Vantage perspective during encoding: The effects on phenomenological memory characteristics

Overcoming boundaries: Interdisciplinary challenges and opportunities in cognitive neuroscience

Cognitive neuroscience has considerable untapped potential to translate our understanding of brain function into applications that maintain, restore, or enhance human cognition. Complex, real-world phenomena encountered in daily life, professional contexts, and in the arts, can also be a rich source of information for better understanding cognition, which in turn can lead to advances in knowledge and health outcomes. Interdisciplinary work is needed for these bi-directional benefits to be realized. Our cognitive neuroscience team has been collaborating on several interdisciplinary projects: hardware and software development for brain stimulation, measuring human operator state in safety-critical robotics environments, and exploring emotional regulation in actors who perform traumatic narratives. Our approach is to study research questions of mutual interest in the contexts of domain-specific applications, using (and sometimes improving) the experimental tools and techniques of cognitive neuroscience. These interdisciplinary attempts are described as case studies in the present work to illustrate non-trivial challenges that come from working across traditional disciplinary boundaries. We reflect on how obstacles to interdisciplinary work can be overcome, with the goals of enriching our understanding of human cognition and amplifying the positive effects cognitive neuroscientists have on society and innovation.

How shifting visual perspective during autobiographical memory retrieval influences emotion: A change in retrieval orientation

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.

The stability of visual perspective and vividness during mental time travel

When remembering or imagining, people can experience an event from their own eyes, or as an outside observer, with differing levels of vividness. The perspective from, and vividness with, which a person remembers or imagines has been related to numerous individual difference characteristics. These findings require that phenomenology during mental time travel be trait-like-that people consistently experience similar perspectives and levels of vividness. This assumption remains untested. Across two studies (combined N = 295), we examined the stability of visual perspective and vividness across multiple trials and timepoints. Perspective and vividness showed weak within-session stability when reported across just a few trials but showed strong within-session stability when sufficient trials were collected. Importantly, both visual perspective and vividness demonstrated good-to-excellent across-session stability across different delay intervals (two days to six weeks). Overall, our results suggest that people dependably experience similar visual phenomenology across occurrences of mental time travel.

Inducing positive involuntary mental imagery in everyday life: an experimental investigation

Positive involuntary mental imagery occurs frequently in daily life but evidence as to its functions and importance is largely indirect. The current study investigated a method to induce positive involuntary imagery in daily life, which would allow direct testing of its impact. An unselected student sample (N = 80) completed a single session of a positive imagery cognitive bias modification (CBM) paradigm, which involved listening to and imagining brief positive imagery scripts. Participants then recorded any involuntary memories of the imagined training scenarios in a three-day diary before returning to the lab for a follow-up assessment. Participants were randomised to imagine the scenarios in either an emotionally involved or emotionally detached manner, providing a test of the role of emotion in the subsequent experience of involuntary memories. Participants reported experiencing involuntary memories of the training scenarios in their daily life, but the number recorded did not differ between the experimental conditions. Exploratory analyses suggested that more vivid imagery and recall testing were associated with a greater number of involuntary memories. The study highlights the potential of the imagery CBM paradigm to further our understanding of the functions and potential importance of positive involuntary mental imagery in daily life.

Vantage perspective in analogue trauma memories: an experimental study

Vantage perspective during recall is thought to affect the emotionality and accessibility of distressing memories. This study aimed to test the effects of vantage perspective during recall on memory associated distress and intrusion development. An adapted version of the trauma film paradigm was used in an experimental design with three conditions. Participants were asked to listen to eyewitness reports of car accidents (e.g. Trauma Analogue Induction) and imagine the scenes vividly using mental imagery. Afterwards, they were asked to recall the most distressing scene from field perspective, observer perspective, or to recall a neutral image from observer perspective (control condition) (e.g. Trauma Analogue Recall). Recall from field perspective resulted in higher negative mood, state-anxiety, and a higher number of short-term intrusions compared to the observer perspective condition and control condition. Negative mood and state-anxiety were mediators in the relationship between vantage perspective and intrusions. In comparison to observer perspective, field perspective increased the amount of short-term intrusions as a result of higher levels of negative mood and state-anxiety after memory retrieval. Future research on the interaction between vantage perspective at recall and negative mood and anxiety effects is warranted.