Personne : Hétu, Sébastien
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Hétu
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Sébastien
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École de psychologie, Faculté des sciences sociales, Université Laval
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ncf11879322
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Publication Restreint Measuring how genetic and epigenetic variants can filter emotion perception(Clinical Neuroscience Publishers, 2015-10-01) Hétu, Sébastien; Jackson, Philip L.; Taschereau-Dumouchel, Vincent; Chagnon, Yvon C.Emotion perception has been extensively studied in cognitive neurosciences and stands as a promising intermediate phenotype of social cognitive processes and psychopathologies. Exciting imaging genetic studies have recently identified genetic and epigenetic variants affecting brain responses during emotion perception tasks, but characterizing how these variants interact and relate to higher-order cognitive processes remains a challenge. Here, we integrate works in parallel fields and propose a new psychophysical conceptualization to address this issue. This approach proposes to consider genetic variants as ‘filters’ of perceptual information that can interact to shape different perceptual profiles. Importantly, these perceptual profiles can be precisely described and compared between multivariate genetic groups using a new psychophysical method. Crucially, this approach represents a potentially powerful novel tool to address gene-by-gene and gene-by-environment interactions, and provides a new cognitive perspective to link social perceptive and social cognitive processes in the context of psychiatric disorders.Publication Accès libre BDNF Val66Met polymorphism is associated with self-reported empathy(Public Library of Science, 2016-02-22) Hétu, Sébastien; Jackson, Philip L.; Taschereau-Dumouchel, Vincent; Chagnon, Yvon C.; Bagramyan, Anaït; Labrecque, Alexandre; Racine, MarionEmpathy is an important driver of human social behaviors and presents genetic roots that have been studied in neuroimaging using the intermediate phenotype approach. Notably, the Val66Met polymorphism of the Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) gene has been identified as a potential target in neuroimaging studies based on its influence on emotion perception and social cognition, but its impact on self-reported empathy has never been documented. Using a neurogenetic approach, we investigated the association between the BDNF Val66Met polymorphism and self-reported empathy (Davis’ Interpersonal Reactivity Index; IRI) in a sample of 110 young adults. Our results indicate that the BDNF genotype is significantly associated with the linear combination of the four facets of the IRI, one of the most widely used self-reported empathy questionnaire. Crucially, the effect of BDNF Val66Met goes beyond the variance explained by two polymorphisms of the oxytocin transporter gene previously associated with empathy and its neural underpinnings (OXTR rs53576 and rs2254298). These results represent the first evidence suggesting a link between the BDNF gene and self-reported empathy and warrant further studies of this polymorphism due to its potential clinical significance.Publication Restreint Stimulating the brain to study social interactions and empathy(Elsevier, 2012-03-24) Hétu, Sébastien; Jackson, Philip L.; Taschereau-Dumouchel, VincentEmpathy is a multi-dimensional concept allowing humans to understand the emotions of others and respond adaptively from a social perspective. This mental process, essential to social interactions, has attracted the attention of many scholars from different fields of study but the blooming interest for empathy in cognitive neurosciences has rekindled this interest. This paper reviews the growing literature stemming from studies using brain stimulation techniques that have investigated directly or indirectly the different components of empathy, including resonance, self-other discrimination, and mentalizing. Some studies have also ventured toward the modulation of this complex process and toward the investigation of different components in populations that show reduced empathic skills. We argue that brain stimulation techniques have the potential to make a unique contribution to the field of empathy research with their exclusive capacity, compared to other brain imaging techniques, to modulate the neural systems involved in the distinct components of this process. Provided the development of innovative ecological paradigms that will put people in actual social interactions as well as comprehensive and adaptive models that can integrate research from different domains, the ultimate goal of this research domain is to devise protocols that can modulate empathy in people with developmental, neurological and psychiatric disorders.