The "PACE for CP" Programme | Fondation Motrice

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THE ‘PACE for CP’ PROGRAMME

        In 2010 La Fondation Motrice, with the support of its partner SODIAAL, initiated the ‘PACE for CP’ programme (Perception – Action - Cognition – Environment) dedicated to develop and promote the PACE approach; whether in the Cerebral Palsy field or in others fields that can generate breakthroughs transferable to the CP field with expected beneficial outcomes for persons with CP.

      The PACE approach means that perception, action, cognition and the interaction with the environment are not seen as separate “functions”, to be isolated and analysed in uni-modular, poorly ecological experimental conditions. Although such a traditional way of focusing on the possible dissociations of each function from the others has proven effective in many respects, it does not address some key questions emerging from clinical and daily-life settings. In the last decades, new discoveries and models in neuroscience have led most researchers to consider these aspects of brain functioning which are deeply blended and to some extent co-emerging throughout development. A true shift of paradigm from isolated, modular functions to functional integration has taken place. This, in turn, now challenges our mission as basic and clinical researchers, health professionals, and care-givers, in that we are confronted with a complex, multi-faceted and highly interconnected brain, whose disturbances cannot be fully understood nor treated, but in a complex, multi-faceted, and integrated way. New research protocols are thus needed, acting in an integrative perspective, in addition to more traditional research addressing specifically isolated functions independently from one another.

Multimodal assessment requires a multidisciplinary team. Moreover, in such a comprehensive approach, the scope and depth of the necessary clinical and scientific competences are not at all negligible: they range from clinical to basic neuroscience, from physical therapy to neuropsychological re-education, from epidemiology to social sciences, from philosophy to architecture. This programme also attempts to reinforce the link between fundamental research and clinical research, hence fastening the way from benchmark to patients’ beds.  

The ‘PACE for CP’ Network of Excellence:

Within the ‘PACE for CP program’, La Fondation Motrice has wired up a network of excellence, committing several top-level research and clinical groups throughout Europe to this goal. This network coordinated by Pr. Giovanni Cioni, meets about twice a year to thoroughly think how to develop this line of research and foresee its implications. Four seminars have already been held and several key research issues have been identified.  LFM will keep on organizing about two meetings of the PACE network per year, to involve more researchers from different countries, selected on the base of their expertise in this field, to ensure that this important multidisciplinary reflection can develop in the long range.

ROADMAP 2011:

In 2011, the ‘PACE for CP’ program is entering the stage of action with the launching of two complementary actions:

1. The ‘PACE for CP’ Pilot Study 2011:

“CONTRIBUTION TO A PACE APPROACH TO CP: New Testing & Conceptual Tools.”

            The ‘PACE for CP’ network pointed the relevance of several issues and agreed to launch a Pilot Study addressing some core questions with a PACE approach throughout the developmental course, both in CP and typically developing children, and thus opening promising perspectives and laying down the basis for further developments

            This pilot study, entitled “CONTRIBUTION TO A PACE APPROACH TO CP: New Testing & Conceptual Tools.”, encompasses three closely related studies and a meta-analysis of the literature, connected to one another to build a coherent international multidisciplinary research program, coordinated by Pr. Alain Berthoz and Pr. Giovanni Cioni. It brings together some members of the network (Alain Berthoz, Christine Cans, Giovanni Cioni, Hans Forssberg, Claes von Hofsten) as well as other recognized scientists belonging to research and clinical centres in France, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Denmark).

The main objectives of this pilot study are:

1) to provide evidence for the viability and scientific relevance of the PACE approach to CP;

2) to get insight into basic functioning and disorders of children with CP in a PACE perspective, possibly contributing to new intervention proposal;

à To test some running hypotheses, each emerging in its own research field, which share the core idea that the integration and coordination of different brain networks and functional strategies may be hindered in CP children, directly due to the lesion or indirectly to a lack of interaction with the environment. Such an integrative defect would then impair, in its turn, the accomplishment of complex actions, thus further limiting the child's functional development.

3) to validate new, evidence-based tools for diagnosis and functional assessment, especially providing reliable early markers of impairment;

4) to establish a “hard-wired” collaborative network across Europe around the PACE approach.

Four Work Packages (WPs) have been selected for the Pilot Study, aiming respectively:

1) to develop and test a new setting to record gaze and head movements in preterm infants at risk for bilateral CP;

2) to standardise a new assessment tool to study bilateral hand function in infants at risk for unilateral CP;

3) to study the cognitive strategies of locomotor navigation in typically developing and in children with CP;

4) to investigate the distribution of cognitive profiles in children with CP, as emerging from a systematic review of the literature.

            These projects, mainly addresses to the first years of life, are all coherent with the PACE approach, in that they address developmental processes from an integrative point of view, where perception, action, cognition and the interaction with the environment are simultaneously and dynamically involved.

2. LFM-SODIAAL International Scientific Prize: 

“The Role of the Mouth in Early Cerebral Development through Interaction with the Environment”

La Fondation Motrice and SODIAAL will award an International Scientific Prize LFM-SODIAAL (estimated allocation: 30 000 €) to scientists who have conducted distinguished research enlightening “The Role of the Mouth in Early Cerebral Development through Interaction with the Environment”.

 Extended deadline

The deadline for the application is June 27, 2011.

Contact: Emilie Gaillard

  Project Leader – ‘PACE for CP’ Programme at La Fondation Motrice

  egaillard AT lafondationmotrice.org