Biology subjects

Brechet, L.

Publications and source records attributed to Brechet, L..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2018

Common recruitment of angular gyrus in episodic autobiographical memory and bodily self-consciousness

Parietal cortex and adjacent parts of the temporal cortex have recently been involved in bodily self-consciousness (BSC) and in episodic autobiographical memory (EAM). However, the neuroanatomical relationship between both fundamental aspects of self-related processing remains currently unexplored. Here we investigated whether regions in the inferior parietal lobule (IPL) that have been involved in BSC (self-location and first-person perspective) are also activate in studies investigating autobiographical memory. To examine this relation, we performed a meta-analytical study based on functional neuroimaging studies on EAM and SAM and compared them with BSC activations. We report an anatomical overlap bilaterally in the angular gyrus (AG), but not in other parietal or temporal lobe structures between BSC and EAM. Moreover, there was no overlap between BSC and SAM, suggesting that the bilateral AG is a key structure for the conscious re-experiencing of past life episodes (EAM) and the conscious on-line experience of being located and experiencing the world in first-person (BSC).

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2018

Capturing the spatiotemporal dynamics of task-initiated thoughts with combined EEG and fMRI

When at rest, our mind wanders from thought to thought in distinct mental states. Despite the marked importance of ongoing mental processes, it is challenging to capture and relate these states to specific cognitive contents. In this work, we employed ultra-high field functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and high-density electroencephalography (EEG) to study the ongoing thoughts of participants instructed to retrieve self-relevant past episodes for periods of 20s. These task-initiated, participant-driven activity patterns were compared to a distinct condition where participants performed serial mental arithmetic operations, thereby shifting from self-related to self-unrelated thoughts. BOLD activity mapping revealed selective activity changes in temporal, parietal and occipital areas (\"posterior hot zone\"), evincing their role in integrating the re-experienced past events into conscious representations during memory retrieval. Functional connectivity analysis showed that these regions were organized in two major subparts of the default mode network, previously associated to \"scene-reconstruction\" and \"self-experience\" subsystems. EEG microstate analysis allowed studying these participant-driven thoughts in the millisecond range by determining the temporal dynamics of brief periods of stable scalp potential fields. This analysis revealed selective modulation of occurrence and duration of specific microstates in both conditions. EEG source analysis revealed similar spatial distributions between the sources of these microstates and the regions identified with fMRI. These findings support growing evidence that specific fMRI networks can be captured with EEG as repeatedly occurring, integrated brief periods of synchronized neuronal activity, lasting only fractions of seconds.\n\nSignificanceWe investigated the spatiotemporal dynamics of large-scale brain networks related to specific conscious thoughts. We demonstrate here that instructing participants to direct their thoughts to either episodic autobiographic memory or to mental arithmetic modulates distinct networks both in terms of highly spatially-specific BOLD signal oscillations as well as fast sub-second dynamics of EEG microstates. The combined findings from the two modalities evince a clear link between hemodynamic and electrophysiological signatures of spontaneous brain activity by the occurrence of thoughts that last for fractions of seconds, repeatedly appearing over time as integrated coherent activities of specific large-scale networks.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2018

Viewing one’s body during encoding boosts episodic memory

Episodic autobiographical memories (EAMs) are recollections of contextually rich and personally relevant past events. EAM has been linked to the sense of self, allowing one to mentally travel back in subjective time and re-experience past events. However, the sense of self has recently been linked to online multisensory processing and bodily self-consciousness (BSC). It is currently unknown whether EAM depends on BSC mechanisms. Here, we used a new immersive virtual reality (VR) system that maintained the perceptual richness of life episodes and fully controlled the experimental stimuli during encoding and retrieval, including the participants body. We report that the present VR setup permits to measure recognition memory for complex and embodied 3D scenes during encoding and retrieval, that recognition memory depends on delay and number of changed elements, and that viewing ones body as part of the virtual scene (as found in BSC studies) enhances delayed retrieval. This body effect was not observed when no virtual body or a moving control object was shown. These data show that embodied views improve recognition memory for 3D life-like scenes, thereby linking the sense of self, and BSC in particular, to episodic memory and the re-experiencing of specific past events in EAM.

neuroscience↗