Nadege Roche-Labarbe

Biographical Sketch – Nadege Roche-Labarbe

Nadege Roche-Labarbe Picture

Associate Professor of Psychology

COMETE U1075, University of Caen Normandy, FRANCE

EDUCATION/TRAINING

INSTITUTION AND LOCATION DEGREE Completion Date (MM/YYYY) FIELD OF STUDY
Paul Sabatier University, Toulouse, FRANCE BSc 06/2001 Biology
IED Paris 8 University, Paris, FRANCE BA 06/2018 Psychology
Paul Sabatier University, Toulouse, FRANCE MSc 06/2003 Neuroscience
IED Paris 8 University, Paris, FRANCE MA 06/2020 Child Psychology
Medical School, Jules Verne University, Amiens, FRANCE PhD 06/2007 Neuroscience
AA. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital – Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology Program, Boston, MA, USA Postdoctoral Fellowship 09/2007 – 07/2011 Biomedical Imaging
Psychology Department, University of Caen Normandy, Caen, FRANCE Habilitation 12/2012 Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience

A. Personal Statement

I am a Biologist trained in integrative neuroscience as well as a certified Psychologist specialized in developmental child psychology. My work focuses on functional brain development during the perinatal period and its links with neurodevelopmental trajectories. My research lies at the intersection of sensory perception, human neurodevelopment, and psychopathology.

During my thesis and post-doctoral work, I combined non-invasive methods (functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), diffuse correlation spectroscopy (DCS), and high spatial resolution electroencephalography (HR-EEG)) to measure brain activity in newborns. I showed that newborns already have a functional neurovascular response that can be exploited to study the emergence of cognitive abilities at the very beginning of life. My recruitment as an Assistant Professor at the University of Caen enabled me to capitalize on these results to develop research into neonatal cognition. I thus proposed the DECODE research program aiming at: 1) highlighting early cognitive mechanisms by measuring neonatal brain activity, 2) understanding the links between these mechanisms and later cognitive development, 3) assessing the potential of these mechanisms as neonatal markers of neurodevelopmental disorder (NDD) risk.

My long-term goal is to understand the neonatal prodromal aspects of pathological trajectories of neurodevelopment and to provide measures of these processes for use as markers of intervention effectiveness.

Research Support

06/2025-05/2026
Participative Research Starting Grant from INSERM’s Science and Society department, 15 k€.
Role: Principal Investigator (PI).
Project: PRESENS - Prevention of sensory regulation disorders in premature babies.

12/2023-11/2025
Grant from the Fondation Perce-Neige, 112 k€.
Role: Principal Investigator (PI).
Project: Sleep and somatosensory processing interactions during cognitive development in premature neonates.

10/2020-09/2023
Grant from the French Ministry of Research and Higher Education (Anne-Lise Marais’s PhD).
Role: PhD advisor / PI.
Project: Neurodevelopmental exploration of somatosensory prediction in preschoolers and premature newborns.

06/2020-11/2024
Young Researcher Grant from the French National Agency for Research (ANR), 308 k€.
Role: Principal Investigator (PI).
Project: NEOPRENE – Neonatal Predictors of Neurodevelopment.
Grant Number: #ANR-19-CE37-0015

10/2019-03/2023
Grant from the Normandy Region Council (Marie Anquetil’s PhD).
Role: PhD co-advisor / co-PI (with Prof. Sandrine Rossi).
Project: Developmental markers of executive attention at preschool age.

10/2020-09/2023
Grant from the Normandy Region Council (Victoria Dumont’s PhD).
Role: PhD advisor / PI.
Project: Cerebral and behavioral exploration of the processing abilities of non-social tactile stimuli sequences by preterm newborns.

10/2014-06/2018
Grant from the Fondation de France, 94 k€.
Role: Principal Investigator (PI).
Project: PREMATEMP – Emergence of temporal expectations in premature neonates: behavioral and brain measures in the tactile modality.
Grant Number: #FDF-00041933

B. Positions, Scientific Appointments, and Honors

Positions

Appointments

Honors and Awards

C. Contributions to Science

Hemodynamic Precursors of Absence Epileptic Seizures

Absence epilepsy is a frequent pediatric issue diagnosed using EEG to detect characteristic spike-and-wave discharges during seizures. However, a vascular component was suspected based on aura feelings reported by the patients which can precede the electric and behavioral symptoms. For lack of non-invasive methods with good temporal resolution, this early vascular component had not received investigation despite its relevance for prevention and treatment. I recorded simultaneous hemodynamic (using fNIRS) and neuronal (using EEG) activity in pediatric patients coming for follow-up visits and showed that hemodynamic changes were indeed happening ten to fifteen seconds before any visible EEG or behavioral manifestation of the seizures (Roche-Labarbe, Zaaimi, et al., 2008). Because treatment strategies are developed on animal models, it was important to reproduce this observation on models to assess their validity in this aspect. I developed a method for simultaneous EEG-fNIRS recordings in awake rats from the GAERS line (Genetic Absence Epilepsy Rats from Strasbourg) and showed that this model also displays hemodynamic changes fifteen seconds before seizure onset (Roche-Labarbe, Zaaimi, et al., 2010), opening a new venue of research on absence epilepsy etiology and treatment.

Roche-Labarbe, N., Zaaimi, B., Berquin, P., Nehlig, A., Grebe, R., & Wallois, F. (2008). NIRS‐measured oxy‐ and deoxyhemoglobin changes associated with EEG spike‐and‐wave discharges in children. Epilepsia, 49(11), 1871–1880. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1528-1167.2008.01711.x Roche-Labarbe, N., Zaaimi, B., Mahmoudzadeh, M., Osharina, V., Wallois, A., Nehlig, A., Grebe, R., & Wallois, F. (2010). NIRS‐measured oxy‐ and deoxyhemoglobin changes associated with EEG spike‐and‐wave discharges in a genetic model of absence epilepsy: The GAERS. Epilepsia, 51(8), 1374–1384. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1528-1167.2010.02574.x

Hemodynamic and Metabolic Measures of Perinatal Brain Injury

In collaboration with neonatologists and radiologists, I conducted a series of optical imaging (combining fNIRS and DCS) studies providing reference values of baseline hemodynamic and metabolic measures in the brains of preterm and term neonates. These studies show how to quantify oxidative metabolism at the brain tissue level, non-invasively at the newborn’s bedside, and provide reference values for these variables in the first six weeks of life as a function of gestational age at birth (Lin et al., 2013; Roche-Labarbe, et al., 2010; Roche-Labarbe et al., 2012). They lay the foundations for the clinical use of these variables, in particular for assessing the integrity of cerebral and cerebrovascular function in the neonatal intensive care unit. We used the method in term-born neonates with hypoxic-ischemic injury to identify prognostic markers of therapeutic hypothermia interventions (Grant et al., 2009).

Grant, P. E., Roche-Labarbe, N., & Surova, A. (2009). Increased cerebral blood volume and oxygen consumption in neonatal brain injury (Vol. 29). Journal of cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism. https://doi.org/10.1038/jcbfm.2009.90 Lin, P.-Y., Roche-Labarbe, N., Dehaes, M., Fenoglio, A., Grant, P. E., & Franceschini, M. A. (2013). Regional and Hemispheric Asymmetries of Cerebral Hemodynamic and Oxygen Metabolism in Newborns. Cerebral Cortex, 23(2), 339–348. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhs023 Roche-Labarbe, N., Carp, S. A., Surova, A., Patel, M., Boas, D. A., Grant, P. E., & Franceschini, M. A. (2010). Noninvasive optical measures of CBV, StO2, CBF index, and rCMRO2 in human premature neonates’ brains in the first six weeks of life. Human Brain Mapping, 31(3), 341–352. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.20868 Roche-Labarbe, N., Fenoglio, A., Aggarwal, A., Dehaes, M., Carp, S. A., Franceschini, M. A., & Grant, P. E. (2012). Near-infrared spectroscopy assessment of cerebral oxygen metabolism in the developing premature brain. Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism, 32(3), 481–488. https://doi.org/10.1038/jcbfm.2011.145

Non-Invasive Functional Brain Imaging for Premature Neonates

Premature neonates represent around 10% of births, and have a high risk of atypical cognitive development, with distinctive deficits in sensory processing, attention and executive functions that put them at high risk of neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD) such as autism. However, we know very little about how their brain processes information during the critical period they spend in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), an aversive sensory environment, at a time when their body and brain should be sheltered in utero. To understand sensory processing and the emergence of cognition in neonates, and to study the relationship between premature birth and NDD, we were missing non-invasive methods for functional brain imaging. I first applied high spatial resolution EEG (HR-EEG) to the recording of spontaneous typical and atypical neuronal activity in preterm newborns, and provided the first assessment of the reliability of EEG source localization in this population by comparing results with individual magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) anatomical images, depending on MRI segmentation alternatives (Roche-Labarbe, Aarabi, et al., 2008). Neurovascular coupling is also an essential proxy of brain activity for cognitive science, and I wanted to determine if it was possible to measure it at the bedside in preterm neonates. Because they stay in incubators with constant monitoring, fMRI is hardly an option. Coupling fNIRS and EEG, I exploited spontaneous variations in neural activity to show the presence of functional neurovascular coupling and to describe the method for exploiting it as a non-invasive marker of neonatal brain activity (Roche-Labarbe et al., 2007). I continued by describing the first sensory-evoked hemodynamic response in this population: (Roche-Labarbe et al., 2014) reports the time courses characteristic of the premature newborn of neurovascular coupling variables (blood volume, blood flow velocity, blood oxygenation rate and oxygen consumption rate) during the neuronal activity evoked by a tactile stimulus. This is the foundation for neurofunctional measures of neonatal cognition.

Roche-Labarbe, N., Wallois, F., Ponchel, E., & Kongolo, G. (2007). Coupled oxygenation oscillation measured by NIRS and intermittent cerebral activation on EEG in premature infants. NeuroImage, 36(3), 718–727. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2007.04.002 Roche-Labarbe, N., Aarabi, A., Kongolo, G., Gondry-Jouet, C., Dümpelmann, M., Grebe, R., & Wallois, F. (2008). High-resolution electroencephalography and source localization in neonates. Hum Brain Mapping, 29(2), 167–176. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.20376 Roche-Labarbe, N., Fenoglio, A., Radhakrishnan, H., Kocienski-Filip, M., Carp, S. A., Dubb, J., Boas, D. A., Grant, P. E., & Franceschini, M. A. (2014). Somatosensory evoked changes in cerebral oxygen consumption measured non-invasively in premature neonates. NeuroImage, 85, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.01.035

Sensory Prediction as a Neonatal Precursor of Neurodevelopmental Disorders

My recent research has focused on investigating the relationships among atypical sensory processing, neural substrates of sensory prediction and habituation, and emerging neurodevelopmental disorders in childhood. I have advised three graduate students on this research program. Among the sensory mechanisms that could explain the various NDD symptoms, deficits in sensory prediction seem particularly promising. Authors proposed that atypical behavior such as stimming or restricted interests could result from underweighting sensory prediction from higher-order brain areas (top-down signals) or overweighting inputs and prediction errors from lower-order areas (bottom-up signals). In typically developing children, sensory prediction appears a core process underlying the subsequent development of attention and executive functions, and in infants born preterm, sensory prediction is impaired which could explain subsequent executive deficits. We reviewed the literature supporting this proposal in (Anquetil et al., 2022). We showed that premature newborns can habituate to a repeated tactile stimulus, based on the location of the stimulus on the body but also on the predictability of the inter-stimuli time interval (Dumont et al., 2017). This is the first work on the active (cognitive) processing of purely perceptive (non-haptic) tactile stimuli in newborns. It shows that the speed of habituation depends on gestational age at birth (and therefore, time spent in the NICU), paving the way for the search for very early neurodevelopmental markers. In (Dumont et al., 2022) we demonstrate, for the first time, the presence of neonatal sensory prediction abilities at the brain level, and active top-down regulation of sensory processing depending on temporal parameters of the sequence: neonates, like older humans, stay attentive to moderately predictable stimuli, but not to fully predictable ones. This first evidence of pre-term cognition is now being studied more extensively using HR-EEG and fNIRS, correlated with attention network development using neonatal MRI (anatomy and structural connectivity), and we follow patients at two years of age with cognitive assessments to determine the value of somatosensory prediction abilities as an early marker of neurodevelopmental disorder risk (publications under review and in preparation).

Marais, A.-L., Roche-Labarbe, N. Predictive coding in early child development: perspectives for neurodevelopmental disorders. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience 72(101519). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2025.101519 Anquetil, M., Roche-Labarbe, N., & Rossi, S. (2022). Tactile sensory processing as a precursor of executive attention: Toward early detection of attention impairments and neurodevelopmental disorders. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 14(4), e1640. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcs.1640 Dumont, V., Bulla, J., Bessot, N., Gonidec, J., Zabalia, M., & Roche-Labarbe, N. (2017). The manual orienting response habituation to repeated tactile stimuli in preterm neonates: Discrimination of stimulus locations and interstimulus intervals. Developmental Psychobiology, 59(5), 590–602. https://doi.org/10.1002/dev.21526 Dumont, V., Giovannella, M., Zuba, D., Clouard, R., Durduran, T., & Roche-Labarbe, N. (2022). Somatosensory prediction in the premature neonate brain. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 57, 101148. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2022.101148