Utilisation de l’électrophysiologie dans l’étude du développement des capacités d’intégration audiovisuelle du nourrisson à l’âge adulte

An abundant litterature documents the benefits associated to multisensory integration in adults as well as brain mechanisms underlying these skills. However, numerous questions regarding the development of multisensory integration during childhood remain unanswered and there is no consensus among animal data in addition to behavioral, electrophysiological and neuroimaging studies conducted in humans wether these skills are innate or acquired. The first objective of this thesis is to review the literature on the development of multisensory integration capacities. This review, which will constitute the first article of this thesis, presents neuronal and behavioral studies in favour of the nature or nurture character of multisensory integration mechanisms. This review suggests that the capacity to detect and form multisensory associations begins very early in development, but that the ability to integrate multisensory information in an optimal manner is a progressive process that continues to develop over childhood and adolescence. This work has also allowed us to better target the gaps in the existing literature related to the neuronal development of integration capacities, with special emphasis on the integration of non linguistic audiovisual information. Thus, to date no electrophysiological study has yet address the developmental progression of audiovisual integration capacities in infants and preschool children. This ascertainment has justified the conduct of the experimental study presented in the second article with the aim of characterizing the neurotypical developmental progression of non linguistic audiovisual information integration mecanisms as early as 3 months of age to adulthood. This research is also aimed at confirming the age when audiovisual integration mechanisms, on the one hand, begin to operate in a similar fashion than adults and, on the other hand, reach their full maturity. For these purposes, we have conducted an experimental iv study. Here, we undertook a cross-sectional experimental investigation on a large cohort of 121 neurotypical individuals using high-density electrophysiology more specifically through time-frequency analysis. Our study revealed the presence of precursors of audiovisual integration in children as young as two years of age. Moreover, our results indicate that 11- to 14-year-old adolescents start to integrate this information in an adult-like manner, but that audiovisual integration mechanisms reach their full maturity late throughout adolescence between the age of 15 and 17 years. This study supports the literature regarding the progressive emergence of the capacities to integrate audiovisual information, documents the developmental progression of these capacities and answers the absence of literature on the neuronal processes of audiovisual integration in infants and preschool children. Overall, this thesis provides a better understanding of the development of audiovisual integration mechanisms and provides a benchmark to investigate these processes in children with neurodevelopmental disorders often accompanied with sensory impairments.

Keyphrases: audition, vision, ondelettes, Multisensory integration, Audiovisual integration, Electrophysiology, Wavelets, Neurotypical development, Neurodevelopmental disorders