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\nIntroduction: Beyond the memory deficits classically observed in individuals with alcohol use disorder (IwAUD), research has recently focused on the study of autobiographical memory (AM) processes in IwAUD by analysing the content of AM narratives, and the implications for self-conception have been discussed. However, little is known about how IwAUD subjectively experience autobiographical recall. Methods: Thirty-seven IwAUD and 37 control participants were invited to perform an AM task that involved recalling memories for 4 life periods (2 important memories per period). Then, they assessed their subjective experience during AM recall using 6 phenomenological scales evaluating emotional valence, emotional intensity, sensory details, distancing, sharing, and vividness. Anxiety and depression symptoms, interoceptive sensibility, and difficulties in emotion regulation were also measured. Results: The IwAUD experienced greater distancing during AM recall, except during childhood AM recall, indicating that IwAUD are more prone to feeling that the person they are today is different from the person in their retrieved AMs. Very few intergroup differences were observed for AMs from childhood, adolescence-young adulthood, and adulthood, and a greater number of differences were observed for AMs from the last year: the IwAUD experienced AMs with a more negative valence, greater emotional intensity, fewer sensory details, greater distancing, and less sharing. A positive correlation was observed between distancing and interoceptive sensibility in the IwAUD group. Conclusion: Although these results suggest good preservation of autonoetic consciousness in IwAUD, except for more recent AMs, it is insufficient for IwAUD to experience a sense of self-continuity. This difficulty in maintaining a continuous sense of self may constitute a risk for AUD relapse. Beyond the memory deficits classically observed in individuals with alcohol use disorder (IwAUD), research has recently focused on the study of autobiographical memory (AM), which is the memory of personal experiences and facts about the self. By analysing the content of AM narratives in IwAUD, recent studies have reported a degradation of AMs content that may impact the self-conception of IwAUD. However, little is known about how IwAUD subjectively experience autobiographical recall. Thirty-seven IwAUD and 37 control participants were invited to perform an AM task that involved recalling memories for 4 life periods (2 important memories per period) and to assess their subjective experience during AM recall using 6 phenomenological scales. Anxiety and depression symptoms, interoceptive sensibility, and difficulties in emotion regulation were also measured. The IwAUD were more likely to feel that the person they are today is different from the person in their retrieved AMs (greater distancing), except during childhood AM recall. Very few intergroup differences were observed for AMs from childhood, adolescence-young adulthood, and adulthood, and a greater number of differences were observed for AMs from the last year: the IwAUD experienced AMs with a more negative valence, greater emotional intensity, fewer sensory details, greater distancing, and less sharing. A positive correlation was observed between distancing and interoceptive sensibility in the IwAUD group, indicating that the greater their interoceptive sensibility was, the more the IwAUD felt that they were a different person from the person in their AMs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Episodic memories are experienced as belonging to a self that persists in time. We review evidence concerning the nature of human episodic memory and of the sense of self and how these emerge during development, proposing that the younger child experiences a persistent self that supports a subjective experience of remembering. We then explore recent research in cognitive architectures for robotics that has investigated the possibility of forms of synthetic episodic and autobiographical memory. We show that recent advances in generative modeling can support an understanding of the emergence of self and of episodic memory, and that cognitive architectures which include a language capacity are showing progress towards the construction of a narrative self with autobiographical memory capabilities for robots. We conclude by considering the prospects for a more complete model of mental time travel in robotics and the implications of this modeling work for understanding human episodic memory and the self in time. This article is part of the theme issue 'Elements of episodic memory: lessons from 40 years of research'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ever since Tulving's influential 1985 article 'Memory and consciousness', it has become traditional to think of autonoetic consciousness as necessary for episodic memory. This paper questions this claim. Specifically, it argues that the construct of autonoetic consciousness lacks validity and that, even if it was valid, it would still not be necessary for episodic memory. The paper ends with a proposal to go back to a functional/computational characterization of episodic memory in which its characteristic phenomenology is a contingent feature of the retrieval process and, as a result, open to empirical scrutiny. The proposal also dovetails with recent taxonomies of memory that are independent of conscious awareness and suggests strategies to evaluate within- and between-individual variability in the conscious experience of episodic memories in human and non-human agents. This article is part of the theme issue 'Elements of episodic memory: lessons from 40 years of research'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last years' achievements in neuroscience are key for a philosophical analysis focused on the mind-body problem, such as the phenomenological approach. The digital evolution, on the one hand, faces us with the interaction between the world of reality and the world of possibility. This means more than a mere coexistence between these two dimensions. Rather, a concrete feedback occurs among them, and this brings out unprecedented and unavoidable issues with regard to perceptual processes. On the other hand, the digital evolution allows for analyzing data and monitoring environmental systems, thus reasoning in a predictive way, anticipating problems, and checking ex ante their evolution and outcomes. Neuroscience, for its part, with the experiments of Libet and their subsequent interpretations, has highlighted a consciousness of the unconscious made of ballistic and automatic processes, which constitutes the starting phase of our decisions and actions. This further confirmed that sequential and linear thinking is unable to address the brain-environment relationship that is key in understanding any cognitive process. This analysis confirms the relevance of different aspects of Husserl's phenomenology. There is, however, a "but," which significantly reduces the extent of adherence to his point of view. Husserl assumed that an implicit horizon precedes or accompanies the acts of conscience. This is the material, impressional, passive, receptive, and, in some way, tacit dimension, strictly connected to the issue of genesis, i.e. the process of constitution of the analyzed entities. Thus, he drew a clear dividing line between this dimension and the phases of the self-controlling, vigilant conscience and its activity. In fact, his approach to the phenomenological problem is mainly oriented toward these phases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Galilean explanatory style is characterized by the search for the underlying structure of phenomena, the positing of "deep" explanatory principles, and a view of the relation between theory and data, on which the search for "crucial data" is of primary importance. In this paper, I trace the dynamics of adopting the Galilean style, focusing on the science of episodic memory. I argue that memory systems, such as episodic and semantic memory, were posited as underlying competences producing the observable phenomena of memory. Considered in idealized isolation from other systems, episodic memory was taken to underlay the ability of individuals to remember events from their personal past. Yet, in reality, memory systems regularly interact, standing in many-to-many relations to actual memory tasks and experiences. Upon this backdrop, I explore a puzzle about the increasing prominence of the notion of autonoetic consciousness in Tulving's theory of episodic memory. I argue that, contrary to widespread belief, the prominence is not best explained by the purported essential link between autonoetic consciousness and episodic memory. Rather, it is explained by the fact that autonoetic consciousness, hypothesized to uniquely accompany episodic retrieval, was considered a source of crucial data, predictable only from theories positing a functionally distinct episodic memory system. However, with the emergence of a new generation of theories, positing wider memory systems for remembering and imagination, the question of the relation between episodic memory and autonoetic consciousness has been reopened. This creates a pressing need for de-idealization, triggering a new search for crucial data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autonoetic consciousness is the awareness that an event we remember is one that we ourselves experienced. It is a defining feature of our subjective experience of remembering and imagining future events. Given its subjective nature, there is ongoing debate about how to measure it. Our goal was to develop a framework to identify cognitive markers of autonoetic consciousness. Across two studies (N = 342) we asked young, healthy participants to provide written descriptions of two autobiographical memories, two plausible future events, and an experimentally encoded video. Participants then rated their subjective experience during remembering and imagining. Exploratory Factor Analysis of this data uncovered the latent variables underlying autonoetic consciousness across these different events. In contrast to work that emphasizes the distinction between Remember and Know as being key to autonoetic consciousness, Re-experiencing, and Pre-experiencing for future events, were consistently identified as core markers of autonoetic consciousness. This was alongside Mental Time Travel in all types of memory events, but not for imagining the future. In addition, our factor analysis allows us to demonstrate directly - for the first time - the features of mental imagery associated with the sense of autonoetic consciousness in autobiographical memory; vivid, visual imagery from a first-person perspective. Finally, with regression analysis, the emergent factor structure of autonoetic consciousness was able to predict the richness of autobiographical memory texts, but not of episodic recall of the encoded video. This work provides a novel way to assess autonoetic consciousness, illustrates how autonoetic consciousness manifests differently in memory and imagination and defines the mental representations intrinsic to this process. • Re -experiencing and mental time travel are core markers of autonoetic consciousness. • Remember/Know judgements might be unsuitable to measure autonoetic consciousness. • Vivid imagery from a self-perspective is associated with autonoetic consciousness. • Autonoetic consciousness varies across types of memory and future imagination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do our bodies influence who we are? Recent research in cognitive neuroscience has examined consciousness associated with the self and related multisensory processing of bodily signals, the so-called bodily self-consciousness. A parallel line of research has highlighted the concept of the autobiographical self and the associated autonoetic consciousness, which enables us to mentally travel in time. The subjective re-experiencing of past episodes is described as re-living them from within or outside one's body. In this brief perspective, I aim to explore the underlying characteristics of self-consciousness and its relation to bodily signals and episodic memory. I will outline some recent behavioral and neuroimaging evidence indicating that bodily cues play a fundamental role in autobiographical memory. Finally, I will discuss these emerging concepts regarding the current understanding of bodily-self, autobiographical-self, their links to self-consciousness, and suggest directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do our bodies influence who we are? Recent research in cognitive neuroscience has examined consciousness associated with the self and related multisensory processing of bodily signals, the so-called bodily self-consciousness. A parallel line of research has highlighted the concept of the autobiographical self and the associated autonoetic consciousness, which enables us to mentally travel in time. The subjective re-experiencing of past episodes is described as re-living them from within or outside one’s body. In this brief perspective, I aim to explore the underlying characteristics of self-consciousness and its relation to bodily signals and episodic memory. I will outline some recent behavioral and neuroimaging evidence indicating that bodily cues play a fundamental role in autobiographical memory. Finally, I will discuss these emerging concepts regarding the current understanding of bodily-self, autobiographical-self, their links to self-consciousness, and suggest directions for future research.

Autonoetic consciousness (ANC), the ability to re-experience personal past events links episodic memory and self-consciousness by bridging awareness of oneself in a past event (i.e., during its encoding) with awareness of oneself in the present (i.e., during the reliving of a past event). Recent neuroscience research revealed a bodily form of self-consciousness, including the sense of agency (SoA) and the sense of body ownership (SoO) that are based on the integration of multisensory bodily inputs and motor signals. However, the relation between SoA and/or SoO with ANC is not known. Here, we used immersive virtual reality technology and motion tracking and investigated the potential association of SoA/SoO with ANC. For this, we exposed participants to different levels of visuomotor and perspectival congruency, known to modulate SoA and SoO, during the encoding of virtual scenes and collected ANC ratings 1 week after the encoding session. In a total of 74 healthy participants, we successfully induced systematic changes in SoA and SoO during encoding and found that ANC depended on the level of SoA experienced during encoding. Moreover, ANC was positively associated with SoA, but only for the scene encoded with preserved visuomotor and perspectival congruency, and such SoA-ANC coupling was absent for SoO and control questions. Collectively, these data provide behavioral evidence in a novel paradigm that links a key subjective component of bodily self-consciousness during encoding, SoA, to the subjective reliving of those encoded events from one's past, ANC., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing financial interests., (Copyright © 2024 Meyer et al.)

Episodic future thinking (EFT) has been suggested to underlie anticipatory pleasure (AP), itself known to play a crucial role in social functioning (SF). Both AP and SF are impaired in various clinical populations, including autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11DS). Therefore, the relationship between EFT, AP and SF was investigated, as well as the potential role of projecting oneself in a social vs. non-social context. Seventy-seven participants [24 with 22q11DS, 20 with ASD, 33 typically developing controls (TDs)] (aged 12–25) were included. They were assessed with a future thinking task in which they were asked to recall a memory and produce a likely event. Narratives were rated based of specificity, richness and imaginability. Participants completed questionnaires assessing AP and SF. Narratives from ASD and 22q11DS participants were rated as less vivid compared to TDs. However, the characteristics of the narratives differed between ASD and 22q11DS participants in terms of specificity and level of details, as well as in reaction to social condition. Moreover, correlations were found between AP and EFT in both ASD and 22q11DS participants, and between SF and EFT in ASD participants. These results point towards impairments in EFT in both ASD and 22q11DS participants but with a specific profile in each condition. The observed associations between EFT and AP suggest that decreased autonoetic consciousness might underlie AP impairments. In ASD individuals, the association between SF and EFT highlights the need to better characterize EFT since EFT could be another mechanism contributing to social difficulties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Episodic memory (EM) is classically conceived as a memory for events, localized in space and time, and characterized by autonoetic consciousness (ANC) allowing to mentally travel back in time and subjectively relive an event. Building on recent evidence that the first-person visual co-perception of one's own body during encoding impacts EM, we used a scene recognition task in immersive virtual reality (VR) and measured how first-person body view would modulate peri-encoding resting-state fMRI, EM performance, and ANC. Specifically, we investigated the impact of body view on post-encoding functional connectivity in an a priori network of regions related either to EM or multisensory bodily processing and used these regions in a seed-to-whole brain analysis. Post-encoding connectivity between right hippocampus (rHC) and right parahippocampus (rPHC) was enhanced when participants encoded scenes while seeing their body. Moreover, the strength of connectivity between the rHC, rPHC and the neocortex displayed two main patterns with respect to body view. The connectivity with a sensorimotor fronto-parietal network, comprising primary somatosensory and primary motor cortices, correlated with ANC after - but not before - encoding, depending on body view. The opposite change of connectivity was found between rHC, rPHC and the medial parietal cortex (from being correlated with ANC before encoding to an absence of correlation after encoding), but irrespective of body view. Linking immersive VR and fMRI for the study of EM and ANC, these findings suggest that seeing one's own body during encoding impacts the brain activity related to EM formation by modulating the connectivity between the right hippocampal formation and the neocortical regions involved in the processing of multisensory bodily signals and self-consciousness.

We reviewed studies that have specifically explored the memory deficit hypothesis of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) checking, highlighting the methodological differences between these studies that may explain inconsistencies regarding memory deficits in OCD checkers. Based on Conway's proposition that one function of episodic memories is to keep an adaptive record of recent goal processing in order to check that actions have actually been accomplished, we suggest that impaired autonoetic consciousness –one of the main features of episodic memory- may be at the heart of the issue of checking compulsion. Autonoetic consciousness, that can be experimentally assessed by the Remember/Know/Guess paradigm,could be impaired in OCD checkers leading them to be unable to mentally relive their actions in order to be assured that they have been accomplished (e.g., having locked the door). We make methodological suggestions to improve the assessment of autonoetic consciousness deficit in OCD checkers and understand its role in the etiology and maintenance of compulsive checking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autobiographical memory is vital for our well‐being and therefore used in therapeutic interventions. However, not much is known about the (neural) processes by which reliving memories can have beneficial effects. This study investigates what brain activation patterns and memory characteristics facilitate the effectiveness of reliving positive autobiographical memories for mood and sense of self. Particularly, the role of vividness and autonoetic consciousness is studied. Participants (N = 47) with a wide range of trait self‐esteem relived neutral and positive memories while their bold responses, experienced vividness of the memory, mood, and state self‐esteem were recorded. More vivid memories related to better mood and activation in amygdala, hippocampus and insula, indicative of increased awareness of oneself (i.e., prereflective aspect of autonoetic consciousness). Lower vividness was associated with increased activation in the occipital lobe, PCC, and precuneus, indicative of a more distant mode of reliving. While individuals with lower trait self‐esteem increased in state self‐esteem, they showed less deactivation of the lateral occipital cortex during positive memories. In sum, the vividness of the memory seemingly distinguished a more immersed and more distant manner of memory reliving. In particular, when reliving positive memories higher vividness facilitated increased prereflective autonoetic consciousness, which likely is instrumental in boosting mood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Co-evolution of working memory and mental time travel. • Complex working memory function is a prerequisite for higher cognition. • Mental time travel is not a privilege of the mammalian brain. 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This account examines how episodes are constructed and measured, and how Peirce's Index informs and even hastens the advancement of this process-from binding spatial features, to the awareness of participant roles and temporal sequencing. It provides semiotic rationale for how episodes develop from static single pictures (dependent on verbatim memory) to events whose frames reflect a deictic and sequential character-superseding the consciousness inherent in autonoesis. Empirical evidence will trace children's event memory-first iconic and static, and later characteristic of increasingly more complex interpretants which specify directional and logical relations, and memory sources. The signs which promote episodic thought are indexical in nature, given their largely relational character. They incorporate deictic projections of the self in diverse orientations, entering into different participant slots inherent to the event. Notice of the latter entails the influence of index to apprehend the spatial, participatory, and temporal directionality within and across event frames. This progression requires a rudimentary consciousness of aspectual features (telicity, dynamicity), as well as an appreciation for the events' purposes/goals. Anticipating how, where, and when events conclude is critical to realizing the event's purpose/goal, since, according to Bauer 2006: 384, it constitutes the basis upon which episodes are constructed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the ability of individuals with disordered gambling to imagine future events. Problem gamblers (n = 35) and control participants (n = 35) were asked to imagine positive and negative future events for three temporal distances (one week, one year, 5–10 years). Then, a variety of phenomenological aspects of their future thoughts (e.g., sensory and contextual details, autonoetic consciousness) were rated. Compared to control subjects, problem gamblers generated fewer positive and negative events across all temporal distances, an impairment that was correlated to verbal fluency scores. Furthermore, problem gamblers rated imagined events as containing fewer sensory and contextual details, and lacking autonoetic consciousness. These findings demonstrate that problem gambling is associated with a reduced future-oriented mental time travel ability and, in particular, with diminished autonoetic consciousness when imagining future events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urbach-Wiethe disease is an extremely rare genetically-based syndrome which usually leads to dermatological and neurological changes. Neurologically, the amygdaloid region is primarily bilaterally affected. Therefore, several functions modulated by the amygdala are changed in patients with Urbach-Wiethe disease. As the neurological alterations evolve only gradually, it is particularly important to determine the cognitive and brain status of a juvenile. The patient described here was seen briefly at age 9 and tested neuropsychologically at age 19; furthermore, computer tomography and magnetic resonance imaging of his head was done. There were no important abnormalities in the brain, which is unusual in the light of previous data from other patients. On the cognitive level, the patient was generally within normal limits. However, he had mild problems in attention and concentration, and more prominent problems in emotional processing domain, and in personality dimensions. It is concluded that amygdala calcifications in Urbach-Wiethe disease take place progressively-possibly underpinned by genetic and gender variables; this can subsequently allow psychosocial-social factors (such a proper education and socialization) and biological factors (compensatory neuroplasticity) to retard and diminish the development of socio-emotional and cognitive deteriorations, though the outcome of questionnaires indicates that such patients may develop substantial concerns as to their future life and well-being. • Brain and behavior of a man with a rare, genetically based disease were investigated. • The patient was young (19-years) and had Urbach-Wiethe disease. • The patient was cognitively intact, but showed emotional and personality changes. • Contrary to most patients with Urbach-Wiethe disease he showed no amygdala changes. • Education, gender, and a possible gene variation might have retarded amygdala damage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Memory is not a unity, but is divided along a content axis and a time axis, respectively. Along the content dimension, five long-term memory systems are described, according to their hierarchical ontogenetic and phylogenetic organization. These memory systems are assumed to be accompanied by different levels of consciousness. While encoding is based on a hierarchical arrangement of memory systems from procedural to episodic-autobiographical memory, retrieval allows independence in the sense that no matter how information is encoded, it can be retrieved in any memory system. Thus, we illustrate the relations between various long-term memory systems by reviewing the spectrum of abnormalities in mnemonic processing that may arise in the dissociative amnesia—a condition that is usually characterized by a retrieval blockade of episodic-autobiographical memories and occurs in the context of psychological trauma, without evidence of brain damage on conventional structural imaging. Furthermore, we comment on the functions of implicit memories in guiding and even adaptively molding the behavior of patients with dissociative amnesia and preserving, in the absence of autonoetic consciousness, the so-called “internal coherence of life”.

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. InThe 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. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Multiple studies have shown compromise of autobiographical memory and phenomenological reliving in Alzheimer's disease (AD). We investigated various phenomenological features of autobiographical memory to determine their relative vulnerability in AD. To this aim, participants with early AD and cognitively normal older adult controls were asked to retrieve an autobiographical event and rate on a five-point scale metacognitive judgments (i.e., reliving, back in time, remembering, and realness), component processes (i.e., visual imagery, auditory imagery, language, and emotion), narrative properties (i.e., rehearsal and importance), and spatiotemporal specificity (i.e., spatial details and temporal details). AD participants showed lower general autobiographical recall than controls, and poorer reliving, travel in time, remembering, realness, visual imagery, auditory imagery, language, rehearsal, and spatial detail-a decrease that was especially pronounced for visual imagery. Yet, AD participants showed high rating for emotion and importance. Early AD seems to compromise many phenomenological features, especially visual imagery, but also seems to preserve some other features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although autonoetic experience—a sense of mental time travel—has been considered as the hallmark of episodic future thinking, what determines this subjective feeling is not yet fully understood. Here, we investigated the role of autobiographical knowledge by manipulating the relevance of imagined events for personal goals. Participants were asked to imagine three types of events (goal-related future events, experimenter-provided future events, and atemporal events) and to assess various characteristics of their mental representations. The results showed that the three types of events were represented with similar levels of detail and vividness. Importantly, however, goal-related future events were associated with a stronger autonoetic experience. Furthermore, autonoetic experience was significantly predicted by the importance of imagined events for personal goals. These findings suggest that the subjective feeling of pre-experiencing one’s personal future in part depends on the extent to which imagined events can be placed in an autobiographical context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Self-referential processing relies mainly on the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and enhances memory encoding (i.e., Self-Reference Effect, SRE) as it improves the accuracy and richness of remembering in both young and older adults. However, studies on age-related changes in the neural correlates of the SRE on the subjective (i.e., autonoetic consciousness) and the objective (i.e., source memory) qualitative features of episodic memory are lacking. In the present fMRI study, we compared the effects of a self-related (semantic autobiographical memory task) and a non self-related (general semantic memory task) encoding condition on subsequent episodic memory retrieval. We investigated encoding-related activity during each condition in two groups of 19 younger and 16 older adults. Behaviorally, the SRE improved subjective memory performance in both groups but objective memory only in young adults. At the neural level, a direct comparison between self-related and non self-related conditions revealed that SRE mainly activated the cortical midline system, especially the MPFC, in both groups. Additionally, in older adults and regardless of the condition, greater activity was found in a fronto-parietal network. Overall, correlations were noted between source memory performance and activity in the MPFC (irrespective of age) and visual areas (mediated by age). Thus, the present findings expand evidence of the role of the MPFC in self-referential processing in the context of source memory benefit in both young and older adults using incidental encoding via semantic autobiographical memory. However, our finding suggests that its role is less effective in aging.

This study aimed to investigate whether people with borderline personality disorder (BPD) can benefit from reliving positive autobiographical memories in terms of mood and state self-esteem and elucidate the neural processes supporting optimal memory reliving. Particularly the role of vividness and brain areas involved in autonoetic consciousness were studied, as key factors involved in improving mood and state self-esteem by positive memory reliving. Women with BPD (N = 25), Healthy Controls (HC, N = 33) and controls with Low Self-Esteem (LSE, N = 22) relived four neutral and four positive autobiographical memories in an MRI scanner. After reliving each memory mood and vividness was rated. State self-esteem was assessed before and after the Reliving Autobiographical Memories (RAM) task. Overall, mood and state self-esteem were lower in participants with BPD compared to HC and LSE, but both the BPD and LSE group improved significantly after positive memory reliving. Moreover, participants with BPD indicated that they relived their memories with less vividness than HC but not LSE, regardless of valence. When reliving (vs reading) memories, participants with BPD showed increased precuneus and lingual gyrus activation compared to HC but not LSE, which was inversely related to vividness. Women with BPD seem to experience more challenges in reliving neutral and positive autobiographical memories with lower vividness and less deactivated precuneus potentially indicating altered autonoetic consciousness. Nevertheless, participants with BPD do benefit in mood and self-esteem from reliving positive memories. These findings underline the potential of positive autobiographical memory reliving and suggest that interventions may be further shaped to improve mood and strengthen self-views in people with BPD. • The therapeutic potential of positive memories was studied in Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). • Women with BPD are compared to a healthy (HC) and low self-esteem control group (LSE). • Vividly reliving positive memories has the potential to improve mood and state self-esteem in women with BPD. • Lower overall vividness and less deactivated precuneus indicate more challenges in reliving for women with BPD. • There is scope for positive memory reliving in a clinical setting for individuals with BPD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A growing number of studies have highlighted impairments in the ability of individuals with autism spectrum disorders to recall specific, personally experienced material. These difficulties have been related to underlying problems with autonoetic consciousness, namely the subjective awareness of one's own existence in subjective time. The current paper describes the manifestation of these difficulties in three individuals diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. For the people described, lifelong collecting and hoarding behaviours appeared to serve the function of constituting and maintaining aspects of their sense of self, particularly the sense of continuity and agency over time. On the basis of this clinical information and previous research into self-related processes in people with autism spectrum disorders, an initial model of collecting and hoarding behaviours amongst individuals with Asperger syndrome was formulated. The implications of this formulation for both clinical practice and future research are discussed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Key Practitioner Message People with Asperger syndrome can have problems in developing a functional sense of self., Collecting and hoarding behaviour by people with Asperger syndrome may reflect such underlying difficulties in their sense of self rather than being symptoms of comorbid mental illness., Interventions need to take account of the function of such behaviours rather than solely regarding them as discrete pathological signs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-referential processing relies mainly on the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and enhances memory encoding (i.e., Self-Reference Effect, SRE) as it improves the accuracy and richness of remembering in both young and older adults. However, studies on agerelated changes in the neural correlates of the SRE on the subjective (i.e., autonoetic consciousness) and the objective (i.e., source memory) qualitative features of episodic memory are lacking. In the present fMRI study, we compared the effects of a self-related (semantic autobiographical memory task) and a non self-related (general semantic memory task) encoding condition on subsequent episodic memory retrieval. We investigated encoding-related activity during each condition in two groups of 19 younger and 16 older adults. Behaviorally, the SRE improved subjective memory performance in both groups but objective memory only in young adults. At the neural level, a direct comparison between self-related and non self-related conditions revealed that SRE mainly activated the cortical midline system, especially the MPFC, in both groups. Additionally, in older adults and regardless of the condition, greater activity was found in a fronto-parietal network. Overall, correlations were noted between source memory performance and activity in the MPFC (irrespective of age) and visual areas (mediated by age). Thus, the present findings expand evidence of the role of the MPFC in self-referential processing in the context of source memory benefit in both young and older adults using incidental encoding via semantic autobiographical memory. However, our finding suggests that its role is less effective in aging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 "timetravel" 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." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] We study links between episodic memory, self-awareness and autonoetic consciousness in AS. [•] Patients with AS produced fewer episodic memories than controls. [•] Patients with AS used less possessive pronouns and family-related vocabulary than did controls. [•] Deficiency of episodic memory may be due to poor awareness of the self in social relationships. [•] This may indicate less self-investment in life experiences, which would impact recall. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Highlights: [•] Participants can use others’ subjective reports to classify memory in the RK paradigm. [•] Know and Familiar are distinguishable classifications of recognition memory success. [•] Confidence and subjective experience are differentially attributed to others’ reports. [•] Suggests confidence and subjective experience are two different types of evaluations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Episodic future thinking refers to mentally traveling forward in time to preexperience an event, and emerging research suggests that this is more difficult for older adults. The current study was designed to better understand the effect of aging on separate component processes of age differences in episodic future thinking. Young (n = 24) and older (n = 25) adults were asked to construct a) atemporal scenarios, b) future scenarios, and c) a narrative that involved navigation. Each of these conditions assesses the capacity to construct and describe a scene, but only the future scenario requires a subjective sense of self in time (autonoetic consciousness). The composite measure of performance showed that relative to young adults, older adults have substantially reduced capacity for all three types of construction, suggesting that age-related difficulty imagining future episodic events may reflect a more general cognitive decline with age. In addition, older adults were worse at imagining future experiences than atemporal experiences, indicating limited capacity for autonoetic consciousness. Further, this difference between imagining atemporal and future experiences was not as evident among younger adults. These deficits in episodic future thinking have implications for the daily lives of older adults in terms of anticipating and planning for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although memory dysfunction is not a prominent feature of the behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia (bv-FTD), there is evidence of specific deficits of episodic memory in these patients. They also have problems monitoring their memory performance. The objective of the present study was to explore the ability to consciously retrieve own encoding of the context of events (autonoetic consciousness) and the ability to monitor memory performance using feeling-of-knowing (FOK) in bv-FTD. Analyses of the patients' cerebral metabolism (FDG-PET) allowed an examination of whether impaired episodic memory in bv-FTD is associated with the frontal dysfunction characteristic of the pathology or a dysfunction of memory-specific regions pertaining to Papez's circuit. Data were obtained from eight bv-FTD patients and 26 healthy controls. Autonoetic consciousness was evaluated by Remember responses during the recognition memory phase of the FOK experiment. As a group, bv-FTD patients demonstrated a decline in autonoetic consciousness and FOK accuracy at the chance level. While memory monitoring was impaired in most (seven) patients, four bv-FTD participants had individual impairment of autonoetic consciousness. They specifically showed reduced metabolism in the anterior medial prefrontal cortex, the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (near the superior frontal sulcus), parietal regions, and the posterior cingulate cortex. These findings were tentatively interpreted by considering the role of the metabolically impaired brain regions in self-referential processes, suggesting that the bv-FTD patients' problem consciously retrieving episodic memories may stem at least partly from deficient access to and maintenance/use of information about the self. Frontal and posterior cingulate metabolic impairment in the behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia with impaired autonoetic consciousness Hum Brain Mapp, 2011. © 2011 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In two studies, 4- to 6-year-olds were asked to name pictures of animals for the benefit of a watching hand puppet (the ongoing task) but to refrain from naming and to remove from view any pictures of dogs (the prospective memory [PM] task). Children also completed assessments of verbal ability, cognitive inhibition, working memory, and false-belief understanding (both studies), empathy (Study 1 only), and performance on false-sign tests that matched the false-belief tests in narrative content and structure (Study 2 only). Both studies found that inhibition and false-belief performance made unique contributions to the variance in PM, although in Study 1 the influence of inhibition was evident only when children needed to withhold naming. Study 2 further demonstrated that false-belief performance was the only reliable predictor of whether children remembered to return to the researcher an object that had been loaned to them prior to the picture-naming game. Both experiments uncovered moderate relations between PM and chronological age, but such relations were rarely significant after taking account of cognitive ability. We consider the implications of the findings for (a) current views regarding frontal/executive contributions to PM development and (b) the suggestion that the same brain network underlies various forms of mental self-projection, including envisioning the future and understanding the minds of other people. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: posited that the capacity to remember is one facet of a more general capacity—autonoetic (self-knowing) consciousness. Autonoetic consciousness was proposed to underlie the ability for “mental time travel” both into the past (remembering) and into the future to envision potential future episodes (episodic future thinking). The current study examines whether individual differences can predict autonoetic experience. Specifically, the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI, ) was administered to 133 undergraduate students, who also rated phenomenological experiences accompanying autobiographical remembering and episodic future thinking. Scores on two of the five subscales of the ZTPI (Future and Present-Hedonistic) predicted the degree to which people reported feelings of mentally traveling backward (or forward) in time and the degree to which they reported re- or pre-experiencing the event, but not ten other rated properties less related to autonoetic consciousness. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]