Aims

- to introduce to the developmental pathology linked to a brain dysfunctioning appearing at birth or during infancy and distorting specifically some dimensions of the cognitive functioning.
- to introduce to the behavioural and cognitive consequences of the pathology of senescence: senile and pre-senile dementias.

Main themes

- introduction to the various theoretical frames related to the neurobiology of the cognitive development (current trends on the brain plasticity and maturation and role of the experience in the development; to present the important developmental pathologies: congenital and developmental aphasia, deficiency of laterality, syndroms of attention deficit, of Turner, of Williams, etc.)
- introduction to the neuropsychology of presenile and senile dementias, by the presentation of degenerative (dementia of Pick and of Alzheimer), artheriopatic, cortical and subcortical syndroms of dementia. Elements allowing the cognitive analysis of the disorders, their diagnosis and their clinic evaluation. Some epidemiologic data should also be given.

Content and teaching methods

First part : child neuropsychology : this course tackles the cognitive deficiencies observed in children. The question of the specificity of developmental neuropsychology is presented namely through the questions of the brain plasticity and of the modularity of the systems in young children.
Detailed presentation of the cognitive disorders met in various contexts: psychiatric disorders (autism), learning difficulties (acalculia), developmental disorders (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), genetic syndrome (syndrome of Williams, etc...)

Second part : cognitive ageing :
- the course first describes the changes related to normal ageing in the field of memory, attention and language. It then presents the interpretations of these changes proposed in cognitive psychology (hypothesis of a decline of the working memory, of the inhibition skills and general slowdown) and in neuropsychology (hypothesis of a frontal deficiency).
- the course then describes the expressions of pathological ageing (diagnosis and typology of the dementias) and presents the analyses of the Alzheimer disease from a cognitive neuropsychological point of view.

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