Anne-Lise Pitel

University of Caen Normandy | UNICAEN · UFR de Psychologie

Background Theoretical and empirical contributions have identified insula as key in addiction. However, anatomical modifications of the insula in addictive states, and their variations across substance use disorders (SUDs), remain to be specifically explored. We therefore explored the specificities and commonalities of insula gray matter (GM) alter...

The thalamus has a key role in mediating cortical-subcortical interactions but is often neglected in neuroimaging studies, which mostly focus on changes in cortical structure and activity. One of the main reasons for the thalamus being overlooked is that the delineation of individual thalamic nuclei via neuroimaging remains controversial. Indeed, n...

Alcohol use disorder is a chronic disease characterized by an inappropriate pattern of drinking, resulting in negative consequences for the individual's physical, mental and social health. Korsakoff's syndrome is a complication of alcohol use disorder and is characterized by severe memory and executive deficits. The fronto-cerebellar and Papez circ...

Background Psychoeducation constitutes a routine therapeutic practice in most treatment settings for severe alcohol use disorder (sAUD). This technique is considered an efficient way to help patients to learn more about their disease and achieve therapeutic objectives. However, this approach capitalizes on three untested assumptions: namely, that (...

The Cerebral Cortex and Thalamus is guided by two central and related tenets, the thalamus plays an ongoing and essential role in cortical functioning, and the cortex is essential for thalamic functioning. Accordingly, neither the cortex nor the thalamus can be understood in any meaningful way in the absence of the other. With chapters written by m...

Many patients with substance use disorders (SUDs) present cognitive deficits, which are associated with clinical outcomes. Neuropsychological remediation might help rehabilitate cognitive functions in these populations, hence improving treatment effectiveness. Nardo and colleagues (Neuropsychology Review, 32, 161–191, 2022) reviewed 32 studies appl...

Functional neuroimaging has demonstrated the key role played by the insula in severe alcohol use disorder (sAUD), notably through its involvement in craving and body signals processing. However, the anatomical counterpart of these functional modifications in sAUD patients with and without neurological complications remains largely unexplored, espec...

In healthy populations, visual abilities are characterized by a faster and more efficient processing of global features in a stimulus compared to local ones. This phenomenon is known as the global precedence effect (GPE), which is demonstrated by (1) a global advantage, resulting in faster response times for global features than local features and...

Background: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Korsakoff’s syndrome (KS) are two major neurocognitive disorders characterized by amnesia but AD is degenerative while KS is not. The objective is to compare regional volume deficits within the Papez circuit in AD and KS, considering AD progression. Methods: 18 KS patients, 40 AD patients (20 with Moderate A...

Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) results in sleep disturbances that may have deleterious impacts on cognition, especially on memory. However, little is known about the sleep architecture in patients with Korsakoff’s syndrome (KS). This study aims at characterizing sleep disturbances in KS compared to AUD without KS and at specifying the relationships wit...

Transient global amnesia is characterized by the sudden apparition of severe episodic amnesia, mainly anterograde, associated with emotional changes. Even though the symptoms are stereotyped, cerebral mechanism underlying transient global amnesia remains unexplained and previous studies using positron emission tomography do not show any clear resul...

Sleep plays a crucial role in memory consolidation. Recent data in rodents and young adults revealed that fast spindle band power fluctuates at a 0.02-Hz infraslow scale during non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. These fluctuations result from a periodic temporal clustering of spindles and may modulate sleep maintenance and memory consolidation. W...

This study aims to specify the determinants of low-risk alcohol drinking and relapse at different time points after detoxification in patients with severe alcohol use disorder (AUD). Fifty-four patients with AUD and 36 healthy controls (HC) were evaluated early in abstinence (T1). They underwent clinical, neuropsychological and neuroimaging (struct...

Background Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) is an important clinical outcome in Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) and is considered as a relevant indicator of treatment success. While a better understanding of the factors affecting HRQoL would enable to adjust patients’ care to favour treatment outcome, the determinants of HRQoL in AUD remain unclea...

Objectives To compare regional volume deficits within the Papez circuit in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Korsakoff’s syndrome (KS), taking into account the neurodegenerative nature of AD. Methods 18 KS patients, 40 AD patients (20 with Moderate AD (MAD) matched on cognitive deterioration with KS patients and 20 with Severe AD (SAD)), and 70 healthy...

Alcohol use is a leading cause of mortality, brain morbidity, neurological complications and minor to major neurocognitive disorders. Alcohol-related neurocognitive disorders are consecutive to the direct effect of chronic and excessive alcohol use, but not only. Indeed, patients with severe alcohol use disorders (AUD) associated with pharmacologic...

Aims: To assess recovery of alcohol-related neuropsychological deficits in a group of patients with pure severe alcohol use disorder (AUD) during a detoxification program using the Brief Evaluation of Alcohol-Related Neuropsychological Impairment (BEARNI) test. Methods: Thirty-two patients with severe AUD using DSM-IV criteria (24 men, mean age =...

Chronic and excessive alcohol consumption can result in alcohol use disorder (AUD) without neurological complications and in Korsakoff's syndrome (KS) when combined with thiamine deficiency. These two clinical forms are accompanied by widespread structural brain damage in both the fronto‐cerebellar (FCC) and Papez circuits (PC) as well as in the pa...

Face au vieillissement de la population, il est nécessaire de mettre en place des politiques de prévention visant à maintenir les personnes âgées en bonne santé et à favoriser leur autonomie. La consommation d’alcool est un facteur de risque évitable de dégradation de l’état de santé et de perte d’autonomie sur lequel il est possible d’agir par des...

Background: Trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) and indoxyl sulfate (IS) are produced by the microbiota and the liver, and can contribute to brain aging and impaired cognitive function. This study aims to examine serum TMAO and IS concentrations in patients with alcohol-use disorder (AUD) at the entry for alcohol withdrawal, and the relationships with s...

Introduction et but de l’étude Le trimethylamine-N-oxyde (TMAO) est une molécule issue du métabolisme par le microbiote intestinal de différents micronutriments tels que la bétaïne, la choline ou la carnitine. Des modèles expérimentaux murins semblent montrer que des concentrations élevées de cette molécule pourrait être responsable d’un vieillisse...

Background. Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) is an important clinical outcome in Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) and is considered as a relevant indicator of treatment success. While a better understanding of the factors affecting HRQoL would enable to adjust patients’ care to favour treatment outcome, the determinants of HRQoL in AUD remain uncle...

The pathophysiological mechanisms behind amnesia are still unknown. Recent literature, through the study of patients with Alcohol Use Disorder with and without Korsakoff's syndrome, increasingly shows that physiological alterations to the thalamus have an important role in the development of amnesia. This review gives an overview of neuropsychologi...

Brain abnormalities observed in alcohol use disorder are highly heterogeneous in nature and severity, possibly because chronic alcohol consumption also affects peripheral organs leading to comorbidities that can result in exacerbated brain alterations. Despite numerous studies focusing on the effects of alcohol on the brain or liver, few studies ha...

Objective To investigate, in Korsakoff patients (KS), cognitive and brain changes over months and up to 10 years after the diagnosis. Methods Two groups of 8 KS patients underwent neuropsychological, motor and neuroimaging investigations including structural MRI and ¹⁸ F-FDG-PET. The KS C group was examined early after the KS diagnosis (KS C -T1)...

Background The aim of the present study was to determine whether the Brief Evaluation of Alcohol‐Related Neuropsychological Impairments (BEARNI), a screening tool developed to identify neuropsychological deficits in alcohol use disorder (AUD) patients, can also be used for the early identification of AUD patients at risk of developing Korsakoff’s s...

Substance use disorder develops from complex interactions between socio-environmental and neurobiological factors. A neurocognitive model of addiction, the triadic model, proposes that Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) is the result of an imbalance between the reflective and the impulsive subcomponents along with a disruption of the regulatory subcomponen...

Cognitive and brain alterations are common in alcohol use disorder and vary importantly from one patient to another. Sleep disturbances are also very frequent in these patients and remain largely neglected even though they can persist after drinking cessation. Sleep disturbances may be the consequence of specific brain alterations, resulting in cog...

Histopathological alterations of the mamillary bodies are the most conspicuous and the most consistent neuropathological features of several disorders that occur after severe thiamine deficiency, such as Wernicke's encephalopathy and Korsakoff's syndrome. Moreover, they are among the few abnormalities that are visible to the naked eye in these diso...

In alcohol use disorder, drinking cessation is frequently associated with an alcohol withdrawal syndrome. Early in abstinence (within the first two months after drinking cessation), when patients do not exhibit physical signs of alcohol withdrawal syndrome anymore (such as nausea, tremor or anxiety), studies report various brain, sleep and cognitiv...

Background: Neuropsychological impairments found in recently detoxified patients with alcohol use disorder (AUD) can limit the benefit of psychosocial treatments and increase the risk of relapse. These neuropsychological deficits are reversible with abstinence. The aim of this retrospective clinical study was to investigate whether a short-term st...

Alcohol abuse is a major public health problem worldwide causing a wide range of preventable morbidity and mortality. In this translational study, we show that heavy drinking (HD) (≥6 standard drinks/day) is independently associated to a worse outcome of ischemic stroke patients. To study the underlying mechanisms of this deleterious effect of HD,...

Alcohol induced neurocognitive disorder: screening strategies and tools. Chronic and excessive alcohol consumption results in cognitive disorders partially reversible with abstinence. These heterogeneous cognitive impairments affect executive functions, episodic memory and social cognition. They may interfere with the motivational process to abando...

Background Despite severe structural brain abnormalities within the frontocerebellar circuit (FCC), cerebellar metabolism studied with ¹⁸F‐2‐fluoro‐deoxy‐glucose–positron emission tomography (FDG‐PET) is relatively preserved in patients with alcohol use disorder (AUD). The compensatory role of the cerebellum has been explored mainly through fMRI ex...

Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) results in multiple social and cognitive problems with a poor health related quality of life (HRQoL). The association between HRQoL and cognition is well-known in various diseases (stroke, dementia...). While HRQoL is crucial to maintain abstinence, it remains little studied in AUD. Depression and anxiety also afect HRQoL...

Background: In this study, we investigated (1) the effect of chronic and excessive alcohol consumption on whole blood (WB) and serum concentrations of thiamine and its metabolites after supplementation, and (2) the relationship between the perturbations of thiamine metabolism and neuropsychological abilities. Methods: WB and serum samples were coll...

Background Alcohol use disorder (AUD) patients without Korsakoff's syndrome (KS) report a variable self‐rated sleep quality. Their ability to accurately judge their sleep quality may be related to their alcohol‐related cognitive deficits and brain damage. KS patients, who present severe brain dysfunction, may be cognitively unable to judge their sl...

The thalamus, a relay organ consisting of several nuclei, is shared between the frontocerebellar circuit and the Papez circuit, both particularly affected in alcohol use disorder. Shrinkage of the thalamus is known to be more severe in alcoholics with Korsakoff’s syndrome than in those without neurological complications (uncomplicated alcoholics)....

Alcohol is a psychoactive substance consumed worldwide and directly responsible or at least contributing to the development of diseases such as alcohol use disorder (AUD), cirrhosis, fetal alcohol syndrome, cancer, and cardiovascular diseases. The past decades of research have revealed brain structural and functional abnormalities associated with m...

The function of the human mediodorsal thalamic nucleus (MD) has so far eluded a clear definition in terms of specific cognitive processes and tasks. Although it was at first proposed to play a role in long-term memory, a set of recent studies in animals and humans has revealed a more complex, and broader, role in several cognitive functions. The MD...

L’impact des troubles cognitifs liés à l’alcool sur les prises en charge addictologiques est de plus en plus considéré. La résistance aux changements observée chez certains patients peut être secondaire à des troubles neuropsychologiques. Ces derniers vont entraver l’engagement dans les soins en contrariant les modifications comportementales. Le re...

Alcohol use disorder is a brain disease that can be modeled by an imbalance between three cerebral and cognitive systems. The reflective system, underpinned by the frontal cortex and corresponding to the executive functions, would be involved in the control of alcohol consumption. The impulsive system, underpinned by the amygdala-striatal complex,...

After a traumatic brain injury (TBI), behavioral disorders can occur without major focal brain lesion and in this case, their pathophysiology remains unclear. The aim of this study is to examine whether TBI patients with behavioral disorders but without any focal damage, as observed from an initial clinical CT scan, present subtle volumetric altera...

Objectif Le trouble de l’usage d’alcool (TUAL) est associé à des atteintes cérébrales et cognitives hétérogènes, ainsi que des troubles du sommeil fréquents. Le sommeil contribue à l’intégrité des structures cérébrales et au bon fonctionnement cognitif. Nous cherchons donc à mieux comprendre l’impact des troubles du sommeil sur les anomalies struct...

Introduction: Decoding emotional information from faces and voices is crucial for efficient interpersonal communication. Emotional decoding deficits have been found in alcohol-dependence (ALC), particularly in crossmodal situations (with simultaneous stimulations from different modalities), but are still underexplored in Korsakoff syndrome (KS). T...

Background Alcohol-dependence is related to large-scale cognitive impairments, particularly for executive functions (EF). These deficits persist even after long-term abstinence and have a major impact on patients’ everyday life and relapse risk. Earlier studies, based on multi-determined tasks, mostly focused on inhibition and did not offer a theor...

Gray matter (GM) lobar atrophy and glucose hypometabolism are well-described hallmarks of frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD), but the relationships between them are still poorly understood. In this study, we aimed to show the patterns of GM atrophy and hypometabolism in a sample of 15 patients with the behavioral variant of FTLD (bv-FTD), com...

Background: Korsakoff syndrome (KS), most frequently resulting from alcohol dependence (ALC), is characterized by severe anterograde amnesia. It has been suggested that these deficits may extend to other memory components, and notably source memory deficits involved in the disorientation and temporal confusion frequently observed in KS. However, t...

The effects of alcoholism on cognitive and motor functioning are heterogeneous. While the role of some factors (patterns of alcohol consumption, eating habits or associated liver disease) has been hypothesized, the origins of this heterogeneity remain difficult to establish. The goals of the present study were thus to identify the clinical and biol...

Subjects with alcohol use disorder (AUD) frequently present memory disorders affecting selective components of memory (episodic memory, working memory, semantic memory and procedural memory) even in absence of neurological complication. These mnemonic deficits are at least partially reversible with abstinence, but even after a few weeks of sobriety...

We are currently recruiting a research engineer having a background in Medical Physics. The expected starting date is January the 23rd 2017, for a contract of fixed duration of 18 months. Job Description The Inserm U1077 research unit in Caen, France, is a laboratory specialized in the neuropsychological and neuroimaging investigation of memory. An...

La conscience de soi est sous-tendue par des fonctions cognitives supérieures pouvant être affaiblies par un trouble de l’usage de l’alcool (TUAL), notamment chez les personnes âgées, plus vulnérables aux effets toxiques du produit. Les troubles cognitifs et comportementaux induits par la consommation chronique et excessive d’alcool, aujourd’hui cl...

Proposition de thèse CIFRE sur une problématique transversale: les nouvelles technologies et la neuropsychologie de la vie quotidienne

Les troubles cognitifs liés à l'alcool sont une conséquence de l'exposition du cerveau à une alcoolisation régulière et/ou excessive d'alcool, en lien avec des altérations cérébrales structurales et fonctionnelles, notamment sur deux circuits : le circuit de Papez (CP) et le circuit frontocérébelleux (CFC). Ces atteintes sont hétérogènes, elles con...

This perspective aims at underlining the usefulness of event-related potentials (ERP) to better understand the brain correlates of Korsakoff’s syndrome (KS), a neuropsychiatric disease characterized by severe memory impairment and most frequently resulting as a neurological complication of alcohol-dependence (AD). While ERP have been broadly used i...

Alcohol-related cognitive impairments are largely underestimated in clinical practice, even though they could limit the benefit of alcohol treatment and hamper the patient's ability to remain abstinent or to respect his/her therapeutic contract. These neuropsychological deficits can impact the management of patients well before the development of t...

Introduction : Les études de neuropsychologie et de neuroimagerie ont permis de préciser les atteintes cognitives et cérébrales des patients alcoolo-dépendants récemment sevrés (AD). D’autres travaux ont souligné la présence très fréquente de troubles du sommeil chez les AD, pouvant être un facteur de risque de rechute (Brower et al., 2001). En pra...

Background: Alcohol-related neuropsychological impairments mainly affect episodic memory, working memory, and visuospatial abilities, as well as executive and motor functioning. These impairments can prevent alcoholic patients (ALs) early in abstinence from benefiting fully from treatment and reduce their ability to remain abstinent. A neuropsychol...

Alcoholism is associated with widespread brain structural abnormalities affecting mainly the frontocerebellar and the Papez’s circuits. Brain glucose metabolism has received limited attention, and few studies used regions of interest approach and showed reduced global brain metabolism predominantly in the frontal and parietal lobes. Even though the...