Study of Social Cognition Processes With Multimodal MRI on Healthy Adult Patients.

The study of higher cognitive functions (learning, memory, language, reasoning, decision making) in humans constitutes an interdisciplinary field, which combines neurobiological and neurological, neuropsychological, as well as linguistic and artificial intelligence skills. Historically, the study of patients with cerebrovascular lesions or brain pathologies associated with primary and/or cognitive deficits has produced fundamental knowledge in this area. The development of modern non-invasive investigation techniques of the human brain - such as Structural Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Diffusion Tensor Imaging, Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), Positron emission (PET), the study of event-related electrophysiological potentials (ERP) or magneto-encephalography (MEG) - has made it possible to carry out similar studies on healthy subjects, as well as the in-vivo analysis of adaptive and plastic mechanisms of the human brain. Recently, the interest of cognitive neuroscience - this is the name taken by this vast interdisciplinary sector which aims to understand the neural mechanisms underlying human cognitive processes - has been oriented towards the study of decision making in social contexts. Knowledge of the mechanisms underlying these processes is fundamental for the most complete description of the biological bases of human behavior and above all for the optimal development of treatments for brain pathologies, whether surgical, pharmacological or rehabilitation in general.