Study of the Cerebral Bases of Tool Use and Tool Evolution (TOOLBOX)

Civil Hospices of Lyon

Status: Completed

Conditions: Healthy

Treatments: Other: fMRI

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT03555162

69HCL18_0121

Details and patient eligibility

About

Tool use is considered to be the hallmark of complex cognitive adaptations that humans have achieved trough evolution, that provides an adaptive advantage to the human species. Even if nonhuman species do use tools too, human tool use is much more complex and sophisticated. Besides, only humans can make their tools evolve by improving them. If Man has special abilities for tool use, it has to be grounded in a specific neuroanatomical substrate. Humans and nonhumans share a similar prehension system located within the superior parietal lobe and the intraparietal sulcus. However, there is a human specificity : the surpramarginal gyrus within the left inferior parietal lobe is unique to Man, and could play a central role in tool use and tool evolution.

This project aims to study the neural correlates of human tool use with functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), to precise the cognitive mechanisms through which humans are able to use tools. We also wish to study what are the cognitive abilities that allow us to make our tools evolve by improving them, and the neural correlates associated.

Enrollment: 70 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 65 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• To be between the ages of 18 and 65 years old
• Having given an informed consent for the study
• Being right-handed
• Being registered with the French Social Security System

Exclusion criteria

• No signature on the consent form, including inability to read or write French.
• Neurologic or psychiatric illness, known or revealed durnig the inclusion visit
• Substance intake ( taking psychoactive medications or recreational drugs) on the day of the experiment
• Noise intolerance
• Minor person, pregnant or breastfeeding woman
• Persons under curatorship or deprived of civil rights or deprived of their freedom
• Unable to fill a questionnaire (severe cognitive troubles)
• Subjects must not have metallic or electronic implants in the body : pacemakers or pacemaker wires, open heart surgery, artificial heart valve, brain aneurysm surgery, middle ear implant, hearing aid, braces or extensive dental work, cataract surgery or lens implant, implanted mechanical or electrical device, or artificial limb or joint o foreign metallic objects in the body (bullets, BBs, pellets, schrapnel, or metalwork fragments) or current or past employment as machinists, welders or metal workers, tattoos near the head or neck regions, permanent makeup
• Claustrophobia

Trial design

Primary purpose: Basic Science

Allocation: Non-Randomized

Interventional model: Single Group Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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70 participants in 2 patient groups

Tool Use

Other group

Description:

The fMRI experimental conditions in this arm will allow us to study the activity of the brain when using tools. Here only the fMRI experimental session is necessary. Tasks proposed to the participants within the fMRI scanner will be related to tool use. They will have to solve mechanical problems, to judge the appropriateness of hand postures for using tools, and to judge if tools presented share the same context of use, the same functional goals, the same hand postures for using them.These experimental conditions related to the BOLD measures given by the fMRI technique will allow us to draw hypotheses on the neurocognitive mechanisms at work when we use tools.

Treatment:

Other: fMRI

Tool Evolution

Other group

Description:

The fMRI experimental conditions in this arm will allow us to study the activity of the brain when we improve tools. Here the fMRI experimental session will be complemented by a cognitive psychology experiment, where participants will be given a tool to improve. Tasks proposed to the participants within the fMRI scanner will be related to cognitive functions that could be implicated in improving tools : creativity, technical reasinoning, logic, empathy. The BOLD measures realted to these experimental condfitions will be related to the ability of the participant to improve a tool, through General Linear Modeling.

Treatment:

Other: fMRI