Emmanuelle Menetrier

Background: The onset of the symptoms of subcortical NDs is due to a unique part of the brain which strengthens the idea of reciprocal influence of physical activity and cognitive training in improving clinical symptoms. Consequently, protocols combining the two stimulations are becoming increasingly popular in NDs. Our threefold aim was to (A) describe the different combinations of physical and cognitive training used to alleviate the motor and cognitive symptoms of patients with subcortical neurodegenerative disorders, (B) compare the effects of these different combinations (sequential, dual tasking, synergical) on symptoms, and (C) recommend approaches for further studies. Methods: We conducted literature searches of PubMed, BASE and ACM, to carry out a systematic review of randomized controlled trials and controlled trials of combined physical and cognitive training among patients with Huntington’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Lewy body dementia, spinocerebellar ataxia, Friedreich’s ataxia, and progressive supranuclear palsy. Physical, neuropsychological, behavioral outcomes were considered. The Cochrane risk-of-bias tool was used to verify the critical appraisal. Results: Twenty-one studies focused on Parkinson’s disease with 940 participants were included. Despites promising benefits on cognitive and physical function, our results revealed discrepant findings for research on combined training. Discussion: Inconsistencies were linked to the choice of tests, the functions that were targeted, disease progression, and trainings. There was a dearth of follow-up data. Conclusions: Differences between combined training are unclear, particularly regarding the role of cognitive load. Future studies should focus on comparing the feasibility, tolerability, and effectiveness of different combinations of motor-cognitive training.

When we look at a picture, we tend to remember it by enriching the constructed mental representation with elements not present but probable outside the current view. The tendency to remember the perceived view with a broader scope is known as boundary extension (BE). Does BE benefit from paying reduced attention to the picture? While attention plays a central role in memory, only a few studies to date have investigated this question in the field of BE. In this research, participants completed a BE task in single- and dual-task conditions. The results indicate that BE is eliminated when the attention is divided on the onset of scene construction. We therefore discuss the role of attention in BE.

This study is an extension of recent research, which examined the possibility that false memories in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm predict the occurrence of false memories in misinformation paradigm. The purpose was to determine in which extent an imaging instruction reduces false memories in DRM and Misinformation paradigms. A sample of young adults was assigned to the DRM or the misinformation tasks, either in control conditions or in conditions including an imaging instruction. Findings confirm that an imaging instruction decreases false memories in DRM whereas it is not possible to conclude about such a reduction in the misinformation task. Overall, this pilot study suggests that the nature of the stimuli in each paradigm gives rise to quality differences in encoding processes, which in turn have consequences on the monitoring process at retrieval, leading to a weaker misinformation effect than DRM false recognition. In conclusion, while one has argued that the monitoring process is common to both paradigms, false memories in the DRM paradigm would be based on semantic association of words that is, on activation processes in semantic memory, whereas misinformation would rather rely on recollection process in episodic memory. Nevertheless, this hypothesis should be specifically tested in further experiments.