[Skin contact as a first experience. From touching to caressing].

This article consists of a review and a report on work carried out in the Laboratory of Developmental Neuropsychology of the Collège de France. Are considered: 1) Ethological and psychoanalytical concepts. 2) The role of the skin in the evolution of the infant-mother relationship during the foetal, neonate and first years of life.

[Wanting a child].

To want a child and to want to have a child are notions receiving renewed interest ever since the generalization of contraception and even more recently, the new methods of procreation. These two notions are compared and tested against biological data across historical, psychoanalytic and sociological works. A brief resume of research done with mothers of newborns underlines the ambiguity and the complex and dynamic character of the question.

[The glider. Postural kinetic behavior during the pre-locomotor period in infants].

Soaring movements-in an opisthotonic posture-which appear between 3 and 10 months when the infant is in a prone position, have been observed with cinematographic recordings. This is a postural and kinetic activity which takes place during the first year's development; i is a transitional stage leading to intentional propulsive movements. This activity may become a repetitive one for some children, especially between 4 and 7 months; at this peak period, it takes on an unusual aspect, not only because of the "aerial" attitude but also because of the rhythmicity of the postural changes which characterize it.

[Syndrome of senile dementia with dilatation of the cerebral ventricles without other lesions (apropos of 18 observations anatomo-clinical)].

Study of 18 anatomo-clinical observations with dilatation of the cerebral ventricles (without vascular, degenerative or other cerebral lesions), and neuropsychiatric syydrome during the senile period of life. In the morphological and pathogenetic point of view, for one half of these cases a traumatic, microhemorrhagic, or inflammatory aetiology could be taken into consideration; for the other half, the hydrocephalus could be considered as idiopathic.

The concept of akinesia.

The concept of akinesia deserves to be looked at again in the light of recent work on Parkinsonism, particularly those findings which have resulted from the use of L-dopa in Parkinsonian syndromes. Akinesia and bradykinesia are integral parts of such syndromes, at times even constituting their essential element. Akinesia belongs to a group of psychomotor syndromes, the semiology and pathogenesis of which were the subject of numerous discussions at the beginning of this century.