Inter-generational person perception in adolescence

The NeuroSchool PhD Program of Aix-Marseille University (France) has launched its annual calls for PhD contracts for students with a master's degree in a non-French university and for  international co-supervised PhDs.

This project is one of the proposed projects. Not all proposed projects will be funded, check our website for details.

Intergenerational non-verbal communication between adults and adolescents is essential in families, education and daily life, but remains largely unexplored. Adolescents’ interactions shift from caregivers to peers, influencing the way they perceive and react to adolescents and adults. This is concomitant to maturation of self-consciousness and related brain networks (1). How brain representation of fundamental aspects of others’ perception is sensitive to age-group, i.e. different for adults and peers’ perception is not well understood, however, with research focusing mostly on face perception (2). While the changes and significance of faces is an important feature in adolescence, other person-related cues like body and voices also undergo paramount changes due to pubertal and social reconfiguration. While the processing of these signals undergoes a protracted maturation during adolescence (3-6), how the distinction between peer and other-age stimuli, in terms of perception but also interaction, change is unknown.

• Objectives
  • Probe brain representation of faces, body and voices for same-age and adults stimuli at different stages of adolescence
  • Investigate inter-generational effect in mimicry and their brain correlate
•  Methods

We will use fMRI and eye tracking in peri-pubertal (10-13) pre-adolescents, adolescents (14-17), emerging adults (18-21) and adults in two experiments.

- Passive observation of stimuli of different ages

- Automatic imitation of hand movements from an adult or a peer (see 7 for design)

Model-based univariate and multivariate analyses will test for the preferential processing of same-age stimuli

•  Expected results

We anticipate stronger effects of other-age stimuli, peaking in middle to late adolescence when self-perception stabilizes (see 8 for discussion).

• Feasibility

This project builds on extensive work in the laboratory with the support of engineers. Ethics approval is secured (CPP SUD-EST IV (ref 2022-A00046-37). Funding for scanning is secured through advance made from a previous grant

Within Aix Marseille Université, NeuroMarseille brings together 8 research laboratories and NeuroSchool, a graduate school in neuroscience, to increase the attractiveness of the university, international collaborations, interdisciplinarity, links with the clinical and industrial worlds and the integration of students into professional life. 

Launched in July 2018, NeuroSchool unifies and harmonizes the training of the third year of the Bachelor of Life Sciences (Neuroscience track), the Master's and the PhD in Neuroscience. 

• Master's degree from a non-French university in neuroscience or related field
• Fluent in English

• Master in Neuroscience, psychology or related field
• Excellent synthesis skills
• Capacity to work in autonomy
• Good analytical, statistics and computing skills
• Experience with fMRI would be an advantage