Are there unconscious visual images in aphantasia? Development of an implicit priming paradigm.

For some people the experience of visual imagery is lacking, a condition recently referred to as aphantasia. So far, most of the studies on aphantasia rely on subjective reports, leaving the question of whether mental images can exist without reaching consciousness unresolved. In the present study, the formation of mental images was estimated in individuals with aphantasia without explicitly asking them to generate mental images.

Memory as a scale of simulation depending on the trace distinctiveness.

It has been proposed that representations emerge from a single memory system organized along a continuum of specificity. This continuum is assumed to reflect a scale between the simulation of overlapping and specific features of the traces, which depends on trace distinctiveness. More specifically, higher trace distinctiveness facilitates the simulation of trace-specific features, which increase the discriminability of traces and lead to the emergence of a more specific representation.

Motor fluency makes it possible to integrate the components of the trace in memory and facilitates its re-construction.

The aim of this work was to test the hypothesis that motor fluency should help the integration of the components of the trace and therefore its re-construction. In the encoding phase of each of the three experiments we conducted, a word to be remembered appeared colored in blue or purple. Participants had to read these words aloud and, at the same time, execute a gesture in their ipsilateral (fluent gesture) or contralateral space (non-fluent gesture), according to the color of the word.

Temporal Predictions in Space: Isochronous Rhythms Promote Forward Projections of the Body.

A regular rhythmic stimulation increases people's ability to anticipate future events in time and to move their body in space. Temporal concepts are usually prescribed to spatial locations through a past-behind and future-ahead mapping. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that a regular rhythmic stimulation could promote the forward-body (i.

Playing "guess who?": when an episodic specificity induction increases trace distinctiveness and reduces memory errors during event reconstruction.

The constructive nature of memory implies a possible confusion between details of similar events. Memory interventions should thus target the reduction of memory errors. We postulate that a brief intervention called Episodic Specificity Induction (ESI) facilitates the sensorimotor simulation of event-related details by improving the distinctiveness of the event memory trace.

Validation of New Methods of Using Simulated Whole-Body Movements as Implicit Indicators of Sound and Odor Preferences.

Would you get close to a stinky perfume bottle or to a loudspeaker producing noise? In this paper, we present two procedures that allowed us to assess the ability of auditory and olfactory cues to elicit automatic approach/avoidance reactions toward their sources. The procedures resulted from an adaptation of the Visual Approach/Avoidance by the Self Task (VAAST; Rougier et al., 2018), a task having the peculiarity of simulating approach/avoidance reactions by using visual feedback coming from the whole-body movements.

Spatial sonification of letters on tablets to stimulate literacy skills and handwriting in 5 y-o children: A pilot study.

We evaluate the effects of multisensory training on letters, including sonification of graphic symbols. We used "spatial sonification" where letter handwriting movements recorded in a two dimensional plan, vertical and horizontal, are systematically assigned to two acoustic features, spectral composition for the horizontal axis and frequency for the vertical axis. Forty-six kindergarten children were recruited.

Distinctive Effects of Within-Item Emotion Versus Contextual Emotion on Memory Integration.

This study investigates the links between memory and emotion and, more specifically, how emotions can impact the integration mechanism. The authors' hypotheses were based on a dynamic conception of memory (Versace et al., 2014; Macri et al.

"Does It Improve the Mind's Eye?": Sensorimotor Simulation in Episodic Event Construction.

Memories are not frozen in the past. Instead, they can be dynamically combined to allow individuals to adapt to the present or even imagine the future. This recombination, called , also means that it might be possible to improve memory through specific interventions such as episodic specificity induction (ESI).

When a Reactivated Visual Mask Disrupts Serial Recall.

To prevent forgetting in working memory, the attentional refreshing is supposed to increase the level of activation of memory traces by focusing attention. However, the involvement of memory traces reactivation in refreshing relies in the majority on indirect evidence. The aim of this study was to show that refreshing relies on the reactivation of memory traces by investigating how the reactivation of an irrelevant trace prevents the attentional refreshing to take place, and (2) the memory traces reactivated are sensorial in nature.

Sleep on your memory traces: How sleep effects can be explained by Act-In, a functional memory model.

Numerous studies have explored the effect of sleep on memory. It is well known that a period of sleep, compared to a similar period of wakefulness, protects memories from interference, improves performance, and might also reorganize memory traces in a way that encourages creativity and rule extraction. It is assumed that these benefits come from the reactivation of brain networks, mainly involving the hippocampal structure, as well as from their synchronization with neocortical networks during sleep, thereby underpinning sleep-dependent memory consolidation and reorganization.

The beneficial effect of contextual emotion on memory: the role of integration.

This study investigates the effects of emotion on the integration mechanism which binds together the components of an event and the relations between these components and encodes them within a memory trace [Versace, R., Vallet, G. T.

A SEMantic and EPisodic Memory Test (SEMEP) Developed within the Embodied Cognition Framework: Application to Normal Aging, Alzheimer's Disease and Semantic Dementia.

Embodiment has highlighted the importance of sensory-motor components in cognition. Perception and memory are thus very tightly bound together, and episodic and semantic memories should rely on the same grounded memory traces. Reduced perception should then directly reduce the ability to encode and retrieve an episodic memory, as in normal aging.

The Reactivation of Motion influences Size Categorization in a Visuo-Haptic Illusion.

People simulate themselves moving when they view a picture, read a sentence, or simulate a situation that involves motion. The simulation of motion has often been studied in conceptual tasks such as language comprehension. However, most of these studies investigated the direct influence of motion simulation on tasks inducing motion.

Haptic modality takes its time: Dynamic of activations of sensory modalities in perceptual and memory processes.

Based on claims resulting from grounded cognition theory that perceptual and memory processes are using the same distributed systems, the present study investigated the temporal aspect of access to memory traces through haptic and auditory modalities. Unlike in the case of visual or auditory components, the perception of a vibrotactile component is more sequential in nature and therefore cannot be fully processed before the end of the signal. The present study explores the dynamic of components activation in a situation of audio-vibrotactile asynchrony.

The automatic visual simulation of words: A memory reactivated mask slows down conceptual access.

How do we represent the meaning of words? The present study assesses whether access to conceptual knowledge requires the reenactment of the sensory components of a concept. The reenactment-that is, simulation-was tested in a word categorisation task using an innovative masking paradigm. We hypothesised that a meaningless reactivated visual mask should interfere with the simulation of the visual dimension of concrete words.

Memory plays tricks on me: perceptual bias induced by memory reactivated size in Ebbinghaus illusion.

The relationship between perceptual and memory processing is at the core of cognition. Growing evidence suggests reciprocal influences between them so that memory features should lead to an actual perceptual bias. In the present study, we investigate the reciprocal influence of perceptual and memory processing by further adapting the Ebbinghaus illusion and tested it in a psychophysical design.

Manipulation gesture effect in visual and auditory presentations: the link between tools in perceptual and motor tasks.

There is much behavioral and neurophysiological evidence in support of the idea that seeing a tool activates motor components of action related to the perceived object (e.g., grasping, use manipulation).

Modeling Protein-Micelle Systems in Implicit Water.

Several membrane proteins and numerous membrane-active peptides have been studied in detergent micelles by solution NMR. However, the detailed structure of these complexes remains unknown. We propose a modeling approach that treats the protein and detergent in atomistic detail and the solvent implicitly.

Radiofrequency ablation in the management of advanced stage thymomas: a case report on a novel multidisciplinary therapeutic approach.

We describe in this report a case of successful radiofrequency ablation of an unresectable stage III-type B3 thymoma, and we discuss the role of this novel approach in the management of patients with advanced stage thymoma. The patient, a 59-year-old Caucasian male underwent neoadjuvant chemotherapy with only a slight reduction of the mass. Subsequently, an explorative sternotomy and debulking were performed; before closing the thorax, radiofrequency ablation of the residual tumor was carried out and a partial necrosis of the mass was achieved.

Perceptual processing affects the reactivation of a sensory dimension during a categorization task.

According to grounded theories of cognition, knowledge is grounded in its sensory-motor features. Therefore, perceptual and conceptual processing should be based on the same distributed system so that conceptual and perceptual processes should interact. The present study assesses whether gustatory stimulation (participants tasted a sweet or a nonsweet yoghurt) could influence performance on a categorization task that involves the reactivation of the same sensory dimension.

"The mask who wasn't there": visual masking effect with the perceptual absence of the mask.

Does a visual mask need to be perceptually present to disrupt processing? In the present research, we proposed to explore the link between perceptual and memory mechanisms by demonstrating that a typical sensory phenomenon (visual masking) can be replicated at a memory level. Experiment 1 highlighted an interference effect of a visual mask on the categorization of auditory targets and confirmed the multimodal nature of knowledge. In Experiment 2, we proposed to reactivate this mask in a categorization task on visual targets.

Sensory-motor properties of past actions bias memory in a recognition task.

The aim of this study was to show that sensory-motor consequences of past actions form part of memory trace components cued by current experience. In a first task participants had to learn a list of words. Then in a guessing task they played against the computer.

Demonstration of an ebbinghaus illusion at a memory level: manipulation of the memory size and not the perceptual size.

Based on recent behavioral and neuroimaging data suggesting that memory and perception are partially based on the same sensorimotor system, the theoretical aim of the present study was to show that it is difficult to dissociate memory mechanisms from perceptual mechanisms other than on the basis of the presence (perceptual processing) or absence (memory processing) of the characteristics of the objects involved in the processing. In line with this assumption, two experiments using an adaptation of the Ebbinghaus illusion paradigm revealed similar effects irrespective of whether the size difference between the inner circles and the surrounding circles was manipulated perceptually (the size difference was perceptually present, Experiment 1) or merely reactivated in memory (the difference was perceptually absent, Experiment 2).

Impaired emotional memory enhancement on recognition of pictorial stimuli in Alzheimer's disease: no influence of the nature of encoding.

Objectives: There is some discrepancy in the results regarding emotional enhancement of memory (EEM) in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Some studies report better retrieval of emotional information, especially positive, than neutral information. This observation is similar to the positivity effect reported in healthy older adults.