Barzykowski and Moulin argue both involuntary autobiographical memories and déjà vu experiences rely on the same involuntary memory retrieval processes but their underlying neurological basis remains unclear. We propose spontaneous neural replay in the default mode network (DMN) and hippocampus as the basis for involuntary autobiographical memories, whereas for déjà vu experiences such transient activation is limited to the DMN.

To provide the three-way comparisons needed to test existing theories, we compared (1) most-stressful memories to other memories and (2) involuntary to voluntary memories (3) in 75 community dwelling adults with and 42 without a current diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Each rated their three most-stressful, three most-positive, seven most-important and 15 word-cued autobiographical memories, and completed tests of personality and mood. Involuntary memories were then recorded and rated as they occurred for 2 weeks. Standard mechanisms of cognition and (...) affect applied to extreme events accounted for the properties of stressful memories. Involuntary memories had greater emotional intensity than voluntary memories, but were not more frequently related to traumatic events. The emotional intensity, rehearsal, and centrality to the life story of both voluntary and involuntary memories, rather than incoherence of voluntary traumatic memories and enhanced availability of involuntary traumatic memories, were the properties of autobiographical memories associated with PTSD. (shrink)

Conscious recollection, of the kind characterised by sensory mental imagery, is often thought to involve ‘episodically’ recalling experienced events in one’s personal past. One might wonder whether this overlooks distinctive ways in which we sometimes recall ordinary, persisting objects. Of course, one can recall an object by remembering an event in which one encountered it. But are there acts of recall which are distinctively objectual in that they are not about objects in this mediated way (i.e., by way of being (...) about events in which they featured)? This question has broad implications, not least for understanding the nature and role of imagery in remembering, the requirements of memory-based singular thought about objects, and the sense in which remembering involves ‘mental time travel’ through which one ‘relives’ past events. In this paper, I argue that we sometimes do recall objects from our past without remembering events in which they featured. The positive view of such cases I go on to propose draws on a wide body of empirical work in its support and accommodates a more nuanced picture of the role of imagery in remembering. In a slogan: remembering might essentially involve a kind of ‘re-experiencing’, but it need not involve ‘reliving’. (shrink)

In recent years, the scientific study of meditation and psychedelic drugs has seen remarkable developments. The increased focus on meditation in cognitive neuroscience has led to a cross-cultural classification of standard meditation styles validated by functional and structural neuroanatomical data. Meanwhile, the renaissance of psychedelic research has shed light on the neurophysiology of altered states of consciousness induced by classical psychedelics, such as psilocybin and LSD, whose effects are mainly mediated by agonism of serotonin receptors. Few attempts have been made (...) at bridging these two domains of inquiry, despite intriguing evidence of overlap between the phenomenology and neurophysiology of meditation practice and psychedelic states. In particular, many contemplative traditions explicitly aim at dissolving the sense of self by eliciting altered states of consciousness through meditation, while classical psychedelics are known to produce significant disruptions of self-consciousness, a phenomenon known as drug-induced ego dissolution. In this article, we discuss available evidence regarding convergences and differences between phenomenological and neurophysiological data on meditation practice and psychedelic drug-induced states, with a particular emphasis on alterations of self-experience. While both meditation and psychedelics may disrupt self-consciousness and underlying neural processes, we emphasize that neither meditation nor psychedelic states can be conceived as simple, uniform categories. Moreover, we suggest that there are important phenomenological differences even between conscious states described as experiences of self-loss. As a result, we propose that self-consciousness may be best construed as a multidimensional construct, and that “self-loss,” far from being an unequivocal phenomenon, can take several forms. Indeed, various aspects of self-consciousness, including narrative aspects linked to autobiographical memory, self-related thoughts and mental time travel, and embodied aspects rooted in multisensory processes, may be differently affected by psychedelics and meditation practices. Finally, we consider long-term outcomes of experiences of self-loss induced by meditation and psychedelics on individual traits and prosocial behavior. We call for caution regarding the problematic conflation of temporary states of self-loss with “selflessness” as a behavioral or social trait, although there is preliminary evidence that correlations between short-term experiences of self-loss and long-term trait alterations may exist. (shrink)

Loss of insight is a prominent clinical manifestation of behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia , but its characteristics are poorly understood. Twelve bvFTD patients were compared with 12 Alzheimer’s disease patients on a structured insight interview of cognitive insight and emotional insight . Compared to the AD patients, the bvFTD patients were less aware and less concerned about their disorder, and they had less appreciation of its effects on themselves and on others. After corrective feedback , the bvFTD patients were just (...) as aware of their disorder as the AD patients but remained unconcerned and unappreciative of its effects. These findings suggest that lack of insight in bvFTD is not due to “anosognosia,” or impaired cognitive and executive awareness of disease, but to “frontal anosodiaphoria,” or lack of emotional concern over having bvFTD and its impact on themselves and others. (shrink)

Visual perspective during autobiographical memory (AM) retrieval influences how people remember the emotional aspects of memories. Prior research in emotion regulation has also shown that shifting from an own eyes to an observer-like perspective is an efficient way of regulating the affect elicited by emotional AMs. However, the impact of shifting visual perspective is also dependent on the nature of the emotion associated with the event. The current review synthesizes behavioral and functional neuroimaging findings from the event memory and emotion (...) regulation literature that examine how adopting particular visual perspectives and actively shifting across them during retrieval alters emotional experience, by primarily focusing on emotional intensity. We review current theories explaining why shifts in perspectives may or may not change the emotional characteristics of memories, then propose a new theory, suggesting that the own eyes and observer-like perspectives are two different retrieval orientations supported by differential neural activations that lead episodic details to be reconstructed in specific ways. (shrink)

This paper reviews the literature concerning the neural correlates of the self, the relationship between self and memory and the profile of memory impairments in Alzheimer’s disease and explores the relationship between the preservation of the self and anosognosia in this condition. It concludes that a potential explanation for anosognosia in AD is a lack of updating of personal information due to the memory impairments characteristic of this disease. We put forward the hypothesis that anosognosia is due in part to (...) the “petrified self.”. (shrink)

Repetition learning is an efficient way to enhance memory performance in our daily lives and educational practice. However, it is unclear to what extent repetition or multiple exposures modulate different types of memory over time. The inconsistent findings on it may be associated with encoding strategy. In this study, participants were presented with pairs of pictures once or three times and were asked to make a same/similar/different judgment. By this, an elaborative encoding is more required for the “same” and “similar” (...) conditions than the “different” condition. Then after intervals of 10 min, 1 day, and 1 week, they were asked to perform a recognition test to discriminate a repeated and a similar picture, followed by a remember/know/guess assessment and a contextual judgment. The results showed that after learning the objects three times, both item memory and contextual memory improved. Multiple exposures enhanced the hit rate for the “same” and “similar” conditions, but did not change the false alarm rate significantly. The recollection, rather than the familiarity, contributed to the repetition effect. In addition, the memory enhancement was manifested in each encoding condition and retention interval, especially for the “same” condition and at 10-min and 1-day intervals. These results clarify how repetition influences item and contextual memories during discriminative learning and suggest that multiple exposures render the details more vividly remembered and retained over time when elaborative encoding is emphasized. (shrink)

The content of dreams and changes to the self were investigated in students moving to University. In study 1, 20 participants completed dream diaries and memory tasks before and after they had left home and moved to university, and generated self images, “I am…” statements , reflective of their current self. Changes in “I ams” were observed, indicating a newly-formed ‘university’ self. These self, images and related autobiographical knowledge were found to be incorporated into recent dreams but not into dreams (...) from other periods. Study 2 replicated these findings in a different sample . We suggest that these data reflect a period of self-consolidation in which new experiences and self images are incorporated into autobiographical memory knowledge structures representing personal goals during sleep. (shrink)

In the 1980s and 1990s, there was a major theoretical debate in the memory domain regarding the multiple memory systems and processing modes frameworks. The components of processing framework argued for a middle ground: Instead of neatly divided memory systems or processing modes, this framework proposed the existence of numerous processing components that are recruited in different combinations by memory tasks and yield complex patterns of associations and dissociations. Because behavioral evidence was not sufficient to decide among these three frameworks, (...) the debate was largely abandoned. However, functional neuroimaging evidence accumulated during the last two decades resolves the stalemate, because this evidence is more consistent with the components framework than with the other two frameworks. For example, functional neuroimaging evidence shows that brain regions attributed to one memory system can contribute to tasks associated with other memory systems and that brain regions attributed to the same processing mode (perceptual or conceptual) can be dissociated from each other. Functional neuroimaging evidence suggests that memory processes are supported by transient interactions between a few regions called process-specific alliances. These conceptual developments are an example of how functional neuroimaging can contribute to theoretical debates in cognitive psychology. (shrink)

In the philosophy of memory, singularism is the view that episodic memories are singular mental states about unique personally experienced past events. In this paper, I present an empirical challenge to singularism. I examine three distinct lines of evidence from the psychology of memory, concerning general event memories, the transformation of memory traces and the minimized role temporal information plays in major psychological theories of episodic memory. I argue that singularist views will have a hard time accommodating this evidence, facing (...) a problem of transitional gradation. I then look at some potential consequences for the larger debate, highlighting the way in which singularism has featured in three important recent arguments in the philosophy of memory. (shrink)

This thesis is intended to analyze a mental phenomenon widely neglected in current philosophical discussions: personal memories. The first part presents a general framework to better understand what personal memories are, how we access our personal past and what we access about our personal past. Chapter 1 introduces traditional theories of memory: direct realism and representationalism in their different versions, as well as some objections. I defend here a particular form of representationalism that is based on the distinction between content, (...) intentional object and ontological object. Chapter 2 explores the possible contents of our personal memories, which prove to be heterogeneous, whereas chapter 3 analyses their possible intentional objects, with a special focus on past events. The second part of the thesis explores an aspect of our personal memories that was omitted in the first part: the senses in which our personal past is apprehended as personal. Chapter 4 examines the way in which the “self” intervenes in the construction of our personal memories. Chapters 5 and 6 focus on the analysis of what seems to be the most subjective aspect of our memories, that is, the emotions and feelings of our past experiences. In these last two chapters, I analyze the different interactions that can take place between memories and emotions and defend the idea that there can be emotional memories that are reducible neither to a propositional memory nor an occurrent and present emotion. The overall intention of this thesis is twofold. First, I aim to show to the philosophical community that there is still a lot to be said and discussed about memory as a mental phenomenon. And second, I intend to emphasize the importance of bringing into the philosophical discussions about the mind ideas coming from different philosophical traditions as well as ideas and empirical data coming from scientific research. (shrink)