[Human interaction, social cognition, and the superior temporal sulcus].

Human beings are social animals. This ability to live together is ensured by cognitive functions, the neuroanatomical bases of which are starting to be unraveled by MRI-based studies. The regions and network engaged in this process are known as the "social brain ".

Towards a new functional assessment of autistic dysfunction in children with developmental disorders: the Behaviour Function Inventory.

In order to assess particular disorders of psychological development and functioning in children with developmental disorders, we have developed a new tool, the Behaviour Function Inventory (BFI), based on 11 neurophysiological functions, disorders of which are considered to contribute to the core autistic syndrome. This article reports the reliability and validity study of this new scale. Factorial analysis computed on the 55 initial items identified six main dimensions which we characterized and labelled: interaction dysfunction, praxis dysfunction, auditory dysfunction, attention dysfunction, islet of ability and emotional dysfunction.

[Further clinical evaluations elicited by functional biological investigations in childhood autism].

As childhood autism is usually considered as a developmental disorder, complete assessment of each patient requires non only clinical examination but various biological investigations: EEG and evoked potentials recordings, biochemical dosages and sometimes, cerebral blood flow measures, molecular biologic explorations...

[Latent imitation of human movements presented on a videoscopic screen, disclosed by electroencephalographic mapping in the spectator].

Trend to imitate human movement is studied here by EEG mapping. The effects of three kinds of situations are compared: a movement on a TV screen is presented to the subject; a movement is realized by the experimenter in front of the subject; the subject is asked to perform a movement. These three situations elicited important modifications in alpha 1 rhythms over the centroparietal area of the scalp.

Validation of the Revised Behavior Summarized Evaluation Scale.

The Behavioral Summarized Evaluation scale (BSE), previously published and validated, was developed for the evaluation for the autistic behavior in developmentally disorder children. A revised version of this scale, the Revised Behavior Summarized Evaluation Scale (BSE-R) completed the 20-item BSE scale with the most relevant items extracted from a similar evaluation carried out with very young children. Thus 9 items were added to the original scale concerning nonverbal communication, emotional, and perception areas.