Topographical Disorientation: Clinical and Theoretical Significance of Long-Lasting Improvements Following Imagery-Based Training

Boccia, Maddalena; Bonavita, Alessia; Diana, Sofia; Vita, Antonella Di; Ciurli, Maria Paola; Guariglia, Cecilia

doi:10.3389/fnhum.2019.00322

Cited by 12 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…Despite the sluggishness of the fMRI response relative to the speed of neuronal firing, this work nevertheless showed that these category-selective reactivation patterns during recall were detectable during the recall period and several seconds before the participants verbalised the recalled event -consistent with the idea that category-selective reinstatement in visual cortex is cuing the memory-system to retrieve remembered items (Polyn et al, 2005). Moreover, others have found that mental imagery of scenes and faces can be decoded from PPA and FFA, and in ventral OTC generally, suggesting that the activity in these areas during memory recall carries stimulusspecific visual information (Boccia et al 2019;Reddy et at., 2010). But are category-selective areas representing fine-grained detail regarding the recalled stimulus, or are they merely representing the category?…”

Section: Reactivation Of Perceptual and Mnemonic Representationssupporting

confidence: 76%

Visual category-driven differences in memory

Steel¹,

Silson²

2022

Visual Memory

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Categorizing classes of stimuli in the real-world is thought to underlie features of general intelligence, including our ability to infer identities of new objects, environments, and people never encountered before. Our understanding of human categorization, and the neural mechanisms that underlie this ability, was initially described in the context of visual perception. It is now broadly accepted that a network of high-level visual areas on the ventral and lateral surfaces of the brain exhibit some level of 'domain (or category)-selective' activity: preferential neural responses to visual stimuli of one category more than another (e.g., larger responses to faces compared to scenes or manipulable objects). Inspired by this robust and intuitive organization, recent studies have begun investigating the extent to which human memory systems also exhibit a category-selective organization. Surprisingly, this work has revealed strong evidence for the existence of category-selective areas in swaths of cortex previously considered to be domain-general. These results suggest that category-selectivity is a general organizing principle not only of visual cortex, but also for higher-level cortical areas involved in memory. In this chapter we review the evidence for the manifestation of visual category preferences in memory systems, and how this relates to the well-established categoryselectivity exhibited within visual cortex.

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Section: Reactivation Of Perceptual and Mnemonic Representationssupporting

confidence: 76%

Visual category-driven differences in memory

Steel¹,

Silson²

2022

Visual Memory

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“…For example, individuals with episodic memory deficits, such as patients with dementia and schizophrenia (Tromp et al, 2015;Kanchanatawan et al, 2018;Das et al, 2019), might benefit from a training of their primal navigational system as an indirect way of boosting their episodic memory system. In particular, a recent single-case report on a patient suffering from topographical disorientation has demonstrated the positive effect on episodic memory of an imagery-based navigational training (Boccia et al, 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Egocentric Navigation Abilities Predict Episodic Memory Performance

Committeri

Fragueiro

Campanile

et al. 2020

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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The medial temporal lobe supports both navigation and declarative memory. On this basis, a theory of phylogenetic continuity has been proposed according to which episodic and semantic memories have evolved from egocentric (e.g., path integration) and allocentric (e.g., map-based) navigation in the physical world, respectively. Here, we explored the behavioral significance of this neurophysiological model by investigating the relationship between the performance of healthy individuals on a path integration and an episodic memory task. We investigated the path integration performance through a proprioceptive Triangle Completion Task and assessed episodic memory through a picture recognition task. We evaluated the specificity of the association between performance in these two tasks by including in the study design a verbal semantic memory task. We also controlled for the effect of attention and working memory and tested the robustness of the results by including alternative versions of the path integration and semantic memory tasks. We found a significant positive correlation between the performance on the path integration the episodic, but not semantic, memory tasks. This pattern of correlation was not explained by general cognitive abilities and persisted also when considering a visual path integration task and a non-verbal semantic memory task. Importantly, a cross-validation analysis showed that participants' egocentric navigation abilities reliably predicted episodic memory performance. Altogether, our findings support the hypothesis of a phylogenetic continuity between egocentric navigation and episodic memory and pave the way for future research on the potential causal role of egocentric navigation on multiple forms of episodic memory.

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“…In humans, few recent studies have reported improvements in declarative memory performance following a navigational training in clinical populations. A single-case study on a patient suffering from topographical disorientation, for example, has described a secondary positive effect of an imagery-based navigational training on episodic memory (Boccia et al, 2019). At the group level, instead, an improvement of long-term memory capabilities (recognition memory) has been observed in older individuals following a training program on a way nding game in virtual reality (Wais et al, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Empowering Episodic Memory through a model-based Egocentric Navigational Training

Fragueiro

Tosoni

Matteo

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Recent works have proposed that spatial mechanisms in the hippocampal-entorhinal system might have originally developed to represent distances and positions in the physical space and successively evolved to represent experience and memory in the mental space (Bellmund et al., 2018; Bottini and Doeller, 2020). Within this phylogenetic continuity hypothesis (Buzsáki and Moser, 2013), mechanisms supporting episodic and semantic memory would have evolved from egocentric and allocentric spatial navigation mechanisms, respectively. Recent studies have described a specific relationship between human performance in egocentric navigation and episodic memory (Committeri et al., 2020; Fragueiro et al., 2021), representing the first behavioral support to this hypothesis. Here, we tested the causal relationship among egocentric navigation and both episodic and semantic components of declarative memory. We conducted two experiments on healthy young adults: in the first experiment, participants were submitted to a navigational training, while in the second experiments participants completed a visual perceptual training. Performance in a set of memory tasks assessing episodic, semantic and short-term memory was compared among the pre- vs. post-training sessions. Results showed a specific, causal effect of the navigational training on episodic memory, as performance in this task, but not in semantic or in short-term memory tasks, was significantly improved in the post-training session. On the contrary, the visual perceptual training did not cause any improvement of the memory performance.Our findings do not only provide strong support to the phylogenetic continuity hypothesis between mechanisms of spatial navigation and memory but also offer insights for possible clinical applications.

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Topographical Disorientation: Clinical and Theoretical Significance of Long-Lasting Improvements Following Imagery-Based Training

Cited by 12 publications

References 46 publications

Visual category-driven differences in memory

Visual category-driven differences in memory

Egocentric Navigation Abilities Predict Episodic Memory Performance

Empowering Episodic Memory through a model-based Egocentric Navigational Training

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