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International audience; Introduction: Owing to recurrent seizures, temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) patients show neural reorganization, which has especially been studied in language and memory networks (Baciu & Perrone-Bertolotti, 2015; Sidhu et al., 2013). Although these two functions have mainly been studied separately, recent evidence indicates their dynamic interaction (Duff & Brown-Schmidt, 2017). Driven by this neural coupling, we are interested in exploring abnormal patterns of activation within the joint language and episodic memory network in TLE patients over the tasks that engage one or the other function or both simultaneously. However, the problem of exploring complex structures is related to the high dimensionality of data and joint variation between the regions, which, in addition, to sample size, restrict the usage of standard statistical analysis. We will present an application of non-linear manifold learning for fMRI data dimension reduction as one way of addressing these issues. Methods: The GE2REC fMRI protocol (Banjac et al., 2019) was used with 21 healthy adults and 12 left TLE patients to obtain language data through sentence generation (GE), episodic memory data through visual recognition (RECO) and mixed language and memory data through recalling and generating sentences (RA). The ROIs were defined as the regions of Brainnetome atlas (Fan et al., 2016) in which more than 40% of the voxels were activated (p 20) in the control group during the tasks. The beta weights were extracted using the Rex toolbox. In order to explore the deviation of language and memory network activation patterns in TLE patients, the following steps were performed (Tilquin et al, 2019): 1. Dimensionality reduction by using the Umap (McInnes, Healy & Melville, 2018) to convert a set of standardized ROI beta values into a unique point in a manifold subspace representing one participant during one task. 2. Model estimation based on the formula Y=f(x)+ε. Where Y is the control data consisting of values for all ROIs in real space, x is the matching point in the reduced space and ε residuals. The f(x) represents the non-linear kernel regression function between the reduced and natural space. 3. TLE patients analysis by projecting them onto the learned manifold space where the projection point reflects the position that a patient would occupy if they belonged to the control group. The ε depicts the abnormalities in the patient’s dataset in the case when it is greater than the model variability obtained by the leave-one-out procedure. Altered values of the residuals for each ROI were identified by using a Z-score with a p < .001 threshold. Results: The reconstructed manifold differentiated the tasks, with mixed RA task situated between those of language (GE) and memory (RECO) as expected. The GE and RA tasks positioned close to each other, while the RECO task was more distant, which could be due to more similar cognitive processes engaged in the GE and RA tasks. The tasks were more dispersed and superposed for the patients and there was not any patient who projected within the majority of controls for all the tasks. The overlap of tasks in patients seems to correspond to higher involvement of the posterior medial system (Ranganath & Ritchey, 2012) than predicted regardless of the task. It appears that, for the majority of patients, there is a disruption within this system reflected by opposite residuals across the tasks between parahippocampal and posterior superior parietal lobule. The illustrative single case (Figure 2) shows how residuals reflect impairment of the ventral semantical pathway. Conclusion: The manifold learning shows abnormalities within high-dimensional networks. This approach enables connecting each point to the original data in order to better understand the reduced space and provides a measure of deviation. This approach is especially valuable for small sample studies or those comparing single-patient with a control group.

International audience; The amygdala, a limbic area crucial in potentiating emotional processing, is atrophied early in Alzheimer’s disease(AD). Yet, the consequences of amygdala alterations on theprocessing of emotional information in patients with ADare still scarcely investigated. Recent behavioral and neuroimaging data suggest that emotional attention may be apromising way of investigation. In this study, we were interested in assessing the link between amygdala structuraland functional alterations and automatic emotional attention toward salient features of faces. Based on previous reports in patients with amygdala lesions, we also investigated the existence of compensatory processes relying onfrontal networks and allowing the preservation of morecontrolled emotional attention mechanisms. Preliminaryresults will be discussed.

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International audience; Introduction: In patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) the benefit of temporal surgery must be carefully evaluated taking into consideration the risk of inducing the impairments since surgery can lead to postoperative memory (Baxendale et al., 2006) and language deficits (Davies et al., 1998). A number of protocols have been proposed for evaluating language and memory preoperatively in these patients (e.g. Aldenkamp et al., 2003), however, they tested language and memory separately. Considering that mesial temporal regions are implied in both of these processes, it should be essential to evaluate the neural basis of language-and-memory jointly in TLE patients that are being considered for surgery. The present protocol was designed to do so. Methods: The GEREC protocol consists of three runs: (1) block-based run, Generation (GE), during which participants should covertly generate a sentence after hearing a word; (2) event-based run, Recognition (REC), during which, after being presented with an image, participants respond whether they have heard the object from the picture in the first run or not; and (3) block-based run, Recall (RA), in which participants should, after hearing the same words from the first run, remember and covertly generate the same sentences they did in the GE. The GE and RA runs are designed to activate intermixed language-and-memory network by engaging episodic memory encoding and retrieval respectively. Moreover, the protocol is ecological and adapted to patients (easy to perform and has a short duration). Before using it with patients, the protocol needs to be tested in healthy participants, which is the objective of this work. Twenty healthy adults aged 18 to 30 completed the experimental protocol. The fMRI data were acquired at 3T and the manufacturer-provided gradient-echo/T2* weighted EPI method was used. Images were first spatially pre-processed. Results: The statistical analyses revealed that GE run (p < 0.05, FWE-corrected) activated the expected frontotemporal network including left inferior frontal, bilateral middle and superior temporal regions and temporal pole as well as the contralateral cerebellum, specifically 6 and Crus 1. Encoding activated (p < 0.001, uncorrected) left hippocampus and middle temporal gyrus. Initially designed as a memory task, REC activated (p < 0.05, FWE-corrected) a large language-and-memory network, including bilateral inferior occipito-temporal, left parietal and hippocampal regions, but also the left frontal inferior, bilateral SMA and cerebellum. It could be that, despite not being explicitly instructed to do so, when seeing the images, participants automatically performed picture naming. The RA run, on the other hand, activated (p < 0.05, FWE-corrected) more strongly the language network consisting of left frontal inferior and bilateral temporal regions. Conclusion: Our findings support the utility of the GEREC protocol for mapping a shared language-and-memory network. The main intention of this protocol is to reliably map this network in patients with TLE and, in conjunction with the results of neuropsychological testing, it can provide valuable information for planning reconstructive surgery. Finally, it can also be considered as a practical foundation for the exploration of language and memory interconnection.

International audience; Normal aging is characterized by decline in cognitive functioning in conjunction with extensive gray matter (GM) atrophy. A first aim of this study was to determine GM volume differences related to aging by comparing two groups of participants, middle-aged group (MAG, mean age 41 years, N = 16) and older adults (OG, mean age 71 years, N = 14) who underwent an magnetic resonance images (MRI) voxel-based morphometry (VBM) evaluation. The VBM analyses included two optimized pipelines, for the cortex and for the cerebellum. Participants were also evaluated on a wide range of cognitive tests assessing both domain-general and language-specific processes, in order to examine how GM volume differences between OG and MAG relate to cognitive performance. Our results show smaller bilateral GM volume in the OG relative to the MAG, in several cerebral and right cerebellar regions involved in language and executive functions. Importantly, our results also revealed smaller GM volume in the right cerebellum in OG relative to MAG, supporting the idea of a complex cognitive role for this structure. This study provides a broad picture of cerebral, but also cerebellar and cognitive changes associated with normal aging.

International audience; Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) accounts for 70-80% of epilepsy in adults (1). The dysfunction (epileptic zone, EZ) is located in the temporal lobe and induces language and memory reorganization of cerebral networks and various degrees of cognitive efficiency. TLE patients should be explored according to a multimodal integrative perspective, based on multiple data on brain activation, cerebral structure and cognitive performance. We present two patients with left TLE compared to a control group (N=12). Data acquisition. Patients underwent neuropsychological, fMRI and MR-DTI. Control group underwent fMRI and MR-DTI. Neuropsychological scores for patients were compared to normative matched samples associated with each of the tests used. Functional MRI and MR-DTI experiments were performed in a whole-body 3T MR scanner (Philips Achieva). Parameters of diffusion tensor sequence for MR-DTI acquisition were: voxel size: 2 x 2 x 2 mm, 128 x 126 slices of 2 mm thickness and no gap, TE = 67.2 ms, TR = 14000ms, EPI factor = 63, field of view = 256 mm, b value = 1500sec / mm2. During fMRI we applied the NEREC protocol (2) to map lexical production. Parameters for manufacturer-provided gradient-echo/T2* weighted EPI used for fMRI were: voxel size 2.75 x 2.75 x 3.5 mm, field of view 220 x 220 x 131.75 acquired with a 88 x 85 pixels and a reconstruction matrix of 96 x 96; TR=2.5 sec, TE=30 msec and flip angle=77°. Data processing. DICOM raw data for MR-DTI was converted to NIFTI (dcm2niix toolbox) before concatenation and pre-processing with Diffusionist software (2,3) running on Linux and based on FSL (FMRIB Software Library v5.0, Oxford UK (4,5) and FMRIB Diffusion Toolbox (FDT). We measured Fractional Anisotropy (FA) to assess white matter (WM) modifications at (a) intra-hemispheric: inferior longitudinal (ILF), inferior fronto-occipital (IFOF), superior longitudinal SLF, arcuate (Arc), uncinate (Unc), cingulum (Cing), fornix (Fox), and (b) inter-hemispheric level in terms of sub-regions of the corpus callosum (CC): genu (GCC), body (BCC) and splenium (SCC). SPM (www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm) implemented in MATLAB (Mathworks Inc., Natick, MA, USA) was used to analyse fMRI data. After pre-processing, statistical analyses were performed individually and then at a group level for controls (one-sample t-test; k > 5; p 5, frontal LI was -0.412, suggesting right hemisphere specialization of P1 compared to controls (left-hemisphere lateralized). Patient 2. P2 showed normal results for memory tests but was impaired for phonological (phonological fluency= -1,86 σ) and lexico-semantic (object naming= -1,65 σ) processes. Lower FA values (p ≤ .05) were obtained for left Unc (t'(12) = -1.671, p = .05) and right Arc (t'(12) = -3.431, p < .05). P2 also showed lower FA of BCC (t '(12) = -1.922, p 5, frontal IL was 0.165, suggesting bilateral representation of language. The integration of multimodal data is a current issue. While different information derived from MRI neuroimaging and cognitive scores is interrelated, it appears important to go beyond the descriptive approach and move towards a statistical integration of these different data. Indeed, the multimodal integration of anatomical, functional and cognitive data make possible to draw-up comprehensive neurocognitive patterns in patients with epilepsy. In this way, efficient versus less efficient reorganization profiles in this pathology will be identified. This will lead to fundamental and clinical advances such as the identification of functional areas, the prediction of post-surgical outcomes in case of curative neurosurgery, the anticipation/optimization of the rehabilitation if necessary and all this with a view to moving towards an individualized and customized medicine.

International audience; Drug-resistant temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) is a severe neurological condition that causes brain injury due to the recurrence of epileptic seizures, with mostly language (L) and memory (M) impairments. Our research aims to: (i) specify the properties of functional modifications on a language and memory network (LMN), according to the hemispheric lateralization of the epileptogenic zone (LH/RH); (ii) evaluate the efficiency of the LMN reorganizations in terms of functional connectivity (FC). Using MRI (3T Philips) we performed resting state fMRI to assess FC. 17 TLE (n=8 Left TLE; n=9 Right TLE) and a group of 28 healthy subjects were included. Two types of FC analyzes have been carried out on the LMN: ROI-to-ROI (pairwise correlations) and graph theory (integration: Eglob, Enod; segregation: Eloc) with Conn toolbox (Whitfield-Gabrieli & Nieto-Castanon, 2012). Spearman correlations were then made between FC biomarkers and LM standardized performance (verbal comprehension index, auditory memory index, naming, verbal fluency). Our main results revealed that: (a) LMN FC is extensively modified in LTLE patients (temporo-frontal and bilateral), compared to RTLE (posterior-right) and healthy; (b) the type of FC modifications depend on the cognitive function (mainly segregation for language and integration for memory); (c) FC parameters correlate remarkably with cognitive scores; (d) hyperconnectivity (increased functional integration capacity) of certain brain regions is not necessarily efficient and can negatively correlate to LM performance (negative plasticity). Thus, we wish to extend the concept of connectome to “cognitome” that taking into account the behavioral consequences of the changes observed in term of connectivity.

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International audience; Although older adults exhibit normal accuracy in performing word retrieval and generation (lexical production; e.g., object naming), they are generally slower in responding than younger adults. To maintain accuracy, older adults recruit compensatory mechanisms and strategies. We focused on two such possible compensatory mechanisms, one semantic and one executive. These mechanisms are reflected at inter- and intra-hemispheric levels by various patterns of reorganization of lexical production cerebral networks. Hemispheric reorganization (HR) changes were also evaluated in relation to increase naming latencies. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we examined 27 healthy participants (from 30 years to 85 years) during an object naming task, exploring and identifying task-related patterns of cerebral reorganization. We report two main results. First, we observed a left intra-hemispheric pattern of reorganization, the left anterior-posterior aging (LAPA) effect, consisting of supplementary activation of left posterior (temporo-parietal) regions in older adults and asymmetric activation along the left fronto-temporal axis. This pattern suggests that older adults recruit posterior semantic regions to perform object naming. The second finding consisted of bilateral recruitment of frontal regions to maintain appropriate response times, especially in older adults who were faster performers. This pattern is discussed in terms of compensatory mechanism. We suggest that aging is associated with multiple, co-existing compensation and reorganization mechanisms and patterns associated with lexical production.

National audience; Articulatory disorders in aphasia need an adapted rehabilitation. If various methods are available for language disorders’ rehabilitation, for speech disorders, they are limited because of visualization difficulties of speech articulators dissimulated in the oral cavity. Visual feedback is very used. Articulatory gestures are often shown on lips. An interesting method of visual feedback is studied here. This technique is particularly used abroad. An ultrasound machine helps lingual reading and patients can see their own tongue to enhance articulatory knowledge of their lingual movement.In this pilot study we wanted to show effects of an intensive rehabilitation with ultrasound. Comportemental, acoustical and neuroimaging assessments were done before and after this rehabilitation to measure patient progress. An experimental fMRI protocol was validated on healthy subjects.Acoustical results have shown a more canonical production of /u/, /o/ and /a/ vowels on the second formant after rehabilitation compared to session before rehabilitation. Moreover, voiced consonants with devoicing before rehabilitation have improved. Speech therapy’s assessments do not show significant improvement between the two sessions of tests. Neuroimaging results are hard to interpret. We cannot judge of any positive effect of speech rehabilitation with ultrasound visual feedback for the moment but we hope to validate; Les troubles articulatoires chez les patients aphasiques, bien que peu fréquents par rapport aux troubles du langage, nécessitent néanmoins une prise en charge adaptée. Si la rééducation des troubles du langage dispose de techniques de rééducation variées, en rééducation de la parole, les moyens sont limités étant donné la difficulté de visualisation des articulateurs de la parole dissimulés dans la cavité orale. Le canal visuel est cependant très utilisé. Ainsi, le geste articulatoire est le plus souvent montré sur les lèvres où il est bien visible. Il nous a paru intéressant d’étudier une technique de retour visuel utilisée avec succès hors de nos frontières pour pouvoir exploiter le potentiel de la lecture linguale c’est-à-dire permettre au patient de visualiser sa propre langue, afin d’améliorer la connaissance articulatoirede son propre mouvement lingual.Nous avons étudié, au cours d’une étude préliminaire, l’effet d’une rééducation intensive par échographie. Des évaluations comportementales, acoustiques et en neuroimagerie centrées sur l’expression orale avaient lieu avant et après rééducation afin de mesurer les progrès du patient. La validation du protocole expérimental utilisé en IRM fonctionnelle a préalablement été réalisée sur une cohorte de sujets sains.Les analyses acoustiques ont montré une production plus canonique des voyelles /u/, /o/ et /a/ sur le plan du formant F2 après rééducation par rapport au bilan en pré-rééducation et des consonnes voisées remplacées par leurs correspondants sourds avant rééducation. Le bilan orthophonique ne permet pas de constater de franche amélioration entre la session pré-rééducation et la session post-rééducation. Les résultats en neuroimagerie sont difficiles à interpréter. Nous ne pouvons donc juger de l’effet de la rééducation par retour visuel de la langue de façon positive pour le moment mais nous espérons valider cette technique par l’application à une cohorte de patients aphasiques non-fluents.

International audience; Recent behavioral studies indicate that right-handed individuals make faster action decisions on object pairs that appear in standard co-location for right-handed actions in comparison to object pairs that appear in a mirror location. In this fMRI study, we aimed to investigate the neural correlates of visual processing of thematic relations between co-acting objects (frying pan and spatula), depending of their co-location for right-handed actions. Fourteen right-handed participants made decisions about thematically related and unrelated object pairs. Pairs were either positioned in a standard location for a right-handed action (with the active object - spatula in the right visual hemifield, and the passive object - frying pan in the left visual hemifield), or in the reverse location. Behavioral results showed a benefit of positioning thematically related pairs in standard co-location when an action decision was made (deciding if the two objects are usually used together), but not when a more general contextual decision was made (deciding if the two object are typically found in the kitchen). Neuroimaging results showed that the left lateral occipital complex was more activated for standard than reverse locations. Our results provide novel evidence of close interrelations between thematic and action processing in the posterior semantic system.

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International audience; BACKGROUND: Patients with bipolar disorder experience cognitive and emotional impairment that may persist even during the euthymic state of the disease. These persistent symptoms in bipolar patients (BP) may be characterized by disturbances of emotion regulation and related fronto-limbic brain circuitry. The present study aims to investigate the modulation of fronto-limbic activity and connectivity in BP by the processing of emotional conflict.METHODS: Fourteen euthymic BP and 13 matched healthy subjects (HS) underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while performing a word-face emotional Stroop task designed to dissociate the monitoring/generation of emotional conflict from its resolution. Functional connectivity was determined by means of psychophysiological interaction (PPI) approach.RESULTS: Relative to HS, BP were slower to process incongruent stimuli, reflecting higher amount of behavioral interference during emotional Stroop. Furthermore, BP showed decreased activation of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) during the monitoring and a lack of bilateral amygdala deactivation during the resolution of the emotional conflict. In addition, during conflict monitoring, BP showed abnormal positive connectivity between the right DLPFC and several regions of the default mode network.CONCLUSIONS:Overall, our results highlighted dysfunctional processing of the emotion conflict in euthymic BP that may be subtended by abnormal activity and connectivity of the DLPFC during the conflict monitoring, which, in turn, leads to failure of amygdala deactivation during the resolution of the conflict. Emotional dysregulation in BP may be underpinned by a lack of top-down cognitive control and a difficulty to focus on the task due to persistent self-oriented attention.TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01821469 NCT01821469.

International audience; Visual processing of emotional stimuli critically depends on the cognitive appraisalstype such as identifying the self-emotional experience or emotional state ofothers. Moreover, each particular affective appraisal may be driven by a specificspatial frequency content in emotional stimuli. The present fMRI study aimed toinvestigate the brain regions involved in the visual processing of emotional scenesduring two distinct affective appraisal tasks, one emotional based on the self-emotionalexperience and one motivational based on the tendency to action. The relativerole of spatial frequency content of visual stimuli during each of these twoappraisal tasks was also explored by using scenes filtered in low spatial frequencies(LSF) and high spatial frequencies (HSF). Results showed a greater activationof the visual regions and amygdala in the motivational task compared to the emotionaltask. Motivational task also induced specific activations of motor areas(premotor cortex and supplementary motor area) and parietal regions (precuneus,superior and inferior parietal lobules and angular gyrus) although requiredmotor response was similar in the two tasks. Parietal activations were particularlyobtained in appraisal of a tendency to approach a pleasant scene. These resultssuggest that the identification of a tendency to action specifically involves motorand navigation processes. Furthermore, cerebral activations in the motivationaltask were mostly greater for HSF scenes compared to LSF scenes suggesting thatthe tendency to action is mainly driven by the detailed information in scenes. Inthe emotional task, only the visual regions showed a role of the spatial frequencieswith greater activity for HSF scenes (compared to LSF scenes) to evaluate theunpleasant experience and for LSF scenes (compared to HSF scenes) to evaluatethe pleasant experience. Our study stresses distinct processing for identifying thetendency to action and the self-emotional experience on emotional visual scenes,and illustrates the flexible use of spatial frequency content in scenes dependingon the task demands.

International audience; According to current models of visual perception (Kauffmann, Ramanoël, & Peyrin, 2014; Schyns & Oliva, 1994) scenes are processed in terms of spatial frequencies following a predominantly coarse-to-fine processing sequence. Low spatial frequencies (LSF) reach high-order areas rapidly in order to activate plausible interpretations of the visual input. This triggers top-down facilitation that guides subsequent processing of high spatial frequencies (HSF) in lower-level areas such as the inferotemporal and occipital cortices (Bar et al., 2006; Bullier, 2001; Peyrin et al., 2010). However, dynamic interactions underlying top-down influences on the occipital cortex have never been systematically investigated. The present fMRI study aimed to further explore the neural bases and effective connectivity underlying coarse-to-fine processing of scenes, particularly the role of the occipital cortex.We used sequences of six filtered scenes as stimuli depicting coarse-to-fine or fine-to-coarse processing of scenes. Participants performed a categorization task on these stimuli (indoor vs. outdoor). Firstly, we showed that coarse-to-fine (compared to fine-to-coarse) sequences elicited stronger activation in the inferior frontal gyrus (in the orbitofrontal cortex), the inferotemporal cortex (in the fusiform and parahippocampal gyri), and the occipital cortex (in the cuneus). Dynamic causal modeling (DCM; Friston, Harrison, & Penny, 2003) was then used to infer effective connectivity between these regions.DCM results revealed that coarse-to-fine processing resulted in increased connectivity from the occipital cortex to the inferior frontal gyrus and from the inferior frontal gyrus to the inferotemporal cortex. Critically, results also revealed an increase in connectivity strength from both the inferior frontal gyrus and the inferotemporal cortex to the occipital cortex, suggesting top-down influences from these areas that may guide processing of incoming signals.The present results support influential models of visual perception and refine them by emphasizing the role of the occipital cortex as a cortical site for feedback projections in the neural network underlying coarse-to-fine processing of scenes.

International audience; This functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study aimed at examining the cerebral regions involved in the auditory perception of prosodic focus using a natural focus detection task. Two conditions testing the processing of simple utterances in French were explored, narrow-focused versus broad-focused. Participants performed a correction detection task. The utterances in both conditions had exactly the same segmental, lexical, and syntactic contents, and only differed in their prosodic realization. The comparison between the two conditions therefore allowed us to examine processes strictly associated with prosodic focus processing. To assess the specific effect of pitch on hemispheric specialization, a parametric analysis was conducted using a parameter reflecting pitch variations specifically related to focus. The comparison between the two conditions reveals that brain regions recruited during the detection of contrastive prosodic focus can be described as a right-hemisphere dominant dual network consisting of (a) ventral regions which include the right posterosuperior temporal and bilateral middle temporal gyri and (b) dorsal regions including the bilateral inferior frontal, inferior parietal and left superior parietal gyri. Our results argue for a dual stream model of focus perception compatible with the asymmetric sampling in time hypothesis. They suggest that the detection of prosodic focus involves an interplay between the right and left hemispheres, in which the computation of slowly changing prosodic cues in the right hemisphere dynamically feeds an internal model concurrently used by the left hemisphere, which carries out computations over shorter temporal windows. Hum Brain Mapp, 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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International audience; Introduction. Considered as the melody of speech, the neural processing of prosody has long been assumed to be right-lateralized (Ross, 1981; Zatorre et al., 1992; Mayer et al., 2002). However, prosody often brings linguistic information and likely involves left-sided language areas (Baum & Pell, 1999; Astésano et al., 2004). One fine example is prosodic contrastive focus which is used to emphasize a constituent in an utterance as opposed to another using a specific intonational contour ('THOMASF mangeait le bonbon' / 'THOMASF ate the candy'). Previous studies have analyzed the processing of prosodic focus but either in an interlinguistic perspective (Tong et al., 2005) or in a framework of affective vs. linguistic comparison (Wildgruber et al., 2004). The aim of the present fMRI study is to clarify the neural network involved in the processing of prosodic contrastive focus in French and to examine potential hemispheric specialization. Methods. 22 French adults participated in the experiment. Two conditions were compared: Focus (F; utterances with narrow contrastive focus on the subject or the object) and Neutral (N; neutral broad focused utterances). The auditory sentences all had the same syntactic and syllabic structure (e.g., 'Thomas mangeait le bonbon' / 'Thomas ate the candy'). The task consisted in determining whether each auditory sentence contained contrastive focus or not. Responses were recorded and performance of task execution was evaluated. A random-effect group analysis was performed on the F vs. N contrast images (p < 0.001, uncorrected). In order to test possible hemispheric lateralization, Regions of Interest (ROI) analyses were carried-out. To this aim, ROIs were based on the whole-brain activation obtained by contrasting F vs. N in all subjects and delineated in the left and right hemispheres symmetrically. For each ROI, a repeated ANOVA was performed on the parameter estimates with the hemisphere as a within-subject factor. Results. Analysis of the correct responses confirmed that the tasks was perfectly performed (Focus: M = 92.99%, SD = 6.73%; Neutral: N = 97.72 %, SD = 3.85%). Compared to the neutral sentences, the processing of prosodic focus involved activations in the left premotor cortex, the inferior frontal gyrus bilaterally, the left superior and right middle temporal gyri, the supramarginal gyrus bilaterally, and the left superior parietal lobule (Group analysis; Figure 1-Panel A). In addition, left dominant activations were observed in the inferior frontal gyrus, the supramarginal gyrus and the anterior insula (ROi analyses; Figure1-Panel B). Conclusion. Altogether, these results demonstrate that the perception of prosodic focus is not strictly right-lateralized but rather involves bilateral processes in order to detect focus cues. The strong right middle temporal activation likely suggest that the melodic processing of the intonational contour rather takes place in the right hemisphere whereas the associative processes towards a linguistic decision would rather be left-lateralized (left dominance of superior temporal, parietal and frontal regions). This study provides evidence that that both hemispheres participate in the auditory perception of prosodic contrastive focus, with a left-dominant contribution for morpho-syntactic processes and thematic role monitoring.