How do we, as humans, manage to perceive and produce temporal sequences, such as speech sentences or musical phrases, with such timing precision? How does this capacity for rhythmic sensorimotor processing shape our behavior and our social world? Those are the big questions that our research team addresses.
Welcome!
Who We Are
We are a research team hosted at the Institut des Sciences du Sports Santé (I3SP), in Paris Cité University. We are mainly supported by Interact, a three-year French National Research Agency (ANR) Junior grant awarded to Valentin Bégel.
Currently, the team is composed of Valentin Bégel (Principal Investigator, Associate Professor at Paris Cité University), two PhD students, Émilie Zhu and Yanis Zaoui, three Masters’ student, Lea Hitti, Capucine Kuta and Elena Fontaine, and Research Assistants from Sport Sciences, Psychology, Neuroscience and Speech Therapy. We are collaborating with national and international academic and industrial partners.
What We Do
We investigate how auditory sensorimotor skills shape humans’ motor, cognitive, and social behavior.
Overall, our translational approach aims at i) explaining basic sensorimotor and cognitive mechanisms of auditory processing and ii) using music for education and rehabilitation.
Our research focuses on determining how we use auditory information to make temporal predictions and exploit them to adapt our movement to a constantly changing, dynamical environment in various contexts, such as music, social interactions, and physical activities. We combine motor, cognitive, physiological and neuroimaging assessments, and we use cutting-edge analysis methods, such as dynamical system modeling tools and machine learning techniques, to pinpoint complex mechanisms involved in temporal auditory processing at the behavioral, physiological, and neurophysiological levels. We also develop sensorimotor training tools based on music and rhythmic stimulation for education and rehabilitation. Implemented in video games and virtual reality, these training tools are designed to boost motor, cognitive and social skills in children and adults with and without developmental (reading and speech disorders, attentional disorders) and neurological (Parkinson’s Disease) conditions.