In rehabilitation of patients with spinal cord injury (SCI), imagination of movement is a candidate tool to promote long-term recovery or to control futuristic neuroprostheses. However, little is known about the ability of patients with spinal cord injury to perform this task. It is likely that without the ability to effectively perform the movement, the imagination of movement is also problematic. We therefore examined, whether patients with SCI experience increased difficulties in motor imagery (MI) compared to healthy controls. We examined 7 male patients with traumatic spinal cord injury (aged 23–70 years, median 53) and 20 healthy controls (aged 21–54 years, median 30). All patients had incomplete SCI, with AIS (ASIA Impairment Scale) grades of C or D. All had cervical lesions, except one who had a thoracic injury level. Duration after injury ranged from 3 to 314 months. We performed the Movement Imagery Questionnaire Revised as well as the Beck Depression Inventory in all participants. The self-assessed ability of patients to visually imagine movements ranged from 7 to 36 (Md = 30) and tended to be decreased in comparison to healthy controls (ranged 16–49, Md = 42.5; W = 326.5, p = 0.055). Also, the self-assessed ability of patients to kinesthetically imagine movements (range = 7–35, Md = 31) differed significantly from the control group (range = 23–49, Md = 41; W = 337.5, p = 0.0047). Two patients yielded tendencies for depressive mood and they also reported most problems with movement imagination. Statistical analysis however did not confirm a general relationship between depressive mood and increased difficulty in MI across both groups. Patients with spinal cord injury seem to experience difficulties in imagining movements compared to healthy controls. This result might not only have implications for training and rehabilitation programs, but also for applications like brain-computer interfaces used to control neuroprostheses, which are often based on the brain signals exhibited during the imagination of movements.

Studies with adults found a memory bias for disgust, such that memory for disgusting stimuli was enhanced compared to neutral and frightening stimuli. We investigated whether this bias is more pronounced in females and whether it is already present in children. Moreover, we analyzed whether the visual exploration of disgust stimuli during encoding is associated with memory retrieval. In a first recognition experiment with intentional learning, 50 adults (mean age; M = 23 years) and 52 children ( M = 11 years) were presented with disgusting, frightening, and neutral pictures. Both children and adults showed a better recognition performance for disgusting images compared to the other image categories. Males and females did not differ in their memory performance. In a second free recall experiment with eye-tracking, 50 adults ( M = 22 years) viewed images from the categories disgust, fear, and neutral. Disgusting and neutral images were matched for color, complexity, brightness, and contrast. The participants, who were not instructed to remember the stimuli, showed a disgust memory bias as well as shorter fixation durations and longer scan paths for disgusting images compared to neutral images. This “hyperscanning pattern” correlated with the number of correctly recalled disgust images. In conclusion, we found a disgust-related memory bias in both children and adults regardless of sex and independently of the memorization method used (recognition/free recall; intentional/incidental).

Color nutrition information (CNI) based on a traffic light system conveys information about food quality with a glance. The color red typically indicates detrimental food characteristics (e.g., very high sugar content) and aims at inhibiting food shopping and consumption. Red may, however, also elicit cross-modal associations with sweet taste, which is a preferable food characteristic. We conducted two experiments. An eye-tracking study investigated whether CNI has an effect on cue reactivity (dwell time, saccadic latency, wanting/liking) for sweet foods. The participants were presented with images depicting sweets (e.g., cake). Each image was preceded by a colored circle that informed about the sugar content of the food (red = high, green = low, gray = unknown). It was tested whether the red circle would help the participants to direct their gaze away from the ‘high sugar’ item. A second experiment investigated whether colored prime circles (red, green, gray) without nutrition information would influence the assumed sweetness of a food. In Experiment 1, CNI had the opposite of the intended effect. Dwell time and saccadic latency were higher for food items preceded by a red compared to a green circle. This unintended response was positively associated with participants’ liking of sweet foods. CNI did not change the wanting/liking of the displayed foods. In Experiment 2, we found no evidence for color priming on the assumed sweetness of food. Our results question whether CNI is helpful to influence initial cue reactivity toward sweet foods.