpes.fr (benoit[dot]lemaire[at]univ-grenoble-alpes[dot]fr)
Sophie PORTRAT sophie.portratuniv-grenoble-alpes.fr (sophie[dot]portrat[at]univ-grenoble-alpes[dot]fr) (Co-encadrant)

Keywords : computational modeling,working memory,cognitive aging,experimental psychology,

• Read more about Thesis Inès LEPROULT

This doctoral research program will overlap the social sciences with the neurosciences. In short, the candidate will study metacognitive experiences, aimed at understanding the patterns of development and decline of metacognition with age. We will use methods of experimental psychology, including face-to-face and internet testing, and will aim to use neuropsychological and neurophysiological methods (electroencephalogram) in the last part of the thesis.
Metacognition is defined as the higher level processes that allow us to
control and monitor our cognitive function. Recently, research on metacognition has opened up new understandings of consciousness: focusing on how we are aware of our memory, or perception. In Grenoble, and at the LPNC, there is a concentration researchers working in this field, in particular applied to memory. In an experiment typical, we ask our participants to report their conscious assessment of their own performance and then we use these ratings as data. A simple example is ask people to make a decision, then ask them how well they are confident in their answer (on a percentage scale). These measures of certainty revealed a network in the prefrontal cortex that is responsible for metacognition: a part of the brain that monitors the processes involved. In general, human beings are capable of knowing their own capabilities: they perform better on decisions they are more confident about. But this metacognitive precision decreases with age (for some tasks but not all) and
develops relatively late.
Metacognition is not just these kinds of conscious judgments or evaluations. Those are also spontaneous feelings, like having “a word on the tip of the tongue”, or the phenomenon of already seen. This thesis will focus on the measurement and analysis of these experiences, which we qualify as spontaneous. How do these experiences change with age? When do they appear in the child development? Do they involve the same processes as metacognitive measures
existing ones, and can we integrate them into the existing theory? Our hypothesis is that when there has a problem or error in the human cognitive system, these experiences are generated to signal to awareness that there is a problem (a recovery failure in the word on the end of the language; or over-activation of familiarity in déjà vu). These are metacognitive sensations
automatic and 'mandatory'. The phenomenon of the word on the tip of the tongue has been frequently studied in the laboratory, but more as a linguistic failure rather than as a metacognitive experience. The thesis will begin with this
phenomenon, because it was found to be relatively easy to produce in the laboratory by asking questions of relatively difficult general knowledge, for example. The idea is to produce a panorama of these experiments using a mixed-method experimental psychology approach, which is in the direct continuity of Chris Moulin's project supported by the Institut Universitaire de France
“Memory and Subjectivity”. The candidate will acquire up-to-date skills and we will learn from them also a lot about those unusual and infrequent spontaneous metacognitive experiences that automatically come into our mind, but tell us something about the current state of cognitive system.

Supervisors :
- Christopher MOULIN - christopher.moulinuniv-grenoble-alpes.fr (christopher[dot]moulin[at]univ-grenoble-alpes[dot]fr)
- Céline SOUCHAY - celine.souchayuniv-grenoble-alpes.fr (celine[dot]souchay[at]univ-grenoble-alpes[dot]fr)

Mots-clés de la thèse : spontaneous,developmental,metacognitive,

• Read more about Thesis Gull ZAREEN

Many older people without a medical diagnosis struggle in their daily lives and worry about their memory, perhaps due to prevalent stereotypes rather than any real deficit. The key issue in such a population is their capacity to judge whether they really have memory difficulties, which is captured in the scientific study of metacognition. This thesis project aims to 1- highlight how metacognition can be modified by memory interventions, 2- test the benefits of three potentially complementary interventions on memory complaints by assessing their benefits on cognitive functioning, metacognition, quality of life and self-esteem. Three interventions over 8 weeks will be tested on three different groups of individuals with a pre-post assessment to measure the intra-group impact and the differential impact of each intervention between groups. An additional active control group will watch films. Post-test data will be collected immediately after the end of the interventions, 6 months later, and 1 year later. This project will determine the role of metacognition in memory complaints, which is a critical issue for professionals, and propose interventions that have been tested for effectiveness.

Supervisors :
- Christopher MOULIN - christopher.moulinuniv-grenoble-alpes.fr (christopher[dot]moulin[at]univ-grenoble-alpes[dot]fr) -
- Sophie PORTRAT - sophie.portratuniv-grenoble-alpes.fr (sophie[dot]portrat[at]univ-grenoble-alpes[dot]fr)

Keywords : Metacognition,Working memory,Aging,Prevention,Cognitive decline,Cognitive stimulation,

• Read more about Thesis Giovanny LAU

This project explores retrieval of the life story (autobiographical memory). It focusses on a key cognitive process: metacognition, so far never measured in autobiographical memory retrieval. We ask whether people can accurately judge the veracity of what they retrieve from their life story. We centre on one simple, elegant task which examines the ability to recall the order in which two events occurred, comparing how well people perform on this task with how well they think they have performed on this task. We will apply this method to older adults, with the aim of ultimately increasing wellbeing in our aging society; and to people with depression, who are known to have difficulties with retrieving memories from their life stories

Encadrants :
Céline SOUCHAY celine.souchayuniv-grenoble-alpes.fr (celine[dot]souchay[at]univ-grenoble-alpes[dot]fr)
Andrea TALES a.talesswansea.ac.uk (a[dot]tales[at]swansea[dot]ac[dot]uk) (Codirection)
Claire BARNES c.m.barnesswansea.ac.uk (c[dot]m[dot]barnes[at]swansea[dot]ac[dot]uk) (Co-encadrant)

Keywords : Autobiographical Memory,Metacognition,Depression,Aging,

• Read more about Thesis Fabien CARRERAS

Auditory verbal hallucinations characterise a large proportion of patients with schizophrenia. Their origin is thought to be due to a failure of internal language, and more specifically of its predictive control, leading to a loss of agentivity. The dysfunction, which disrupts the activity of the language connectome, is thought to involve the left inferior frontal gyrus. The overall aim of this thesis project is, on the one hand, to provide a better description of the neural dynamics of auditory verbal hallucinations and, on the other, to envisage a neurofeedback treatment based on these neural dynamics and on previous research carried out on healthy participants. In the first phase of this thesis, before looking at hallucinations, we are assessing the neural dynamics and brain correlates of language, and more specifically of internal language (endophasia) in healthy adults, using neurophysiological methods (sEEG and MEG).

Supervisor :
Monica BACIU Monica.Baciuuniv-grenoble-alpes.fr (Monica[dot]Baciu[at]univ-grenoble-alpes[dot]fr), Directrice de thèse

Keywords : language, inner speech, connectomics, language, neurocognition, neurophysiology, sEEG, MEG, hallucinations

• Read more about Thesis Taisha DONNELLY

This PhD project will evaluate the effect of Motor Imagery (MI) on language comprehension. A coupling of language and motor processes has been established and studies proposed that this relation was involved during the semantic access. In this vein, similar brain network was observed during actual action execution and during comprehension of action verbally described. Moreover, studies in the motor cognition field showed that actual action execution and action imagination recruit similar brain regions and also that MI improve behavioural motor performances. Therefore, we hypothesize that by MI-training we could improve language comprehension performances and also prevent for language deficits. Indeed, we suggest that MI-training was an effective way to enhance motor function and subsequently facilitate semantic access during language comprehension. These questions will be evaluated using behavioural and non-invasive neurstimulation protocols.

Supervisors :
Marcela PERRONE-BERTOLOTTI -  marcela.perrone-bertolottiuniv-grenoble-alpes.fr (marcela[dot]perrone-bertolotti[at]univ-grenoble-alpes[dot]fr)
Sylvain HARQUEL - sylvain.harqueluniv-grenoble-alpes.fr (sylvain[dot]harquel[at]univ-grenoble-alpes[dot]fr) -

Keywords : motor imagery,language,TMS,cognition,cognitif training,action verbs,

• Read more about Thesis Mariam BAYRAM

Supervisors :
- Hélène LOEVENBRUCK - helene.loevenbruckuniv-grenoble-alpes.fr (helene[dot]loevenbruck[at]univ-grenoble-alpes[dot]fr)
- Anne VILAIN - anne.vilaingipsa-lab.grenoble-inp.fr (anne[dot]vilain[at]gipsa-lab[dot]grenoble-inp[dot]fr)

Keywords : spoken language,cochlear implant,children,speech perception,speech production,

• Read more about Thesis Lucie VAN BOGAERT

Nowadays, in Morocco, the lack of Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, adapted to the morrocan children, makes the neuropsychologists use the French norm when doing the WISC V. The results always show a biase due to the scale, because we observe high average gap between French and Morrocan children results. It is likely that those differences don’t reflect reality.
When the scores distribution between populations of different origins have such a big gap, it is natural to ask the socio-cultural objectivity of the study. The psychometrical evaluations come from a research tradition, which reflects the specific cultural needs and expectations. Indeed, the different cultures define the cognitive abilities according their own political, ecological and social requirements. According the culture, certain abilities can be privileged, and be reinforced. Therefore, the comparison of cognitive abilities between different populations needs, for the evaluation, the sampling of representative population, adapted to the culture of the evaluated people.
Our project aim is to study the sociocultural factors, explaining the performance gap in intelligence tests, between Morrocan and French children. Particularly, we will focuse on the use of the WISW V which is the most used in psychology. The final goal is to develop a tool for intelligence evaluation, adapted to Morrocan children and useful to neuropsychologists.

Supervisors :
- Marie-Line BOSSE- Marie-line.Bosseuniv-grenoble-alpes.fr (Marie-line[dot]Bosse[at]univ-grenoble-alpes[dot]fr)
- Jean-Luc ROULIN - jean-luc.roulinuniv-savoie.fr (jean-luc[dot]roulin[at]univ-savoie[dot]fr)

Keywords  : WISC V,Intelligence,Psychometry,Measurement bias,Intercultural differences,Socio-cultural factors,

• Read more about Thesis Hayat SABRI

The integration of multimodal data to decipher the neural processes and networks underlying cognition and behavior is a major challenge in cognitive neuroscience. This is associated with a current paradigm shift with neurocognitive models considering that human behaviors are enabled by complex interactions between cognitive functions. The fusion (integration) of multimodal data could not only compensate for the limitations of each modality, but also detect features that are intrinsically multimodal.
Objectives and research program. This research work is at crossroads between language and declarative memory and addresses the question of their interactive union in a multimodal and integrative perspective, with artificial intelligence methods. The project will have two dimensions, neurocognitive and neurocomputational. On the neurocognitive level, the objective is to validate and enrich this new theoretical framework LuM (language-union-memory) that we have recently developed (Roger et al., 2022) and which consists in considering that language and memory are two inseparable functions and that their evaluation must be done in an interactive joint way, rather than in isolation. The project will also have a transcognitive dimension and try to explore this framework in normal and pathological settings. On the neuro-computational side, we will use several analysis methods (unsupervised machine learning, graph theory and deep learning) for multimodal fusion and develop transfer learning in the framework of deep learning AI. Multimodal biomarkers (neuropsychology, functional and anatomical neuroimaging) have been acquired in our previous work.

Supervisors :
Monica BACIU Monica.Baciuuniv-grenoble-alpes.fr (Monica[dot]Baciu[at]univ-grenoble-alpes[dot]fr)
Martial MERMILLOD martial.mermilloduniv-grenoble-alpes.fr (martial[dot]mermillod[at]univ-grenoble-alpes[dot]fr) (Codirection)

Keywords : Language,Memory,Cross-cognitive Modeling,Cognitive Neuroscience,Computational Neuroscience,

• Read more about Thesis Clément GUICHET