Charline Urbain

• PhD
• Professor (Assistant) at Université Libre de Bruxelles

Sleep is one of life’s fundamental requirements, and like oxygen, water, and food, human beings simply cannot live without it. Sleep is essential for tissue repair, metabolism, growth, infection control, and learning, memory, and emotional regulation. In many ways sleep is nature’s medicine; it is what nature has provided to deliver daytime functio...

Declarative memory formation critically relies on the synchronization of brain oscillations in the theta frequency band (4-8 Hz) within specific brain networks. The development of this capacity is closely linked to the functional organization of these networks already at rest. However, the relationship between theta-band resting-state functional co...

Magnetoencephalography (MEG) allows the non-invasive detection of interictal epileptiform discharges (IEDs). Clinical MEG analysis in epileptic patients traditionally relies on the visual identification of IEDs, which is time consuming and partially subjective. Automatic, data-driven detection methods exist but show limited performance. Still, the...

Language control processes allow for the flexible manipulation and access to context‐appropriate verbal representations. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have localized the brain regions involved in language control processes usually by comparing high vs. low lexical–semantic control conditions during verbal tasks. Yet, the spec...

Declarative memory formation critically relies on the synchronization of brain oscillations in the theta (4-8 Hz) frequency band within specific brain networks. The development of this capacity is closely linked to the functional organization of these networks already at rest. However, the relationship between theta-band resting-state functional co...

Introduction Short post‐learning breaks, lasting from 5 to 30 min, transiently enhance procedural motor memory performance in adults. However, the impact of activity type (active vs. passive) during the offline break on sequential motor performance remains poorly investigated in children. Method This study examined the impact of active versus pass...

Magnetoencephalography (MEG) allows the non-invasive detection of interictal epileptiform discharges (IEDs). Clinical MEG analysis in epileptic patients traditionally relies on the visual identification of IEDs, which is time consuming and partially subjective. Automatic, data-driven detection methods exist but show limited performance. Still, the...

This study highlights that spontaneous post-learning, offline motor performance improvements occur at both short and long delays in children, but only after an active post-training break, unlike adults who show improved performance only at short delays, regardless of the activity type. These results suggest a developmental difference of offline con...

Post-learning breaks, lasting from 5 to 30 minutes, transiently enhance procedural motor memory performance in adults. However, the impact of activity type (active vs. passive) during the offline break on sequential motor performance remains poorly investigated in children. This study examined the impact of active vs. passive short post-learning br...

Motor skills dynamically evolve during practice and after training. Using magnetoencephalography, we investigated the neural dynamics underpinning motor learning and its consolidation in relation to sleep during resting-state periods after the end of learning (boost window, within 30 min) and at delayed time scales (silent 4 h and next day 24 h win...

This paper investigates brain–behaviour associations between interictal epileptic discharges and cognitive performance in a population of children with self-limited focal epilepsy with centro-temporal spikes (SeLECTS). Sixteen patients with SeLECTS underwent an extensive neuropsychological assessment, including verbal short-term and episodic memory...

Learning and consolidation of motor skills dynamically evolve both online during practice and offline after training. We investigated using magnetoencephalography the neural dynamics underpinning motor learning and its consolidation in relation to sleep during resting-state periods shortly after the end of learning (short-term boost window, within...

The analysis of clinical magnetoencephalography (MEG) in patients with epilepsy traditionally relies on the visual identification of interictal epileptiform discharges (IEDs), which is time consuming and dependent on (subjective) human criteria. Data-driven approaches enabling both spatial and temporal localization of epileptic spikes would represe...

We investigated the procedural learning deficit hypothesis in Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) while controlling for global performance such as slower reaction times (RTs) and variability. Procedural (sequence) learning was assessed in 31 children with DCD and 31 age-matched typically developing (TD) children through a serial reaction time...

Un ensemble d’études menées au cours de ces 15 dernières années montrent des performances d’apprentissage procédural altérées dans le trouble développemental du langage (TDL). Bien que des résultats contradictoires soient parfois rapportés, l’hypothèse du déficit procédural dans le TDL est prometteuse car elle offre une meilleure compréhension des...

Children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) present lower abilities to acquire and execute coordinated motor skills. DCD is frequently associated with visual perceptual (with or without motor component) impairments. This magnetoencephalography (MEG) study compares the brain resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) and spectral power...

The ability to effectively and automatically regulate one's response to emotional information is a basic, fundamental skill for social functioning. The neural mechanisms underlying emotion regulation processing have been assessed, however few investigations have lev-eraged neurophysiological techniques, particularly magnetoencephalography (MEG) to...

This magnetoencephalography (MEG) study aimed at characterizing the spectro-temporal dynamics of brain oscillatory activity elicited by sentence completion (SC). For that purpose, we adapted a version of the SC experimental paradigm typically used in functional magnetic resonance imaging to MEG investigation constraints. Twenty right-handed healthy...

This magnetoencephalography (MEG) study investigates how procedural sequence learning performance is related to prior brain resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC), and to what extent sequence learning induces rapid changes in brain rsFC in school-aged children. Procedural learning was assessed in 30 typically developing children (mean age ±...

Working memory is an executive function critical for academic and social behaviours and is often impaired in those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Thus, understanding the neural underpinnings of working memory deficits is important for adapted cognitive and social interventions in youth with ASD, as well as an improved understanding of the dif...

Background Short-term and working memory (STM and WM) deficits have been demonstrated in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and may emerge through atypical functional activity and connectivity of the frontoparietal network, which exerts top-down control necessary for successful STM and WM processes. Little is known regarding the spectr...

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Working memory impairment is associated with symptom severity and poor functional outcome in autistic individuals, and yet the neurobiology underlying such deficits is poorly understood. Neural oscillations are an area of investigation that can shed light on this issue. Theta and alpha oscillations have been found consistently to support working me...

Post-learning slow wave sleep (SWS) is known to support declarative memory consolidation. As SWS is more abundant in young population, we suggested that sleep-dependent memory consolidation processes could occur at a faster pace in school-aged children. After learning new associations between non-objects and their functions, retrieval performance w...

Human brain activity is not merely responsive to environmental context but includes intrinsic dynamics, as suggested by the discovery of functionally meaningful neural networks at rest, i.e., even without explicit engagement of the corresponding function. Yet, the neurophysiological coupling mechanisms distinguishing intrinsic (i.e., task-invariant...

Children born very preterm (VPT) often demonstrate selective difficulties in working memory (WM), which may underlie academic difficulties observed in this population. Despite this, few studies have investigated the functional networks underlying WM in young children born VPT, a period when cognitive deficits become apparent. Using magnetoencephalo...

Children born very preterm (VPT; <32 weeks' gestational age) are at high risk for emotional regulation and social communication impairments. However, the underlying neurobiological correlates of these difficulties remain poorly understood. Using a multimodal approach, including both magnetoencephalographic and structural magnetic resonance imaging,...

In previous studies we have provided evidence that performance in speeded response tasks with infrequent target stimuli reflects both automatic and controlled cognitive processes, based on differences in reaction time (RT) and task-related brain responses (Cheyne et al. 2012, Isabella et al. 2015). Here we test the hypothesis that such shifts in co...

The social impairments observed in children with autism spectrum disorder are thought to arise in part from deficits in theory of mind, the ability to understand other people's thoughts and feelings. To determine the temporal-spatial dynamics of brain activity underlying these atypical theory-of-mind processes, we used magnetoencephalography to cha...

Working Memory (WM) supports a wide range of cognitive functions, and is positively associated with academic achievement. Although fMRI studies have revealed WM networks in adults, little is known about how these networks develop to support successful WM performance in children. Using magnetoencephalography, we examined the networks underlying the...

Introduction. Slow waves sleep (SWS) has been associated with declarative memory consolidation processes in children and adults. As children exhibit significantly larger amounts of SWS than adults, it has been hypothesized that memory consolidation may occur at faster pace during development. Methods. To test this hypothesis, we compared sleep-dep...

Background Electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) are neurophysiological methods used to investigate noninvasively the spatial, temporal, and spectral dynamics of human brain functions.Objectives This article reviews data on the use of EEG and MEG for presurgical functional brain mapping in patients with refractory focal epil...

Emotion regulation mediates socio‐cognitive functions and is essential for interactions with others. The capacity to automatically inhibit responses to emotional stimuli is an important aspect of emotion regulation; the underlying neural mechanisms of this ability have been rarely investigated. Forty adults completed a Go/No‐go task during magnetoe...

Objective: To characterise the incidence, symptoms and risk factors for withdrawal associated with prolonged dexmedetomidine infusion in paediatric critically ill patients. Methods: Retrospective chart review in the paediatric intensive care unit and the cardiac critical care unit of a single tertiary children's hospital. Patients up to 18 years...

Millions of North Americans suffer a concussion or a mild traumatic brain injury annually and are at risk of cognitive, emotional and physical sequelae. While fMRI studies have provided an initial framework for examining functional deficits induced by concussion, particularly working memory and attention, the temporal dynamics underlying these defi...

Mechanisms for automatic emotion regulation (AER) are essential during childhood as they offset the impact of unwanted or negative emotional responses without drawing on limited attentional resources. Despite the importance of AER in improving the efficiency and flexibility of self-regulation, few research studies have investigated the underlying n...

Theory of Mind (ToM) is the ability to understand the perspectives, mental states and beliefs of others in order to anticipate their behaviour and is therefore crucial to social interactions. Although fMRI has been widely used to establish the neural networks implicated in ToM, little is known about the timing of ToM-related brain activity. We used...

Background: Mounting evidence suggests that autism is a network disorder, characterized by atypical brain connectivity, especially in the context of high level cognitive processes such as working memory (WM). Accordingly, atypical WM processes have been related to the social and cognitive deficits observed in children with autism spectrum disorder...

Here we investigate the precise temporal dynamics of WM-related brain activity using magnetoencephalography (MEG) in 20 children with ASD and matched controls during an n-back WM task across different load levels (1-back vs 2-back).

Working memory (WM) impairments may contribute to the profound behavioural manifestations in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, previous behavioural results are discrepant as are the few functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) results collected in adults and adolescents with ASD. Here we investigate the precise temporal dyn...

We investigated the incidence, symptoms and risk factors for withdrawal associated with prolonged dexmedetomidine use. Dexmedetomidine is an α2-adrenergic receptor agonist, with anxiolytic, analgesic and sedative properties. Intended for short-term use, there is increasing literature describing prolonged use for sedation. However, this raises the p...

That post-training sleep supports the consolidation of sequential motor skills remains debated. Performance improvement and sensitivity to proactive interference are both putative measures of long-term memory consolidation. We tested sleep-dependent memory consolidation for visuo-motor sequence learning using a proactive interference paradigm. Thir...

Reporting the ink color of a written word when it is itself a color name incongruent with the ink color (e.g. "red" printed in blue) induces a robust interference known as the Stroop effect. Although this effect has been the subject of numerous functional neuroimaging studies, its neuronal substrate is still a matter of debate. Here, we investigate...

Behavioral studies have cast doubts about the role that posttraining sleep may play in the consolidation of implicit sequence learning. Here, we used event-related fMRI to test the hypothesis that sleep-dependent functional reorganization would take place in the underlying neural circuits even in the possible absence of obvious behavioral changes....

Although a beneficial role of post-training sleep for declarative memory has been consistently evidenced in children, as in adults, available data suggest that procedural memory consolidation does not benefit from sleep in children. However, besides the absence of performance gains in children, sleep-dependent plasticity processes involved in proce...

Learning the functional properties of objects is a core mechanism in the development of conceptual, cognitive and linguistic knowledge in children. The cerebral processes underlying these learning mechanisms remain unclear in adults and unexplored in children. Here, we investigated the neurophysiological patterns underpinning the learning of functi...

Learning the functional properties of objects is a core mechanism in the development of conceptual, cognitive and linguistic knowledge in children. The cerebral processes underlying these learning mechanisms remain unclear in adults and unexplored in children. Here, we investigated the neurophysiological patterns underpinning the learning of functi...

Supplemental details on the methods as well as supplemental Tables and Figures. Figure S1, Learning-related changes in evoked-related fields over the left frontal region (analysis in sensor space). Grand average time courses of ERFs for LNO and UNO non-objects at S1 (LNO: black hyphenated line, UNO: gray hyphenated line) and S2 (LNO: black line; UN...

Whether sleep contributes to the consolidation of visuo-motor memories remains disputed. We investigated the impact of post-learning sleep on their consolidation using a tactile screen variant of the deterministic serial reaction time task. At learning, subjects practiced blocks 1-6 and 8 (64 trials/block) using a deterministic sequence A. Block 7...

It is known that sleep participates in memory consolidation processes. However, results obtained in the auditory domain are inconsistent. Here we aimed at investigating the role of post-training sleep in auditory training and learning new phonological categories, a fundamental process in speech processing. Adult French-speakers were trained to iden...

It is hypothesised that focal interictal epileptiform discharges (IED) may exert a deleterious effect on behaviour and cognition in children. This hypothesis is supported by the abnormally high prevalence of IED in several developmental disorders, like specific language impairment, and of cognitive and behavioural deficits in epileptic children aft...

The phenomenological experience of sleep as a cessation of waking activity is misleading. Indeed, it suggests that sleep constitutes, like a switch, a simple mechanism by which are shut off all neurophysiological processes associated with an active and costly wake state of vigilance. In this chapter, we present a summary description of sleep and it...

Tiège a a Laboratoire de cartographie fonctionnelle du cerveau (LCFC), Erasme hospital, université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Brussels, Belgium b Department of paediatric neurology, ULB-hôpital Erasme, 808 route de Lennik, 1070 Brussels, Belgium c Neuropsychology and functional neuroimaging research unit (UR2NF), faculty of psychological and educati...

We investigated sleep-related declarative memory consolidation in four children with focal idiopathic epilepsy. In a population of healthy control children, recall of learned pairs of words was increased after a night of sleep, but not after a daytime wakefulness period. In children with epilepsy (1 case of benign epilepsy with centro-temporal spik...

Pseudoneglect is a slight but consistent misplacement of attention toward the left visual field, commonly observed in young healthy subjects. This leftward attentional bias is thought to result from a right hemispheric dominance in visuospatial processing. Changes in endogenous levels of alertness may modulate attentional asymmetries and pseudonegl...

In the present chapter, we describe behavioural and neurophysiological studies supporting the hypothesis that sleep exerts a positive impact on long-term retention in declarative memory, either by consolidating relevant memories or by actively erasing unwanted day residues. We do not aim to be comprehensive, but rather to illustrate the complex rel...