Three researchers from Lyon were able, for the first time, to study the brains of gifted children. The first results confirm the existence of two profiles: “laminar” and “complex”.
Long called “gifted, precocious children are now called” high potential “children. A team of researchers from CEMEREP – Living Imaging, Lyon University Hospital and Lyon 2 University observed the brains of children at High Potential thanks to an MRI study (Magnetic Resonance Imaging). With the financial support of the APICIL Foundation, the researchers aimed to better understand the cerebral functioning of these children.
“Laminaria” and “complexes”
In France, children with High Potential represent only 3% of the population. Despite their intellectual capacities to easily understand very complex things, a third of them fail the bac.
The Lyon study therefore confirms the existence of two very distinct profiles in children with High Potential. These profiles, updated by Fanny nusbaum, psychologist, researcher in psychology and neuroscience at the University of Lyon II are the “laminaria” and the “complexes”.
The first correspond to children who have no academic difficulties and who know how to adapt and integrate into their environment, while accepting their difference. The second show a “cognitive dyssynchrony”, that is to say, they suffer from a gap between the very mature intellectual sphere and the more fragile emotional sphere. They find it more difficult to accept their difference and often fail at school.
Improve learning
To carry out this research, the Lyon team studied via MRI, the connections, the anatomy and the functioning of the brain, stimulated or not, of 80 children with High Potential, aged between 8 and 12 years. The latter, previously selected by the child psychiatrist Olivier Revol, had passed an IQ test allowing them to be divided into four groups: the “normal”, the “homogeneous”, the “heterogeneous” and those suffering from attention disorders. MRI showed that areas of the brain were activated in different ways depending on whether it belonged to a particular group.
This study is used to better understand the cerebral functioning of HP children with the aim of integrating it into the teaching techniques of teachers.
Beyond a cerebral mapping of precocious children, these results will make it possible to adapt the teaching in schools to the profile of the child. The latter will be better supported on the educational and psychological level to help him adapt to his environment and no longer be in failure at school.
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