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The ability to remember, recognize and reconstruct places is a key component of episodic autobiographical memory. In this respect, place forms an essential basis for the unfolding of experiences in memory and imagination. The autobiographical memory is seen to contribute to a sense of self and place identity. The aim of this study was to concertedly analyze paintings, autobiographical narrations and places of birth and life of clients under treatment at a psychiatric clinic in Switzerland who were manifesting psychiatric disorders, e.g. depression, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, personality disorder, substance dependence, and dementia. Each client exhibited distinctive attitudes and approaches towards life characterized by unique personal mental constructs for living in given places of time episodes that worked towards shaping the development of their identities as well as the development of their health. For these clients, place and time function together to leave a mark, a trajectory, that can hinder or help the resolution of a psychiatric condition. Based on six representative cases, we illustrate how each painting, each biographical narration and each interview reveals deeper structures of individual perception, emotions, feelings, coping strategies, and capacities to reflect and identify with place-time trajectories. Based on this analysis, a place-time-identity model has been developed, which emphasizes the importance of narration, the structure of personality, and emotional experiences in the development of the 'relay station' of episodic autobiographical memory, self and autonoetic consciousness: these three elements are not only connected through their embeddedness in time, but also through their embeddedness in place. In this context, place provides an external fundus of memory, capable of supporting humans in healthy recollection and remembering. The process of placing appears to contribute to the creation of self-esteem and identity. This psycho-geographical place-life-time approach is contrasted to phenomenological place-space-time theories of Husserl, Heidegger, Bachelard, and Sloterdijk.

When having travelled one returns to, or revisits, a place. Unaware of the personal transformation that has occurred, one realizes the change when confronted with familiar things. In a desire to understand what objects and places mean to people, the project An actual house looks at three objects from a childhood home: a staircase, a window and a curtain and their relation to memory and autonomic consciousness. It reflects upon the importance of memory and imagination in art, architecture, and design - memory as well as imagination as a tool to create a different future. This art-practice-based work uses a hybrid form method. Exploring phenomenology trough writing, creating objects from memory and conveying the work to a perceptible form in a curated exhibition. It wants to contribute to a discussion on the relation between humans, objects and places in time.

Alterations within consciousness in schizophrenia can be evidenced by impediments in self-awareness and loss of agency. Ned Block’s definition of access consciousness is applied in order to further delineate cognitive deficits involving reflective thought and autonoetic thinking in persons with schizophrenia. Current theories on the nature and functioning of consciousness are discussed, which include Global Workspace Theory and metarepresentational characterizations. These describe a recursive, integrative quality to consciousness, contributed to by the functions of access consciousness, that is relevant in examining cognitive deficits in schizophrenia. The integrative deficit that is described as operating in conscious process involves a failure to incorporate prior outputs from a separate cognitive task and integrate these into a novel working schema. The alterations in access consciousness in persons with schizophrenia appear to be a consequence of disrupted integrative cognitive functions. An anteceding problem with cortical circuits involving integrative functions related to access consciousness is therefore hypothesized to manifest as subsequent cognitive dysfunction that leads to symptoms of schizophrenia. Constitutive failures to integrate information in schizophrenia could lead to an inability to create experiential unity and manage content in autonoetic consciousness. Some of the aberrant reasoning manifested by persons with schizophrenia, including problems with hierarchical relational reasoning, model-based-learning, J-con, ipseity, and source monitoring, could also reflect alterations in access consciousness, and their investigation offers additional approaches for scientific inquiry.

Although the concept of mental time travel refers to autonoetic consciousness (that is, consciousness of one's own past), I argue that it should prove worthwhile to analyse the apparent similaritie...

Understanding consciousness is one of the most fascinating challenges of our time. From ancient civilizations to modern philosophers, questions have been asked on how one is conscious of his/her own existence and about the world that surrounds him/her. Although there is no precise definition for consciousness, there is an agreement that it is strongly related to human cognitive processes such as attention, a process capable of promoting a selection of a few stimuli from a huge amount of information that reaches us constantly. In order to bring the consciousness discussion to a computational scenario, this paper presents conscious attention-based integrated model (CONAIM), a formal model for machine consciousness based on an attentional schema for human-like agent cognition that integrates: short- and long-term memories, reasoning, planning, emotion, decision-making, learning, motivation, and volition. Experimental results in a mobile robotics domain show that the agent can attentively use motivation, volition, and memories to set its goals and learn new concepts and procedures based on exogenous and endogenous stimuli. By performing computation over an attentional space, the model also allowed the agent to learn over a much reduced state space. Further implementation under this model could potentially allow the agent to express sentience, self-awareness, self-consciousness, autonoetic consciousness, mineness, and perspectivalness.

Endel Tulving's proposal that episodic memory is distinct from other memory systems like semantic memory remains an extremely influential idea in cognitive neuroscience research. As originally suggested by Tulving, episodic memory involves three key components that differentiate it from all other memory systems: spatiotemporal binding, mental time travel, and autonoetic consciousness. Here, we focus on the idea of spatiotemporal binding in episodic memory and, in particular, how consideration of the precision of spatiotemporal context helps expand our understanding of episodic memory. Precision also helps shed light on another key issue in cognitive neuroscience, the role of the hippocampus outside of episodic memory in perception, attention, and working memory. By considering precision alongside item-context bindings, we attempt to shed new light on both the nature of how we represent context and what roles the hippocampus plays in episodic memory and beyond.

Current theories of identity in organizations assume and valorize stability of identity over time. In this chapter the authors challenge this assumption by introducing contemporary understandings of the fluidity of time in the construction of autobiographical memory. They argue that, both in individual and organizational memory, narrative constructions of the self fluidly incorporate episodes from the past, present, and future in an ongoing effort to create a coherent autobiography. They elaborate the construct of autobiographical memory as constituted by autonoetic consciousness, life narrative, and collective memory and discuss the implications for identities in organizations.

Memory disorders without a direct neural substrate still belong to the riddles in neuroscience. Although they were for a while dissociated from research and clinical arenas, risking becoming forgotten diseases, they sparked novel interests, paralleling the refinements in functional neuroimaging and neuropsychology. Although Endel Tulving has not fully embarked himself on exploring this field, he had published at least one article on functional amnesia (Schacter et al., 1982) and ignited a seminal article on amnesia with mixed etiology (Craver et al., 2014). Most importantly, the research of Endel Tulving has provided the researchers and clinicians in the field of dissociative or functional amnesia with the best framework for superiorly understanding these disorders through the lens of his evolving concept of episodic memory and five long term memory systems classification, which he developed and advanced. Herein we use the classification of long-term memory systems of Endel Tulving as well as his concepts and views on autonoetic consciousness, relationships between memory systems and relationship between episodic memory and emotion to describe six cases of dissociative amnesia that put a challenge for researchers and clinicians due to their atypicality. We then discuss their possible triggering and maintaining mechanisms, pointing to their clinical heterogeneity and multifaceted causally explanatory frameworks.

The authors assessed the relationship between confabulations in Alzheimer's disease and the ability to mentally travel in time to reexperience memories. Twenty-seven patients with Alzheimer's disease were administered evaluations of provoked confabulations, spontaneous confabulations, and mental time travel. Provoked and spontaneous confabulations were evaluated with questions probing personal and general knowledge and with a scale rated by nursing and medical staff. Mental time travel was assessed by asking patients to retrieve personal memories. After each memory, participants had to provide a "remember" response if they were able to retrieve the event with their encoding context or a "know" response if they knew that the event had occurred but were unable to recall any contextual details. Results showed significant negative correlations between confabulations and "remember" responses. These findings reflect a relationship between the occurrence of confabulations in patients with Alzheimer's disease and impairments in their ability to mentally project themselves in time when retrieving the context in which confabulated memories were originally encoded.

People diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) continuously struggle with knowing who they are and maintaining relationships. Fortunately, psychotherapies for BPD have proven effective. However, not everyone benefits from treatment with particular challenges remaining in social relations and finding meaning in life. Therefore, it is important to understand how we can better support people with BPD.We know that identity disturbances relate to interpersonal difficulties but we do not really understand how. Therefore, we investigated how interactions with others are influenced by how people see themselves, in the general population and in people diagnosed with BPD. To this end, we studied brain activation and the role of childhood trauma and low self-esteem. In addition, we investigated whether self-views can be strengthened using positive memories.We found that the way people respond to critiques and compliments relates to how positive or negative they see themselves. Moreover, vivid positive memories can benefit mood and self-esteem. However, people with BPD seem to not sufficiently distance themselves from critiques nor engage in positive memories and compliments. Finding the right balance between distance from critiques and engagement with a positive self-image may break the cycle of negative self-knowledge and contribute to better social interactions.

The term 'episodic memory' was coined by Endel Tulving, who also created a classification in several memory systems. This classification is presented, and it is described which predecessors existed for the partition of memory into systems. The 'episodic memory system' is discussed as being in general equivalent with the 'episodic-autobiographical memory system'. It is seen as an emotionally colorized system. A special paragraph is devoted to the 'perceptual memory system', as this was not included in Tulving's previous schemes of memory systems. More recent sub-categorizations of the 'episodic memory system' are presented and a perspective on the future of the episodic memory system is developed.

Humans spend the lion's share of their mental life either in their personal past or an anticipated or imagined future. This type of mental state is known as mental time travel. It is perhaps the most sophisticated and fitness-promoting cognition that has evolved in humans and with some reservation in animals. We have proposed that working memory capacity and the complexity of executive functions within working memory might limit the authenticity with which past events are reconstructed and anticipated or imagined future scenarios are constructed. In the present article, we discuss the possibility of a co-evolution between working memory capacity, complexity of executive functions available in the working memory workspace, and mental time travel abilities across species. We further assume that a complex working memory system can be constructed with quite different brains and conclude that the advanced cognitive function of thinking about the past and the future might not be a privilege of the mammalian brain.

International audience; The aim of this study was to highlight the underlying process responsible for the age-related deficit in recollection. Through two experiments using the Remember-Know-Guess procedure (Gardiner, J. M., & Richardson-Klavehn, A. [2000]. Remembering and knowing. In The Oxford handbook of memory (pp. 229–244). New York, NY: Oxford University Press) in recognition, we manipulated the opportunity to update bindings between target items and their encoding context, in young and older adults. In the first experiment we impaired the binding updating process during the encoding of items, while in the second we supported this process. The results indicated that the “Remember” responses in the younger group were specifically reduced by the impairment of the binding updating process (Exp. 1), suggesting that this ability is useful for them to encode a specific episode. Conversely, only the “Remember” responses in the older group were improved in accuracy by supporting the binding updating process (Exp. 2), suggesting that their weakness in this ability is the source of their failure to improve the accuracy of their memories. The overall results support the hypothesis that the age-related decline in episodic memory is partly due to a greater vulnerability to interference on bindings, impairing the ability to update content-context bindings as and when events occur.

Episodic memory enables the storage of personal events with specific temporal and spatial details, and their retrieval through a sensory experience, usually visual, which is called autonoetic consciousness. While, in Brazil, several scales for the evaluation of anterograde episodic memory have been validated, there is not yet an instrument to assess the episodic autobiographical memory. The aim of this study is thus to make a cross-cultural adaptation and validation of the Episodic Autobiographic Memory Interview (EAMI) for Brazilian Portuguese. Altogether, 11 patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and 10 healthy controls (CTs) were evaluated. EAMI scores for AD patients were lower than those of CTs, and these scores also correlated positively with the Remember-Know coefficient. The intraclass correlation coefficient indicated a good inter-rater reliability. The Portuguese version of EAMI showed a good reliability and validity, which suggests that it is a useful tool for evaluation of autobiographical memory in Brazilian patients. A memória episódica possibilita o arquivamento de eventos pessoais, com seus detalhes temporais e espaciais, e sua recuperação através de uma experiência sensorial, geralmente visual, chamada de consciência autonoética. No Brasil, foram validados vários instrumentos para avaliação da memória episódica anterógrada, porém não há ainda uma escala para avaliar a memória episódica autobiográfica. O objetivo deste estudo é realizar uma validação e adaptação transcultural da Entrevista para avaliação da Memória Episódica Autobiográfica (EMEA) para o português brasileiro. Onze pacientes com doença de Alzheimer (DA) e 10 controles normais foram avaliados. Os escores dos pacientes com DA na EMEA foram menores do que nos controles saudáveis. Estes escores se correlacionaram positivamente com o coeficiente Lembrar-Saber. O coeficiente de correlação intraclasse indicou uma confiabilidade inter-examinadores adequada. A EMEA demonstrou uma boa validade e confiabilidade, sugerindo que ela é um instrumento útil para a avaliação da memória autobiográfica em pacientes brasileiros.

The present study aimed to explore autobiographical memories (long-lasting memories about the self) and episodic memories (memories about discrete episodes or events) within dream content. We adapted earlier episodic memory study paradigms and reinvestigated the incorporation of episodic memory sources into dreams, operationalizing episodic memory as featuring autonoetic consciousness, which is the feeling of truly re-experiencing or reliving a past event. Participants (n = 32) recorded daily diaries and dream diaries, and reported on wake-dream relations for 2 weeks. Using a new scale, dreams were rated for their episodic richness, which categorized memory sources of dreams as being truly episodic (featuring autonoetic consciousness), autobiographical (containing segregated features of experiences that pertained to waking life) or otherwise. Only one dream (0.5%) was found to contain an episodic memory. However, the majority of dreams (>80%) were found to contain low to moderate incorporations of autobiographical memory features. These findings demonstrate the inactivity of intact episodic memories, and emphasize the activity of autobiographical memory and processing within dreams. Taken together, this suggests that memories for personal experiences are experienced fragmentarily and selectively during dreaming, perhaps in order to assimilate these memories into the autobiographical memory schema.

The study of the origin and evolution of consciousness presents several problems. The first problem concerns terminology. The word consciousness comes from the Latin term conscĭentĭa that means "knowledge shared with others." However, the term consciousness also refers to several other aspects involving both its levels (sleep, coma, dreams and waking state) and contents (subjective, phenomenal and objective). A second issue is the problem of other minds, namely, the possibility to establish whether others have minds very like our own. Moreover, human consciousness has been linked to three different forms of memory: procedural/implicit, semantic and episodic. All these different aspects of consciousness will be discussed in the first part of the chapter. In the second part, we discuss different neuroscientific theories on consciousness and examine how research from developmental psychology, clinical neurology (epilepsy, coma, vegetative state and minimal state of consciousness), neuropsychology (blindsight, agnosia, neglect, split-brain and ocular rivalry), and comparative neuropsychophysiology contribute to the study of consciousness. Finally, in the last part of the chapter we discuss the distinctive features of human consciousness and in particular the ability to travel mentally through time, the phenomenon of joint intentionality, theory of mind and language.

STUDY OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study is to examine the effects of sleep deprivation during the first or second half of the night on episodic memory consolidation. Episodic memory is defined as memory for events located in time and space. It is also characterized by autonoetic consciousness, which gives a subject the conscious sensation of traveling back in time to relive the original event and forward into the future. DESIGN: Consolidation of episodic information was tested after 4-hour retention intervals, which followed learning and occurred during either the early or late half night, respectively dominated by slow wave sleep (SWS) or rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, or corresponding periods of wakefulness. SETTING: Data collection occurred in the sleep laboratory. PARTICIPANTS: Forty-three young healthy subjects: 9 men and 34 women, age ranging from 18 to 26 years (mean 20.18 +/- 1.94 years) were included in this study. INTERVENTIONS: Waking after a 4-hour retention interval filled with early or late sleep, or 4-hour sleep deprivation, during early or late period of night. MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS: The cognitive task, named the What-Where-When test, was specially designed to assess factual, spatial, and temporal components of episodic memory. This task was associated with the Remember/Know paradigm to assess autonoetic consciousness. We measured performance on immediate free recall, delayed free recall (after a 4-hour interval of wakefulness or sleep), and delayed recognition. We also calculated a forgetting rate for each feature (factual, spatial, and temporal) and, for the recognition task, scores of autonoetic consciousness (R responses). REM-sleep deprivation was associated with significantly lower recall of spatial information compared to SWS deprivation (P < .01) or late sleep (P < .05) conditions. REM-sleep deprivation was also associated with a higher forgetting rate of temporal information as compared to the early sleep condition (P< .01). Finally, REM-sleep deprivation led subjects to give significantly fewer R responses, indicative of true memories, as compared to SWS deprivation (P < .05). CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that consolidation of truly episodic memories mainly involves REM sleep. Language: en

The Self-reference effect (SRE) on long-term episodic memory and autonoetic consciousness has been investigated in young adults, scarcely in older adults, but never in Alzheimer's patients. Is the functional influence of Selfreference still present when the individual's memory and identity are impaired? We investigated this issue in 60 young subjects, 41 elderly subjects, and 28 patients with Alzheimer's disease, by using 1) an incidental learning task of personality traits in three encoding conditions, inducing variable degrees of depth of processing and personal involvement, 2) a 2- minute retention interval free recall task, and 3) a 20-minute delayed recognition task, combined with a remember-know paradigm. Each recorded score was corrected for errors (intrusions in free recall, false alarms in recognition, and false source memory in remember responses). Compared with alternative encodings, the Self-reference significantly enhanced performance on the free recall task in the young group, and on the recognition task both in the young and older groups but not in the Alzheimer group. The most important finding in the Alzheimer group is that the Self-reference led the most often to a subjective sense of remembering (especially for the positive words) with the retrieval of the correct encoding source. This Self-reference recollection effect in patients was related to independent subjective measures of a positive and definite sense of Self (measured by the Tennessee Self Concept Scale), and to memory complaints in daily life. In conclusion, these results demonstrated the power and robustness of the Self-reference effect on recollection in long-term episodic memory in Alzheimer's disease, albeit the retrieval is considerably reduced. These results should open new perspectives for the development of rehabilitation programs for memory deficits.

Psychoanalysts have suggested that a mentalization process is required for the transformation of drives and affects into mental representations of self and others. Meanwhile, neuroscientists suggest that episodic memory, through autonoetic consciousness, is crucially involved in the elaboration of the Self and subjective experience. This research empirically investigates the relationship between the quality of mentalization and the efficacy of autobiographical recall, and considers childhood trauma and psychopathology as possible related factors. Thirty participants presenting with either high or low mentalization profiles according to the Mental States Rating Systems (MSRS) were submitted to the TEMPau, a semi-structured interview designed to assess the quality of autobiographical recall from several criteria (episodicity, self-perspective and consciousness). Childhood trauma was assessed using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ). The Symptom Checklist (SCL- 90-R) and the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Personality Disorders (SCID-II) were used to assess global symptomatology and Axis-II disorders respectively. As expected, levels of mentalization are related to higher levels of childhood abuse (emotional, physical and sexual) and symptomatology (SCL-90-R Global Severity Index). However, contrary to our expectation, better autobiographical memory is associated with poor mentalization profiles, although spontaneity of recall is less efficient in those subjects. No significant relation was found between Axis-II disorders and traits, and other clinical variables.

Background:Autobiographical memory (ABM), personal semantic memory (PSM), and autonoetic consciousness are affected in individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) but their relationship with Alzheimer's disease (AD) biomarkers are unclear.Methods:Forty-five participants (healthy controls (HC) = 31, MCI = 14) completed the Episodic ABM Interview and a battery of memory tests. Thirty-one (HC = 22, MCI = 9) underwent β-amyloid positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance (MR) imaging. Fourteen participants (HC = 9, MCI = 5) underwent one imaging modality.Results:Unlike PSM, ABM differentiated between diagnostic categories but did not relate to AD biomarkers. Personal semantic memory was related to neocortical β-amyloid burden after adjusting for age and apolipoprotein E (APOE) ɛ4. Autonoetic consciousness was not associated with AD biomarkers, and was not impaired in MCI.Conclusions:Autobiographical memory was impaired in MCI participants but was not related to neocortical amyloid burden, suggesting that personal memory systems are impacted by differing disease mechanisms, rather than being uniformly underpinned by β-amyloid. Episodic and semantic ABM impairment represent an important AD prodrome.

Autonoetic consciousness refers to the ability to mentally transport oneself back in subjective time to relive elements of, or all, of a past event, and is compromised in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Here, we investigate autobiographical memory (ABM) and the recollective experience in amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI). aMCI participants exhibited significant deficits compared with healthy elderly controls for both personal semantic and event detail components of ABM. These decrements were evident across all life epochs for episodic recall. Recall of an event that occurred 1 week previously, was tested in the same spatiotemporal context, and provided the greatest group dissociation, with elderly controls benefitting from a context-dependent memory effect. This reinstantiation of context did not ameliorate the anterograde deficits in the aMCI cohort, nor did it facilitate the mental reliving of these memories for either participant group. Whereas reliving judgments were comparable in both groups, aMCI participants exhibited a compromised capacity to generate vivid, self-referential visual imagery and to re-experience the original emotion of events. These contextual and experiential deficits extended beyond recently encountered events into remote epochs, and suggest a greater level of ABM impairment in aMCI than previously assumed. (JINS, 2010, 16, 546–555.)

In two experiments, we investigated whether having prior experience of objects influenced young children's ability to solve a metacognitive search task, based on the objects' perceptual properties. In Experiment 1, 100 children (mean age 77 months) chose whether to look or feel to locate one of two hidden balls (identifiable by sight or touch). Before choosing, children were told about the balls' perceptual properties (i.e. their colour and ‘feel’), and/or saw and touched them, or had no pre-trial experience of them at all. Children who only had self-directed contact with the balls performed best, but children who heard the objects described by an adult performed relatively poorly. In Experiment 2, 116 children (mean age 72 months) either heard only relevant, relevant and irrelevant, or no information about the objects before completing the task. Verbal descriptions of the balls (whether or not they contained irrelevant information) caused children difficulties. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This study investigated the mechanisms behind episodic autobiographical memory (EAM) development in school-age children. Thirty children (6-11years) performed a novel EAM test. We computed one index of episodicity via autonoetic consciousness and two indices of retrieval spontaneity (overall and EAM-specific) for a recent period (previous school year) and a more remote one (preschool years). Executive functions, and episodic and personal semantic memory were assessed. Results showed that recent autobiographical memories (AMs) were mainly episodic, unlike remote ones. An age-related increase in the indices of episodicity and specific spontaneity for recent AMs was mainly mediated by an age-related increase in the efficiency of the three cognitive abilities. Remote AMs varied only slightly with age (overall spontaneity), reflecting improvements in semantic abilities. Thus, EAM development in school-age children is essentially bound up with the increasing efficiency of cognitive abilities. Results are discussed in the light of models of childhood amnesia.

The critical attributes of episodic memory are self, autonoetic consciousness and subjectively sensed time. The aim of this paper is to present a theoretical overview of our already published researches into the nature of episodic memory over the course of time. We have developed a new method of assessing autobiographical memory (TEMPau task), which is specially designed to measure these specific aspects, based on the sense of re-experiencing events from across the entire lifespan. Based on our findings of cognitive, neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies, new insights into episodic autobiographical memories are presented, focusing on the effects of age of the subjects interacting with time interval in healthy subjects and lesioned patients. The multifaceted and complex nature of episodic memory is emphasized and it is suggested that mental time travel through subjective time, which allows individuals to re-experience specific past events through a feeling of self-awareness, is the last feature of autobiographical memory to become fully operational in development and the first feature to go in aging and most amnesias. Our findings highlight the critical role of frontotemporal areas in constructive autobiographical memory processes, and especially hippocampus, in re-experiencing episodic details from the recent or more distant past.

Personal identity depends on synchronic coherence and diachronic continuity of the self. Autobiographical remembering and autobiographical knowledge as well as the stability of bodily integrity, of social roles, of significant others and of physical and sociocultural environment have been suggested as supporting a pre-reflective sense of self-continuity. Stark biographical discontinuities or disruptions in these areas may destabilise the sense of self-continuity. To test the hypothesis that autobiographical reasoning in life narratives helps to compensate the effects of biographical discontinuities on the sense of self-continuity, life narratives of a lifespan sample with the ages of 16, 20, 24, 28, 44 and 69 (N = 150, 78 female) were investigated. Results confirm that if, and only if there have been biographical disruptions in the past four years, then autobiographical reasoning correlates positively with a sense of self-continuity. The findings contradict the thesis that mere remembering of past episodes is sufficient to maintain a sense of self-continuity under conditions of biographical change.

BACKGROUND: Autobiographical memory (ABM) refers to the recollection of individual experiences, while personal semantic memory (PSM) refers to personally relevant, but shared, facts. Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is routinely diagnosed with the aid of neuropsychological tests, which do not tap the ABM and PSM domains. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to characterize the nature of ABM and PSM retrieval in cognitively healthy (HC) memory complainers, non-memory complainers, and MCI participants, and to investigate the relationship between neuropsychological tests and personal memory. METHODS: Gender- and education-matched participants (HC = 80 and MCI = 43) completed the Episodic ABM Interview (EAMI) and a battery of neuropsychological tests. RESULTS: ABM and PSM did not differ between complainers and non-complainers, but were poorer in MCI participants, after accounting for age and depressive symptomatology. There were significant associations between personal memory and objective memory measures were found in MCI participants, but standard cognitive measures were more sensitive to MCI. CONCLUSION: Personal memory was compromised in MCI, reflected by lower scores on the EAMI. Memory complaining, assessed by current approaches, did not have an impact on personal memory. Standard subjective questionnaires might not reflect the sorts of concerns that bring individuals to clinical attention. Understanding personal memory function in the elderly may aid in the development of a more sensitive measure of subjective memory concerns.

Research on autobiographical memory (AM) and the ability to retrieve specific autobiographical events in euthymic depressed patients yielded divergent results. The main goal of the present study was to further explore episodic specificity of AM among fully remitted depressed patients. Twenty euthymic depressed patients and 20 matched healthy controls were given a semi-structured interview, which assesses episodic specificity of positive and negative autobiographical memories regarding event and details' specificity, autonoetic consciousness (remember/know procedure) and visual perspective (field/observer procedure). Results showed an impairment of episodic specificity of AM in euthymic depressed patients. This impairment was explained by a field perspective deficit for positive memories only. These results suggest that euthymic patients continue to exhibit discrepancy between their current self and their self for positive past behaviors, which maintains an unfavorable view of their current self. Specific cognitive interventions may improve the self-relevance of their positive memories.

We aimed at identifying the cerebral structures whose synaptic function subserves the recollection of lifetime's episodic autobiographical memory (AM) via autonoetic consciousness. Twelve healthy middle-aged subjects (mean age: 59 years +/- 2.5) underwent a specially designed cognitive test to assess the ability to relive richly detailed episodic autobiographical memories from five time periods using the Remember/Know procedure. We computed an index of episodicity (number of Remember responses justified by the recall of specific events and details) and an index of retrieval spontaneity, and additionally an index of semanticized memories (number of Know responses). The regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) was measured in the resting state, with H(2)O(15) as part of an activation PET study. The indexes were correlated with blood flow using volumes of interest in frontotemporal regions, including hippocampus and voxel-wise analyses in SPM. With both analyses, significant correlations were mainly found between the index of episodicity and rCBF in the medial temporal lobe, including hippocampus, across the five time periods (unlike the index of semanticized memories) and between the spontaneity index and rCBF in the prefrontal areas. These results highlight, in healthy subjects, the distinct role of these two structures in AM retrieval and support the view that the hippocampus is needed for reexperiencing detailed episodic memories no matter how old they are.

Patients suffering from frontal variant of frontotemporal dementia (fv-FTD) undergo autobiographical amnesia encompassing all time periods. We previously demonstrated in a group of 20 fv-FTD patients that this impairment involved deficits in executive function and semantic memory for all periods as well as new episodic learning and behavioural changes for the most recent period covering the last 12 months [Matuszewski, V., Piolino, P., de la Sayette, V., Lalevée, C., Pélerin, A., Dupuy, B., et al. (2006). Retrieval mechanisms for autobiographical memories: Insights from the frontal variant of frontotemporal dementia, Neuropsychologia, 44, 2386-2397]. The aim of the present study was to unravel the neural bases of this impairment by mapping in a subgroup of patients correlations between resting-state brain glucose utilization measured by FDG-PET and measures of autobiographical memory (AM) using the TEMPau task which is designed to gauge personal event recollection across five life time periods. Like in our previous report, the group of patients was impaired regardless of time periods compared to healthy subjects providing generic memories instead of event specific sensory-perceptual-affective details, i.e., episodic memories. New data showed that the patients were also impaired in sense of reliving and self-perspective during retrieval. The cognitivo-metabolic correlations between the AM score and resting normalized FDG-Uptake were computed using statistical parametric mapping (SPM2) and controlling for age and dementia severity. They revealed that AM deficits were mainly subserved by the dysfunction of left-sided orbitofrontal and also temporal neocortical areas whatever the period. Additional analysis showed that specific memories were associated with left orbitofrontal areas whereas generic memories were mainly associated with the left temporal pole. This study supports the view that fv-FTD patients undergo a breakdown of generative processes which relies regardless of the remoteness on the left orbitofrontal cortex and temporal neocortex to gain access to AM.

Based on an interdisciplinary perspective, we discuss how primary-process, anoetic forms of consciousness emerge into higher forms of awareness such as knowledge-based episodic knowing and self-aware forms of higher-order consciousness like autonoetic awareness. Anoetic consciousness is defined as the rudimentary state of affective, homeostatic, and sensory-perceptual mental experiences. It can be considered as the autonomic flow of primary-process phenomenal experiences that reflects a fundamental form of first-person “self-experience,” a vastly underestimated primary form of phenomenal consciousness. We argue that this anoetic form of evolutionarily refined consciousness constitutes a critical antecedent that is foundational for all forms of knowledge acquisition via learning and memory, giving rise to a knowledge-based, or noetic, consciousness as well as higher forms of “awareness” or “knowing consciousness” that permits “time-travel” in the brain-mind. We summarize the conceptual advantages of such a multi-tiered neuroevolutionary approach to psychological issues, namely from genetically controlled primary (affective) and secondary (learning and memory), to higher tertiary (developmentally emergent) brain-mind processes, along with suggestions about how affective experiences become more cognitive and object-oriented, allowing the developmental creation of more subtle higher mental processes such as episodic memory which allows the possibility of autonoetic consciousness, namely looking forward and backward at one’s life and its possibilities within the “mind’s eye.”

Episodic memory makes it possible to mentally travel back in our own past; it breaks the law of theunidirectionality of time, and allows us to mentally relive past events. The main goal of this work wasto investigate whether episodic memory and the subjective feeling of reliving a past event (i.e.,autonoetic consciousness) arise from the fluency of the reconstruction process of the event. Thisreconstruction would involve the process of egocentric spatial updating with self-motion. Thishypothesis was first developed in Gomez and colleagues' model (Gomez, Rousset, & Baciu, 2009) thatsuggests that egocentric updating re-instances an egocentric spatial point of view on the rememberedevent. The present work brings additional behavioral evidences to this model by assessing both theconception of attributional episodic memory and the functional link between online egocentricupdating with self-motion and episodic memory. A first set of studies showed that enhancingartificially the fluency of the egocentric updating process, during the recognition phase, increasedautonoetic consciousness. Moreover, such phenomenon only happened when recognition involved areconstruction process. A second set of studies showed that performing an online egocentric updatingwith self-motion interfered with remembering. Although the updating of its own position though selfmotionis automatic, it specifically slows down source recall. Finally, a last study showed adissociation between preservations of and deficits of egocentric spatial updating abilities in patientssuffering from Alzheimer's disease. The results of these studies are discussed in the context of Gomezand colleagues' model, and in terms of embodied and situated cognition.; La mémoire épisodique donne la capacité de voyager mentalement dans son propre passé. En cela,elle permet de faire fi du temps qui passe pour pouvoir revivre des événements passés. Ce travail dethèse évalue l’hypothèse selon laquelle la mémoire épisodique et la sensation de revivre un événementpassé (i.e., conscience autonoëtique) sont basées sur une fluence dans la reconstruction de l’épisode,reconstruction impliquant une mise à jour égocentrée. Cette proposition est développée dans le modèlede Gomez et collaborateurs (Gomez, Rousset & Baciu, 2009) qui propose que la mise à jourégocentrée permette de ré-instancier un point de vue spatialisé égocentré sur l’évènement remémoré.Ce travail de thèse a amené de nouveaux arguments en faveur de ce modèle, en évaluant à la foisl’approche attributionnelle de la mémoire épisodique et le lien fonctionnel entre la mise à jourégocentrée en ligne et la mémoire épisodique. Une première série d’études met en évidence uneinfluence de la fluence du processus de mise à jour égocentrée sur la conscience autonoëtique.L’augmentation artificielle de la fluence de mise à jour égocentrée, lors de la reconnaissance,augmente le sentiment de conscience autonoëtique et ce uniquement lorsque la reconnaissanceimplique une reconstruction. Une seconde série d’études permet de mettre en évidence un effetd’interférence du processus de mise à jour égocentrée en ligne sur la récupération épisodique.Actualiser sa position dans l’espace lors d’un déplacement a beau être un processus automatique, celaralentit spécifiquement le rappel de source. Enfin, une étude impliquant des patients atteints de lamaladie d’Alzheimer, met en évidence une dissociation entre les compétences en mise à jourégocentrée chez ces patients. Ces résultats sont discutés dans le cadre du modèle de Gomez etcollaborateurs et en regard d’une conception incarnée et située de la cognition.

Although most aspects of world and self-consciousness are inherently subjective, neuroscience studies in humans and non-human animals provide correlational and causative indices of specific links between brain activity and representation of the self and the world. In this article we review neuroanatomic, neurophysiological and neuropsychological data supporting the hypothesis that different levels of self and world representation in vertebrates rely upon (i) a "basal" subcortical system that includes brainstem, hypothalamus and central thalamic nuclei and that may underpin the primary (or anoetic) consciousness likely present in all vertebrates; and (ii) a forebrain system that include the medial and lateral structures of the cerebral hemispheres and may sustain the most sophisticated forms of consciousness [e.g., noetic (knowledge based) and autonoetic, reflective knowledge]. We posit a mutual, bidirectional functional influence between these two major brain circuits. We conclude that basic aspects of consciousness like primary self and core self (based on anoetic and noetic consciousness) are present in many species of vertebrates and that, even self-consciousness (autonoetic consciousness) does not seem to be a prerogative of humans and of some non-human primates but may, to a certain extent, be present in some other mammals and birds.

Despite the intrinsic temporal nature of procrastination, little research has examined the link between this form of self-regulatory failure and the consideration of future consequences, and no study has addressed the link between procrastination and episodic future thinking. The aim of the present study was to explore these relationships. Participants were asked to project themselves into possible future events and to rate the amount of sensory-perceptual details and autonoetic consciousness associated with their representations. They were also asked to complete questionnaires that assessed procrastination, the consideration of future consequences, and negative affect. Results showed that both the consideration of future consequences and episodic future thinking were associated with procrastination, and in particular with procrastination-related decision making abilities and procrastination-related motivational dispositions, respectively.

Introduction: Functional amnesia refers to various forms of amnesia, which have no direct organic brain basis. Psychological stress and trauma were etiologically linked to its development across various cultures. Methods: We have studied several patients With functional amnesia, employing neuropsychological and neuroimaging methods. Herein we provide a review of the current understanding of the phenomenology, neuropsychology and neurobiology of functional amnesia, which we illustrate by reference to five own case descriptions and other cases presented in the literature. Results: Functional amnesia is mostly of retrograde nature and presents in the form of a memory blockade or repression to recollect episodic-autobiographical events, which may cover the whole past life. Sometimes, the recollection impairment is localized to certain time epochs. In comparison to functional retrograde amnesia, functional isolated anterograde amnesia is much rarer and data on its neurobiology are scant. In patients with functional amnesia with pronounced retrograde episodic-autobiographical memory impairments, we identified changes in brain metabolism, above all reductions in the temporo-frontal regions of the right hemisphere. Recently, even subtle structural changes in the white matter of the (right) frontal cortex were described in functional retrograde amnesia by other researchers Conclusions: The disruption in recollection in functional amnesia is often accompanied by changes in personality dimensions, pertaining to cognition (self-related processing, theory of mind), autonoetic consciousness and affectivity. This suggests that functional amnesia is a multifaceted condition. We hypothesize that the recollection deficit in functional retrograde amnesia primarily reflects a desynchronization between a frontal lobe system, important for autonoetic consciousness, and a temporo-amygdalar system, important for evaluation and emotions. Despite assumptions that functional amnesia can always be reversed, several cases of functional amnesia were found to follow a chronic course, suggesting a need for longitudinal prospective studies to quantify possible global cognitive deterioration over time and its neural underpinnings. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The time-scale of medial temporal lobe (MTL) involvement in storage and retrieval of episodic memory is keenly debated. To test competitive theories of long-term memory consolidation, the present work aimed at characterizing which cerebral regions are involved during retrieval of recent and remote strictly episodic autobiographical memory. Using positron emission tomography (PET), we examined mental retrieval of recent (0-1 year) and remote (5-10 years) autobiographical memories, controlling for the nature of the autobiographical memories (i.e., specificity, state of consciousness, vividness of mental visual imagery, emotion) retrieved during scanning by behavioral measures assessed at debriefing for each event recalled. Cognitive results showed that specificity and emotion did not change with time interval although both autonoetic consciousness and mental image quality were significantly higher for recent memories, suggesting an underlying shift in the phenomenal experience of remembering with the passage of time. The SPM analysis revealed common activations during the recollection of recent and remote memories that involved a widespread but mainly left-sided cerebral network, consistent with previous studies. Subtraction analysis demonstrated that the retrieval of recent (relative to remote) autobiographical memories principally activated the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex whereas the retrieval of remote (relative to recent) autobiographical memories activated the inferior parietal cortex bilaterally. ROIs analysis revealed more hippocampal activity for remote memories than for recent ones and a preferentially right-sided involvement of the hippocampal responses whatever the remoteness of autobiographical memories. New insights based on higher hippocampal response to the remoteness of episodic autobiographical memories challenge the standard model and are less discrepant with the multiple trace theory.

Episodic memory is a neurocognitive (brain/mind) system, uniquely different from other memory systems, that enables human beings to remember past experiences. The notion of episodic memory was first proposed some 30 Years ago. At that time it was defined in terms of materials and tasks. It was subsequently refined and elaborated in terms of ideas such as self, subjective time, and autonoetic consciousness. This chapter provides a brief history of the concept of episodic memory, describes how it has changed (indeed greatly changed) since its inception, considers criticisms of it, and then discusses supporting evidence provided by (a) neuropsychological studies of patterns of memory impairment caused by brain damage, and (b) functional neuroimaging studies of patterns of brain activity of normal subjects engaged in various memory tasks. I also suggest that episodic memory is a true, even if as yet generally unappreciated, marvel of nature.