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The COVID-19 pandemic created a unique set of circumstances in which to investigate collective memory and future simulations of events reported during the onset of a potentially historic event. Between early April and late June 2020, we asked over 4,000 individuals from 15 countries across four continents to report on remarkable (a) national and (b) global events that (i) had happened since the first cases of COVID-19 were reported, and (ii) they expected to happen in the future. Whereas themes of infections, lockdown, and politics dominated global and national past events in most countries, themes of economy, a second wave, and lockdown dominated future events. The themes and phenomenological characteristics of the events differed based on contextual group factors. First, across all conditions, the event themes differed to a small yet significant degree depending on the severity of the pandemic and stringency of governmental response at the national level. Second, participants reported national events as less negative and more vivid than global events, and group differences in emotional valence were largest for future events. This research demonstrates that even during the early stages of the pandemic, themes relating to its onset and course were shared across many countries, thus providing preliminary evidence for the emergence of collective memories of this event as it was occurring. Current findings provide a profile of past and future collective events from the early stages of the ongoing pandemic, and factors accounting for the consistencies and differences in event representations across 15 countries are discussed., Krystian Barzykowski was supported by the French Government Scholarship (`Campus France'), the National Science Centre, Poland (UMO-2019/35/B/HS6/00528) and the Bekker programme from the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (no.: PPN/BEK/2019/1/00092/DEC/1). The Washington University in St. Louis collaboration (Dessenberger, Roediger, Tekin, and Uner) was supported by a grant from the James S. McDonnell Foundation to HLR. A. Taylor gratefully acknowledges support from The University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand.

Mental representations of space can be generated and communicated with respect to different reference frames and perspectives. The present study investigated the effects of age and individual differences in domain-general executive functions on people's ability to process spatial relations as expressed in language within different spatial reference frames (SRFs). Healthy adults aged between 18 and 85 completed a novel task involving self-, third-person-, object-, and environment-centered judgements of spatial relations between two objects, as well as standard tests of working memory, inhibition, and mental flexibility. A psychometric evaluation confirmed the test-retest reliability and the convergent and divergent validity of the new task. Results showed that the lifespan trajectories varied depending on the SRF. Processing from a self-centered perspective or an object-centered frame remained intact throughout the adult-lifespan. By contrast, spatial processing from a third-person-centered perspective or within an environment-centered frame declined in late adulthood. Mediation regression models showed that mental flexibility accounted for a significant part of the age-related variance in spatial processing across all allocentric SRFs. The age effects on environment-centered processing were also partially mediated by age-related changes in visuospatial working memory capacity. These findings suggest that at least partially distinct systems are involved in mentally representing space under different SRFs, which are differentially affected by typical aging. Our results also highlight that people's ability to process spatial relations across different SRFs depends on their capacity to employ domain-general effortful cognitive resources.

Self-knowledge is a type of personal semantic knowledge that concerns one’s self-image and personal identity. It has most often been operationalized as the summary of one’s personality traits (“I am a stubborn person”). Interestingly, recent studies have revealed that the neural correlates of self-knowledge can be dissociated from those of general semantic and episodic memory in young adults. However, studies of “dedifferentiation” or loss of distinctiveness of neural representations in ageing suggest that the neural correlates of self-knowledge might be less distinct from those of semantic and episodic memory in older adults. We investigated this question in an event-related potential (ERP) study with 28 young and 26 older adults while they categorised personality traits for their self-relevance (self-knowledge conditions), and their relevance to certain groups of people (general semantic condition). Participants then performed a recognition test for previously seen traits (episodic condition). The amplitude of the late positive component (LPC), associated with episodic recollection processes, differentiated the self-knowledge, general semantic, and episodic conditions in young adults, but not in older adults. However, in older adults, participants with higher composite episodic memory scores had more differentiated LPC amplitudes across experimental conditions. Moreover, consistent with the fact that age-related neural dedifferentiation may be material and region specific, in both age groups some differences between memory types were observed for the N400 component, associated with semantic processing. Taken together, these findings suggest that declarative memory subtypes are less distinct in ageing, but that the amount of differentiation varies with episodic memory function.

The COVID-19 pandemic created a unique set of circumstances to investigate collective memory and future simulations of events reported during the onset of a potentially historic event. Between early April and late June, 2020, we asked over 4000 individuals from 15 countries across four continents to report on remarkable (a) national and (b) global events that (i) have happened since the first cases of COVID-19 were reported, and (ii) they expect to happen in the future. Whereas themes of infections, lockdown, and politics dominated global and national past events in most countries, themes of economy, a second wave, and lockdown dominated future events. The themes and phenomenological characteristics of the events differed based on contextual group factors. First, across all conditions, the event themes differed to a small yet significant degree depending on the severity of the pandemic and stringency of governmental response at the national level. Second, participants reported national events as less negative and more vivid than global events, and group differences in emotional valence were largest for future events. This research demonstrates that even during the early stages of the pandemic, themes relating its onset and course were shared across many countries, thus, providing preliminary evidence for the emergence of collective memories of this event as it is occurring. Current findings provide a profile of past and future collective events from the early stages of the ongoing pandemic and factors accounting for the consistencies and differences in event representations across 15 countries are discussed.

Language abilities in adulthood remain relatively intact with increasing age, while spatial abilities decline. However, much less is known about ageing effects on spatial language (the ability to verbally describe where objects are located in relation to other objects). The primary goal of this study was to examine age-related changes in naming static and dynamic spatial relations across the adult lifespan. Moreover, we examined whether spatial naming is more closely associated with (non-spatial) verbal or (non-linguistic) visuospatial abilities.Healthy adults aged between 18 and 85 years completed a newly developed Spatial Naming Test (SNT), as well as standard object and action naming tests and various visuospatial tasks. The psychometric properties of the novel SNT (inter-rater and test-retest reliability and convergent, divergent, and construct validity) were also examined.The psychometric evaluation confirmed the reliability and validity of the SNT. Striking effects of ageing on naming of both static and dynamic spatial relations were found, as well as on visuospatial abilities, while object and action naming remained age invariant. Moreover, both (non-spatial) verbal and (non-linguistic) visuospatial abilities predicted static spatial naming, but only visuospatial abilities accounted for significant variance in dynamic spatial naming beyond age.These findings provide the first evidence that naming spatial relations declines in ageing as a function of changes in non-linguistic visuospatial abilities, indicating strong connections between linguistic and non-linguistic representations of space. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

In the absence of a pharmacological cure, finding the most sensitive early cognitive markers of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is becoming increasingly important. In this article we review evidence showing that brain mechanisms of spontaneous, but stimulus-dependent, cognition overlap with key hubs of the default mode network (DMN) that become compromised by amyloid pathology years before the clinical symptoms of AD. This leads to the formulation of a novel hypothesis which predicts that spontaneous, but stimulus-dependent, conscious retrieval processes, that are generally intact in healthy aging, will be particularly compromised in people at the earliest stages of AD. Initial evidence for this hypothesis is presented across diverse experimental paradigms (e.g., prospective memory, mind-wandering), and new avenues for research in this area are outlined.

© 2021 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is the accepted manuscript version of an article which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2021.101712

Space constitutes one of the core framing structures of experience in the natural environment. Therefore, communicating spatial information with verbal means, such as locative relations between objects, is vital for numerous everyday activities and constitutes a core part of human linguistic communication. The present project aimed to 1) develop psychometrically sound measures assessing spatial language abilities, including naming static and dynamic spatial relations, memory for route- and survey-based descriptions, and comprehension of descriptions of locative relations under different spatial reference frames; 2) identify the trajectories of these spatial language abilities across the adult-lifespan and contrast them against trajectories of various (non-verbal) visuospatial and (non-spatial) verbal abilities; and 3) investigate spatial language abilities in individuals who are at an early stage of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), for the first time. Across a series of studies involving 160 adults aged between 18 and 85, we found comparable age-related declines in spatial language and visuospatial abilities, although their onset and magnitude depended on the type of subability examined. By contrast, verbal abilities remained well-preserved with increasing age. Moreover, performance in spatial language measures was found to discriminate mild AD patients and age-, education-, and gender-matched controls to a very high degree. The results of the present work have several theoretical and practical implications, as they 1) establish the test-retest reliability, and the concurrent, construct and discriminative validity of the newly-developed spatial language measures; 2) reveal a number of divergent and convergent domain-specific cognitive changes across the adult-lifespan; 3) extend the large existing literature on the detrimental (a)typical ageing effects on visuospatial cognition by demonstrating that spatial processing is also compromised when assessed through language; and 4) suggest that language- and perception-based representations of space are underpinned by comparable cognitive operations and supported by overlapping neural networks that are particularly sensitive to ageing effects.

Given the insular's anatomic complexity and functional interconnectivity, acute lesions may result in varied clinical presentations, including autonomic, somatosensory, perceptual, motor, affective, and cognitive deficits. Although functional neuroimaging studies have demonstrated its role in executive functions, no clinical manifestations have been reported to date. We present the case of a woman with an acute left anterior insular infarction leading to executive (i.e., word and design fluency, mental flexibility, sustained attention, inhibitory control), but not language, visuoperceptual, or memory impairment. This case confirms the left anterior insula's involvement in executive functioning and suggests that an infarction may result in executive impairment.

Exposure to early-life stress is associated with long-term alterations in brain and behavior, and may aggravate the outcome of neurological insults. This study aimed at investigating the possible interaction between maternal separation, a model of early stress, and subsequent neonatal hypoxia-ischemia on emotional behavior and markers of synaptic plasticity in hippocampus. Therefore, rat pups (N = 60) were maternally separated for a prolonged (MS 180min) or a brief (MS 15min) period during the first six postnatal days, while a control group was left undisturbed. Hypoxia-ischemia was applied to a subgroup of each rearing condition on postnatal day 7. Emotional behavior was examined at three months of age and included assessments of anxiety (elevated plus maze), depression-like behavior (forced swimming) and spontaneous exploration (open field). Synaptic plasticity was evaluated based on BDNF and synaptophysin expression in CA3 and dentate gyrus hippocampal regions. We found that neonatal hypoxia-ischemia caused increased levels of anxiety, depression-like behavior and locomotor activity (ambulation). Higher anxiety levels were also seen in maternally separated rats (MS180min) compared to non-maternally separated rats, but prolonged maternal separation prior to HI did not potentiate the HI-associated effect. No differences among the three rearing conditions were found regarding depression-like behavior or ambulation. Immunohistochemical evaluation of synaptophysin revealed that both prolonged maternal separation (MS180min) and neonatal hypoxia-ischemia significantly reduced its expression in the CA3 and dentate gyrus. Decreases in synaptophysin expression in these areas were not exacerbated in rats that were maternally separated for a prolonged period prior to HI. Regarding BDNF expression, we found a significant decrease in immunoreactivity only in the hypoxic-ischemic rats that were subjected to the prolonged maternal separation paradigm. The above findings suggest that early-life stress prior to neonatal hypoxia-ischemia leads to significant alterations in synaptic plasticity of the dorsal hippocampus during adulthood, but does not exacerbate HI-related changes in emotional behavior.

Animal studies suggest that maternal separation, a widely used paradigm to study the effects of early life adversity, exerts a profound and life-long impact on both brain and behavior. The aim of the current study was to investigate whether adverse early life experiences interact with neonatal hypoxia–ischemia, affecting the outcome of this neurological insult at both functional and structural levels during adulthood. Rat pups were separated from their mothers during postnatal days 1–6, for either a short (15 min) or prolonged (180 min) period, while another group was left undisturbed. On postnatal day 7, a subgroup from each of the three postnatal manipulations was exposed to a hypoxic–ischemic episode. Behavioral examination took place approximately at three months of age and included tests of learning and memory (Morris water maze, novel object and novel place recognition), as well as motor coordination (rota-rod). We found that both prolonged maternal separation and neonatal hypoxia–ischemia impaired the animals’ spatial learning and reference memory. Deficits in spatial but not visual recognition memory were detected only in hypoxic–ischemic rats. Interestingly, prolonged maternal separation prior to neonatal hypoxia–ischemia augmented the reference memory impairments. Histological analysis of infarct size, hippocampal area and thickness of corpus callosum did not reveal any exacerbation of damage in hypoxic–ischemic rats that were maternally separated for a prolonged period. These are the first data suggesting that an adverse postnatal environmental manipulation of just 6 days causes long-term effects on spatial learning and memory and may render the organism more vulnerable to a subsequent insult.