Christophe-Loic Gerard

• MD
• Medical Doctor at Hôpital Universitaire Robert Debré

Several studies in children with neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) including autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), reading impairment, or attention deficit/hyperactive disorder (ADHD) pointed toward a potential dysfunction of the vestibular system, specifically in its complex relationship with the cerebellum. The aim of the present study was to test...

Dyslexia is a specific disorder in reading abilities. The aim of this study was to explore whether a short visual attentional training could improve reading capabilities in children with reading disorders by changing their oculomotor characteristics. Two groups (G1 and G2) of 25 children with reading disabilities and who are matched in IQ (intellig...

Background: Dyslexia is a disorder found in 5–10% of school-aged children. Several studies reported visual deficits and oculomotor abnormalities in dyslexic children. The objective of our study was to examine horizontal pursuit performance in dyslexic children, despite its poor involvement in reading. Methods: Eye movements were recorded by video-...

Purpose: Preliminary evidence indicated that children with a reading disorder (RD) may have deviance in their ability to perform high demanding cognitive tasks, such as reading, depending on somatosensory inputs. Until now, only anecdotical reports suggested that improving somatosensory inputs may influence their ability to maintain a stable percep...

Purpose: We explored the perception of subjective visual vertical (SVV) in dyslexic and non-dyslexic age, sex and QImatched.Method: The SVV was evaluated with a laser and with or without foam under the feet. We performed an analysis ofvariance. Post hoc comparisons were made with the Fisher’s least significant differences test (LSD).Results: Our re...

The aim of the present study was to explore the possible change in eye movement performance in a group of dyslexic and non-dyslexic children reading four lines of a text with different font sizes and spaces between the words. Fifteen dyslexic children from 7 to 12 years old and two groups of fifteen non-dyslexic children, respectively reading and c...

In everyday life, our activities frequently involve the simultaneous performance of two or more tasks. Sharing attention between two concurrent tasks may result in a decrease in performance specifically among children with neurodevelopmental disorders. The objective of the study was to determine whether the influence of postural conditions (sitting...

The aim of this study was to compare the visual exploration strategies used during a postural control task across participants with and without dyslexia. We simultaneously recorded eye movements and postural control while children were viewing different types of emotional faces. Twenty-two children with dyslexia and twenty-two aged-matched children...

Autism, learning disabilities and attention deficit/hyperactive disorder are often comorbid disorders. In order to try and find some markers that might be transnosographic, we hypothesized that abnormal postural sway profiles may discriminate children with neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) from typically developing children. The aim of our study...

Dyslexic children show impaired in postural stability. The aim of our study was to test the influence of foot soles and visual information on the postural control of dyslexic children, compared to non-dyslexic children. Postural stability was evaluated with TechnoConcept® platform in twenty-four dyslexic children (mean age: 9.3 ± 0.29 years) and in...

The object of this study was to explore further phonological visual-auditory recognition tasks in a group of fifty-six healthy children (mean age: 9.9 ± 0.3) and to compare these data to those recorded in twenty-six age-matched dyslexic children (mean age: 9.8 ± 0.2). Eye movements from both eyes were recorded using an infrared video-oculography sy...

To our knowledge, behavioral studies recording visual fixations abilities in dyslexic children are scarce. The object of this article is to explore further the visual fixation ability in dyslexics compared to chronological age-matched and reading age-matched non-dyslexic children. Fifty-five dyslexic children from 7 to 14 years old, 55 chronologica...

The aim of this study was to explore whether a short postural training period could affect postural stability in dyslexic children. Postural performances were evaluated using Multitest Equilibre from Framiral. Posture was recorded in three different viewing conditions (eyes open fixating a target, eyes closed and eyes open with perturbed vision) an...

Dual task is known to affect postural stability in children. We explored the effect of visual tasks on postural control in thirty dyslexic children. A selected group of thirty chronological age-matched non-dyslexic children (mean age: 9.92 ± 0.35 years) and a group of thirty reading age-matched non-dyslexic children (mean reading age: 7.90 ± 0.25 y...

L’objectif de cette étude est d’explorer les capacités posturales des enfants dyslexiques. La nouveauté ici, est l’utilisation à la fois de l’analyse spatiale et de l’analyse temporelle avec la décomposition en ondelettes.

Studies dealing with developmental aspects of binocular eye movement behavior during reading are scarce. In this study we have explored binocular strategies during reading and visual search tasks in a large population of dyslexic and typical readers. Binocular eye movements were recorded using a video-oculography system in 43 dyslexic children (age...

Objective The aim of this study is to examine postural control of dyslexic children using both spatial and temporal analysis. Methods Thirty dyslexic (mean age 9.7 ± 0.3 years) and thirty non-dyslexic age-matched children participated in the study. Postural stability was evaluated using Multitest Equilibre from Framiral®. Posture was recorded in t...

There is an error in the first author's name in the citation. The correct citation is: Bucci MP, Bui-Quoc E, Gerard C-L (2013) The Effect of a Stroop-like Task on Postural Control in Dyslexic Children. PLoS ONE 8(10): e77920. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0077920

The influence of a secondary task on concurrent postural control was explored in twenty-one dyslexic children (mean age: 10.4±0.3 years). Data were compared with twenty age-matched non-dyslexic children. As a secondary task, a modified Stroop test was used, in which words were replaced with pictures of fruits. The postural control of children was r...

Dyslexia is one of the most common childhood disorders with a prevalence of around 5-10% in school-age children. Although an important genetic component is known to have a role in the aetiology of dyslexia, we are far from understanding the molecular mechanisms leading to the disorder. Several candidate genes have been implicated in dyslexia, inclu...

Background: The relationship between phoneme awareness, rapid automatized naming (RAN), verbal short-term/working memory (ST/WM) and diagnostic category is investigated in control and dyslexic children, and the extent to which this depends on orthographic complexity. Methods: General cognitive, phonological and literacy skills were tested in 1,13...

Several studies have examined postural control in dyslexic children; however, their results were inconclusive. This study investigated the effect of a dual task on postural stability in dyslexic children. Eighteen dyslexic children (mean age 10.3±1.2 years) were compared with eighteen non-dyslexic children of similar age. Postural stability was rec...

Studies comparing binocular eye movements during reading and visual search in dyslexic children are, at our knowledge, inexistent. In the present study we examined ocular motor characteristics in dyslexic children versus two groups of non dyslexic children with chronological/reading age-matched. Binocular eye movements were recorded by an infrared...

Objective. Latency of eye movements depends on cortical structures while speed of execution and accuracy depends mostly on subcortical brainstem structures. Prior studies reported in dyslexic reader children abnormalities of latencies of saccades (isolated and combined with vergence); such abnormalities were attributed to deficits of fixation contr...

A five-year-old girl was referred for chronic and stable velopharyngeal insufficiency. Pharyngoplasly was performed, without significant improvement, and further neurological investigation was undertaken. Clinical examination and electromyography led to a suspicion of denervation of the IX, X and XI cranial nerves. Magnetic resonance imaging reveal...

Learning disorders are the center of medical process used for the assessment of school failure. We argue here that medical diagnosis is based on analysis of the interaction of three symptomatic clusters: cognitive symptoms, emotional symptoms, conduct disorders.

Les troubles non spécifiques du langage ne touchent pas intrinsèquement la capacité reconnue comme innée à manipuler les codes linguistiques. Ils ont cependant une importance pour le psychiatre soucieux d'envisager l'ensemble des troubles pouvant mettre en cause l'adaptation de l'individu en développement. La description de ces troubles, qui touche...

This article presents the results of an investigation on elicited production and comprehension of determiners and clitic pronouns by 13 French-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) ages 5;7 to 13;0 years and a group of 20 normal children ages 5;6 to 5;11 years. Out findings show that the children with SLI studied here do not pre...

There is currently no agreement on the nature and the neuropsychological basis of communication difficulties in children with fragile X disorder. In this article, we present a detailed clinical assessment procedure for the communication problems of these children. We report on the results of a pilot study of this procedure on a first sample of 19 c...

During the past twenty-five years, there has been a good deal of research on the outcome of subjects presenting specific developmental language disorders. These studies demonstrated the persistence of speech and language difficulties as well as considerable academic problems and social maladjustment. The authors describe a prospective study concern...

We report the case of Olivia, a 10–year-old developmental dyslexic whose reading age is 7 years 7 months. Most of her reading errors are visual paralexias and she makes neither semantic errors nor errors of regularisation. Her reading error pattern is thus analogous to that previously described in acquired visual dyslexia.Neuropsychological assessm...

Nine patients aged 15 to 37 years with Gilles de la Tourette syndrome inadequately controlled by conventional agents were given open-label treatment with carbamazepine. Symptoms rapidly worsened in the first three patients who were given 600 to 800 mg/d. Lower dosages (100 to 400 mg/d) were used in subsequent patients. Responses varied across patie...

Three cases of behavioral disorders in children previously treated for a diencephalic tumor are reported. In such cases, classical psychiatric evaluation is difficult because reference data on childhood psycho-organic syndromes are lacking. Another complicating feature is that multiple factors contribute to the impairment of social interactions, in...

We report five cases of Landau-Kleffner syndrome with onset of language disorders after the age of 9. Epileptic phenomena had common features with those typically described in cases of Landau–Kleffner with earlier onset. However, patterns of linguistic deficits differed. Massive comprehension disorder with auditory agnosia was found in only one sub...

A five-year-old girl was referred for chronic and stable velopharyngeal insufficiency. Pharyngoplasty was performed, without significant improvement, and further neurological investigation was undertaken. Clinical examination and electromyography led to a suspicion of denervation of the IX, X and XI cranial nerves. Magnetic resonance imaging reveal...

Since 1957, over 156 cases of Landau and Kleffner syndrome have been published. As yet, nevertheless, no general overview of the syndrome’s natural history has been written. This is partly because of methodological difficulties that arise, and which are discussed. Our experience includes among 18 cases of Landau and Kleffner syndrome 12 subjects fo...

Developmental dyspraxia concerns children with a high level of motor activity dysfunction. This condition cannot be explained by intellectual deficiency or cerebral damage. It is a cause of social, scholastic and emotional maladaptation. The authors review the main theoretical approaches to the disorder, and propose a classification based on Piaget...

Few of the 150 publications or more dealing with Landau-Kleffner syndrome have properly addressed the issues concerning speech therapy. The place taken by speech therapy has in fact varied according to the explanatory model to report on the syndrome’s particular evolutionary pattern. In our review of the speech therapy approach for our 18 Landau-Kl...

Prescription of speech rehabilitation is now an act often performed by pediatricians. We attempt to define the implications of this act by successively describing the specific features of the training of speech specialists, the main childhood disorders for which their help is sought, and the key principals of rehabilitation. We underline the need f...

Behavioral disorders in cerebral lesions are as neurological as psychiatric diseases. A neurological approach referring to oncogenic neuro-development leads to a better understanding of the connection between brain functions and social behavior.