Hervé Platel

This paper introduces MONET (Museum Observatory of Neuro-affective Eye-Tracking), a novel multimodal dataset collected over a nine-month period in a naturalistic museum setting, built to observe the effect of artwork on well-being. The core contribution of this work lies in the simultaneous capture of visual attention and affective responses from 148 visitors viewing original artworks, thereby ensuring an ecological validity often missing from traditional laboratory screen-based studies. The experimental design follows a unique two-phase protocol comparing solo and paired (two visitors simultaneously) visits, under both mediated and unmediated conditions. For each of the twelve paintings, the dataset provides individual saliency maps derived from mobile eye-tracking, valence and arousal scores obtained via an affect grid, and comprehensive demographic metadata. Exploratory findings reveal that while painting content remains the primary driver of inter-individual gaze variability, paired viewing leads to a significant convergence in affective responses between partners. Furthermore, the use of the Kullback-Leibler Divergence identifies a statistical link between spatial gaze distribution and emotional states, offering new pathways for modeling attention and affect in unconstrained environments. The dataset and supplementary materials are available at https://git.unicaen.fr/raphaelle.lemaire/monet, and the MONET dataset is distributed under a Data Use Agreement (DUA) license.

Background: Auditory spatial attention (ASA) can be impaired in clinical populations and affects everyday activities, yet it remains understudied and lacks practical assessment tools for clinical use. However, recent technological advances have enabled the development of auditory virtual environments capable of engaging attentional networks while remaining compatible with clinical implementation and supporting the collection of objective physiological measures. Objective: This study aimed to address the lack of clinically applicable ASA assessments by developing a new assessment (phase 1) and supporting its future implementation in clinical practice through preliminary validation and user experience evaluation (phase 2). Methods: In phase 1, the assessment was developed through a multidisciplinary research committee involving clinicians and researchers, and was refined through pilot testing with 17 healthy participants. It uses an immersive auditory virtual environment and combines eye tracking, head tracking, and pupillometry. Phase 2 will consist of two successive studies: (1) 15 expert clinicians (neuropsychologists or speech therapists) will evaluate face and content validity, and user experience, and (2) 80 healthy adults will provide additional sources of validity evidence and user experience data. Participants will complete 5 steps of an ASA task, alternating habituation and measurement blocks, using either gaze orientation or head orientation as the response modality. Vocal targets will be presented with or without background sound in a dynamic binaural environment. Results: Study 1 will provide preliminary validity evidence based on face and content, together with user experience outcomes, including usability, satisfaction, and intention to use. Recruitment of participants began in November 2025 and was completed in January 2026. Data analysis is in progress, and the corresponding manuscript is expected to be submitted for publication during the winter of 2026‐2027. Study 2 will provide preliminary validity evidence based on precision, face and content, response processes, internal structure, and fairness, together with user experience outcomes, including usability, satisfaction, and sense of presence. Recruitment of participants began in March 2026 and is expected to be completed in October 2026. As of July 2026, 48 participants had been enrolled. Completion of data analysis and submission of the corresponding manuscript are expected in winter 2027‐2028. Conclusions: This validation study represents the first step toward developing a clinically applicable tool for assessing ASA. By combining immersive auditory technology with clinically feasible hardware, the proposed approach aims to provide a rapid and ecologically valid evaluation of ASA. Future studies will focus on formal psychometric validation, patient testing, and the development of normative data.

Background: Informal caregiving for individuals with Alzheimer’s disease and related neurodegenerative disorders represents a major public health issue. Although caregiving is widely recognised as a source of chronic psychosocial stress with potential consequences for brain health and cognition, its neurofunctional correlates remain poorly understood. Two theoretical frameworks, the Stress Process Model and the Healthy Caregiver Hypothesis, offer competing predictions regarding the cognitive impact of caregiving, yet neuroimaging studies directly addressing these perspectives remain scarce. Objective: This study aimed to investigate resting-state EEG functional connectivity in informal caregivers and non-caregivers from the INSIGHT-preAD cohort, and to explore whether caregiving status is associated with specific connectivity patterns and cognitive performance. Methods: Resting-state EEG data were analysed in 41 self-reported caregivers and 39 matched noncaregivers. Functional connectivity was estimated using the weighted Phase Lag Index across five frequency bands: delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma. Analyses focused on posterior regions of the default mode network, including the posterior cingulate cortex and precuneus, as well as prefrontalparahippocampal networks. Neuropsychological assessments targeted episodic memory and executive functioning. Results: Exploratory findings revealed increased beta-band functional connectivity in caregivers, particularly within posterior default mode regions and prefrontal-parahippocampal coupling. These connectivity patterns were associated with slightly poorer cognitive performance. Conclusion: These preliminary results suggest that informal caregiving may be associated with specific resting-state EEG connectivity patterns in cognitively unimpaired older adults. They provide new insights into potential neurofunctional mechanisms underlying vulnerability or resilience in caregivers. Keywords: Informal caregivers, EEG, functional connectivity, cognition, chronic stress

The Music Ensemble dataset is a large-scale, cross-national database that provides detailed information about the musical, cognitive, personality, and demographic profiles of young adult musicians and nonmusicians. Data were collected from 1438 participants (aged 18–30) across thirty-five research sites in Europe, North America, South America, and Australia. Participants completed an in-person, in-lab battery of objective tests, including measures of verbal, visuospatial and musical short-term memory, executive functions (updating component), nonverbal reasoning, verbal comprehension, and music perception skills. The battery also included standardized and custom self-report questionnaires assessing music sophistication, music reward, personality traits, socioeconomic status, and demographic characteristics. Music Ensemble was preregistered, and the research protocol followed a standardized procedure across sites. The dataset also includes a large subsample of musicians and nonmusicians that are pair-matched for age, gender, and education (678 pairs). It enables well-powered investigations into the relationship between musical expertise and individual differences in cognition, personality, and demographic variables. It is also suitable for training in statistical and psychometric methods.

BACKGROUND Auditory spatial attention can be impaired in clinical populations and affects everyday activities, yet it remains understudied and lacks practical assessment tools for clinical use. However, recent technological advances now enable the development of rich auditory environments that can engage attention networks with equipment designed for clinical implementation. OBJECTIVE This study aims to validate a newly developed approach for assessing auditory spatial attention designed for clinical implementation. The study will first evaluate face and content validity with expert clinicians. If these aspects are established, construct validity will be examined in both clinicians and healthy adults, including response-mode validity (eye and head responses relative to sound location), coherence between response modalities, and sensitivity to background-noise effects. Feasibility will also be investigated, including usability and intention to use, technological and procedural quality, and the quality of pupil-dilation data. METHODS This within-subject methodological validation pilot study will include two successive groups: (1) 15 expert clinicians (neuropsychologists or speech therapists with ≥1 year of experience in attention assessment and ≥6 months in spatial-neglect evaluation) and (2) 40 healthy adults aged 20–40 and 60–80 years. Participants will complete five auditory spatial-attention task phases alternating habituation and measurement, using eye-tracking and head-tracking as response modalities. Vocal targets will be presented with or without background sound in a dynamic binaural environment integrating Unity, MaxMSP, and IRCAM SPAT, combined with Supperware inertial head-tracking and Tobii eye-tracking. Primary outcomes include face and content validity, assessed through expert ratings of relevance, clarity, and comprehensiveness, and their alignment with the underlying construct of auditory spatial attention. Secondary outcomes include construct validity through analyses of eye position, head position, and pupil size; as well as feasibility through usability (SUS), intention-to-use measures, ratings of technological and procedural quality, and quality analysis of pupillometry data. RESULTS The study has received ethical approval from the Institutional Research Ethics Committee of the University of Caen (Reference: 2025060606545200000310000391). Recruitment of clinicians began in October 2025 and is ongoing. Recruitment of healthy participants is planned from January to October 2026. The end of the study is expected in late 2026. CONCLUSIONS This validation study represents the first step toward developing a clinically applicable tool for assessing auditory spatial attention. The approach combines immersive auditory technology and clinically feasible hardware to enable fast, systematic, and ecologically valid evaluation. Future studies will focus on building a normative database and testing the tool in patients populations. Ultimately, this assessment could improve diagnostic precision and guide targeted interventions for neurological and neurodevelopmental disorders.

The Music Ensemble dataset is a large-scale, cross-national database that provides detailed information about the musical, cognitive, personality, and demographic profiles of musicians and nonmusicians. Data were collected from 1438 participants (aged 18–30) across thirty-five research sites in Europe, North America, South America, and Australia. Participants completed an in-person, in-lab battery of objective tests, including measures of verbal, visuospatial and musical short-term memory, executive functions (updating component), nonverbal reasoning, verbal comprehension, and music perception skills. The battery also included standardized and custom self-report questionnaires assessing music sophistication, music reward, personality traits, socioeconomic status, and demographic characteristics. Music Ensemble was preregistered, and the research protocol followed a standardized procedure across sites. The dataset also includes a large subsample of musicians and nonmusicians that are pair-matched for age, gender, and education (678 pairs). It enables well-powered investigations into the relationship between musical expertise and individual differences in cognition, personality, and demographic variables. It is also suitable for training in statistical and psychometric methods.

Background: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Korsakoff’s syndrome (KS) are two major neurocognitive disorders characterized by amnesia but AD is degenerative while KS is not. The objective is to compare regional volume deficits within the Papez circuit in AD and KS, considering AD progression. Methods: 18 KS patients, 40 AD patients (20 with Moderate AD (MAD) matched on global cognitive deficits with KS patients and 20 with Severe AD (SAD)), and 70 healthy controls underwent structural MRI. Volumes of the hippocampi, thalami, cingulate gyri, mammillary bodies (MB) and mammillothalamic tracts (MTT) were extracted. Results: For the cingulate gyri, and anterior thalamic nuclei, all patient groups were affected compared to controls but did not differ between each other. Smaller volumes were observed in all patient groups compared to controls in the mediodorsal thalamic nuclei and MB, but these regions were more severely damaged in KS than AD. MTT volumes were damaged in KS only. Hippocampi were affected in all patient groups but more severely in the SAD than in the KS and MAD. Conclusions: There are commonalities in the pattern of volume deficits in KS and AD within the Papez circuit with the anterior thalamic nuclei, cingulate cortex and hippocampus (in MAD only) being damaged to the same extent. The specificity of KS relies on the alteration of the MTT and the severity of the MB shrinkage. Further comparative studies including other imaging modalities and a neuropsychological assessment are required.

People with Alzheimer’s disease (PWAD) show preservation of remote memory for songs. However, our recent findings suggest that they may also be able to encode new musical stimuli, but only for non-verbal information. Here, we tried to assess whether verbal and musical features of unknown songs could be encoded after 8 days of exposures sessions with two presentation formats: only listening (Audio group) or listening with lyrics (Audio-Textual group). Subsequent to the test session, allowing to separately assess the recognition for songs, melodies alone, and lyrics alone (versus distractors) shows that both complete songs and melodies targets were better recognized than distractors, whereas lyrics alone do not give rise to significant recognition for the Audio group. Contrary to our expectations, the Audio-Textual group showed impaired performance compared to the Audio group both in learning and retrieving all type of information, as no recognition was possible regardless of the format (lyrics, melodies and songs). This lack of improvement in lyrics recognition of the Audio-textual group could be explain by a divided attention situation (between the reading task and the background audio stimuli), hence the very poor performance for PWAD at severe stage of the illness, even for the recognition for song or melodies alone.