Analyse des prélèvements biologiques médico-légaux : quel cadre juridique à l’ère de la qualité?

Medico-legal autopsy sometimes requires the use of the Parasitology-Mycology specialty. Two recent medico-legal clinical cases, involving this specialty, have questioned us. First of all, may a non-conformity biological analytical (compared to accepted and accredited standards by COFRAC) fail the whole biological expertise, and thereafter, the medico-legal expertise of the file? The answer must consider that the raw result obtained as a result of a medical biology technique must be interpreted and discussed by the expert in the discipline (in this case by the parasitologist) before being included in the medical discussion and discussed by the medical examiner. The judgment is secondarily delivered by the judge according to his intimate conviction and without determining the probative value of the examination. Should a post-mortem biological examination be part of an expertise in medical biology or is it a technical and scientific examination? This answer is based on the previous one, considering the significant contribution of the expert who will bring his knowledge, interpreting and discussing the raw result. A simple technical and scientific examination would only provide the raw result without any assessment of the context and circumstances of the biological sample.     

Infants’ cortical processing of biological motion configuration – A fNIRS study

Biological motion perception is a key component of action perception contributing to social cognition in crucial ways. Contemporary neuroimaging studies show that biological motion is processed differently in the human brain from other types of motion. In particular, the right posterior Superior Temporal Sulcus (rpSTS), an area known for its central role in social perception, has been consistently associated with the perception of biological motion in the mature brain. By contrast, most findings investigating the development of biological motion perception in infancy come from behavioral studies, and far less is known regarding the right STS’ role in processing biological motion.The current study used fNIRS to measure brain activation to biological motion in the rSTS region of 7–8-month-old infants. Infants were presented with two conditions: an approaching coherent motion of a person walking (coherent point-light-walker, PLW); and a spatially scrambled version of this display, where the global configuration of a person walking was disrupted (scrambled PLW).We found a functional activation, i.e., a significant increase in HbO₂ concentration in relation to baseline, in the right middle-posterior temporal cortex only when infants viewed the coherent point-light-walker. This activation statistically differed from the scrambled point-light-walker, and no significant activations were found for viewing the scrambled motion.Our study adds evidence pointing to rSTS’ sensitivity to the global human configuration in biological motion processing during infancy. The rSTS seems thus to become functionally specialized in biological motion configuration as early as at 7–8 months of age.     

A teleological account of Cartesian sensations?

Alison Simmons, in Simmons (1999), argues that Descartes in Meditation Six offered a teleological account of sensory representation. According to Simmons, Descartes’ view is that the biological function of sensations explains both why sensations represent what they do (i.e., their referential content) and why they represent their objects the way they do (i.e., their presentational content). Moreover, Simmons claims that her account has several advantages over other currently available interpretations of Cartesian sensations. In this paper, I argue that Simmons’ teleological account cannot be sustained for both theoretical and textual reasons and that it does not have the advantages it is claimed to have.