Projects Archive - Foundation for Prader-Willi Research | Learning Disabilities

Neuropsychological studies have detailed several cognitive deficits in Prader-Willi Syndrome (PWS), among which the observation of altered social interactions, with notable difficulty in interpreting and responding to social information. The integration of the information from the face and the voice is important for our social communication as...

The MAGEL2 gene appears as one of the main genes involved in feeding and behavioral (autistic like behavior) alterations observed in Prader-Willi Syndrome. We showed that, in mouse, the deficiency of Magel2 results in a phenotype similar to the clinical description of patients with mutations in MAGEL2. Indeed, we showed that Magel2-deficient mice...

This project centers on better understanding the social-cognitive characteristics of Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) in early childhood and providing education and training to parents of children with PWS to optimize learning and joint engagement between parent and child. There are two goals of this research:

Paying attention to communicative faces is essential for our understanding of the social world. Indeed, faces provide observers rich and complex information about the identity (gender, age, etc), the socio-emotional state (eye-brows movements, eye-gaze) and the linguistic message (auditory speech sounds/mouth movements) of our social partners. The...

Children with Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) exhibit wide variation in their behavior and educational profiles, which has made the development of effective teaching strategies difficult for many educators. The proposed study would attempt to remedy this problem through the development of rating forms that would provide specific, detailed information...