Genetic, neurological and cognitive characterisation of developmental language disorders

Together with geneticist Thomas Bourgeron at Institut Pasteur and many collaborators all over France, I set up the Genedys project, which explores the genetic bases of developmental language disorders (dyslexia and SLI), in relation to both cognitive and neuroanatomical phenotypes. It is based on the participation of dyslexic, SLI and control children, aged 8 to 12, and their family members (in the case of multiplex families). Children undergo a complete behavioural test battery (around 3 hours of tests covering all the main aspects of general cognitive functioning, oral and written language), donate either a blood or a saliva sample for DNA extraction, and a subset of them undergo a neuroanatomical MRI scan, in order to define a neural phenotype for those disorders.

The Genedys project also became part of the European project Neurodys, led by Gerd Schulte-Körne in Munich, and including many other collaborators. Within Neurodys, around 1500 dyslexic and 1500 control children from 9 countries are behaviourally tested on a common test battery (a subset of the Genedys battery) and donate a DNA sample. 

Review papers:

Ramus, F., & Fisher, S. E. (2009). Genetics of language. In M. S. Gazzaniga (Ed.), The Cognitive Neurosciences IV (pp. 855-871). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Galaburda, A. M., LoTurco, J., Ramus, F., Fitch, R. H., & Rosen, G. D. (2006). From genes to behavior in developmental dyslexia. Nature Neuroscience, 9(10), 1213-1217.  

Ramus, F. (2006). Genes, brain, and cognition: A roadmap for the cognitive scientist. Cognition, 101(2), 247-269.  (Introduction to a Cognition Special Issue)

Research

• Team members
• The phonological deficit
• Genetics
• • Social cognition
• Theories of dyslexia
• Language acquisition

   

Links to

• The lab
• The department
• Ecole Normale Supérieure
• CNRS