Pascale Tremblay
Regular member
Institutions: Université Laval, Département de Réadaptation
Research interests: cognitive neuroscience, brain plasticity, speech perception and production, aging, voice
Pascale Tremblay is full professor in the rehabilitation department at Laval University and FRQS chercheur-boursier Junior 2. Her laboratory -the Speech and Hearing Neurosciences Laboratory-is located at the CERVO research centre. Her work, fundamentally interdisciplinary, aims to uncover the neurobiological mechanisms underlying the perception and production of speech and voice in adults, to understand how aging affects these mechanisms and, ultimately, to relate speech decline to age-related neurobiological changes. This knowledge is key to develop strategies to prevent, delay or even reverse the effects of aging on communication by inducing neuroplastic changes in the neurological circuits involved in speech and hearing processing, which is another focus of her research. Strategies under investigation include neurostimulation and the practice musical activities, especially singing, as well as other types of speech/vocal expertise. To answer these questions, she uses magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), as well as behavioural (accuracy, reaction times, acoustic analyzes, etc.) and physiological approaches.