Contextual Associations During Episodic Recall of Everyday or Virtual Reality

NCT03286387 | Completed

• 2 other identifiers: 69HCL17_04042017-A02558-45
• Study Type: interventional
• Target: 95
• Locations: 1 country
• Sites: 1

Brief Summary

The project is dedicated to development of new paradigms to investigate memory and attention in the rich and realistic environments. The investigator will use modern interactive digital technologies for encoding complex episodes either using mobile phone technology in everyday life or using a virtual reality life-like simulation. He aims to characterize the role of the medial temporal lobe and prefrontal cortex during recall of naturalistic episodic experiences, using functional neuroimaging (fMRI) in healthy participants. The secondary aim is assess how the allocation of attention during memory encoding contribute to mechanisms of the subsequent recall. He will achieve this by monitoring gaze direction during encoding and by analyzing the retrieval data as a function of the elements that participants attended / fixated during encoding. The protocol will involve, first, behavioral testing of memory performance with encoding in the real-life or in virtual reality, followed by the main hypothesis testing phase when fMRI will be used to measure brain activity during retrieval.

Conditions

Healthy Volunteers

Keywords

Memory; naturalistic; context; fMRI; Attention

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcomes (2)

• BOLD cerebral response to contextual recall in medial temporal lobe

  After spatial preprocessing of individual series of EPI fMRI images, normalization and smoothing as suggested for SPM analysis, the successful and failed contextual recall will be modeled and convolved with canonical HRF function. The GLM will be estimated according to the algorithm of SPM, the significance threshold will be p\<0.05 FWE within the regions of interest. Our hypothesis will be confirmed by activation of medial temporal lobe and prefrontal cortex in contextual recall, congruent contextual cueing and recall of episodes when targets were semantically congruent with the context at encoding.

  up to 1 week after the end of the encoding session

• BOLD cerebral response to contextual recall in prefrontal cortex

  After spatial preprocessing of individual series of EPI fMRI images, normalization and smoothing as suggested for Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM) analysis, the successful and failed contextual recall will be modeled and convolved with canonical HRF function. The GLM will be estimated according to the algorithm of SPM, the significance threshold will be p\<0.05 Family-wise error (FWE) within the regions of interest. Our hypothesis will be confirmed by activation of medial temporal lobe and prefrontal cortex in contextual recall, congruent contextual cueing and recall of episodes when targets were semantically congruent with the context at encoding.

  up to 1 week after the end of the encoding session

Secondary Outcomes (1)

• Pattern of gaze fixation during episodic encoding and cerebral activity during recall

  up to 1 week after the end of the encoding session

Study Arms (1)

Memory for naturalistic episodes

EXPERIMENTAL

Encoding of episode in real life situations (using Smartphones) or in a virtual environment, followed by memory retrieval (either behavior only or with fMRI, in successive studies)

Other: Functional brain imaging without any contrast agent

Interventions

Functional brain imaging without any contrast agent OTHER

During the fMRI protocol, the subject will perform the retrieval tasks while whole-brain activity will be recorded using Echo Planar Imaging (EPI) that measures the Blood Oxygen Level Dependent (BOLD) signal (2x2x2 isotropic voxels, Echo Time (TE) = 30 ms, Repetition Time (TR) = 2.5 sec). The functional session will be subdivided into several parts ("Runs", duration: 10-15 min). Together with the functional data, the protocol will include a structural scan (T1 weighted, 1x1x1 mm voxels; duration 5-7 min) and a field mapping sequence (duration: 1 min).

Memory for naturalistic episodes

Eligibility Criteria

• Age: 18 Years - 40 Years
• Sex: all
• Healthy Volunteers: Yes
• Age Groups: Adult (18-64)

You may qualify if:

• Possession a Smartphone compatible with GPS 3-rd generation and exploitation system Android 4.2 with user-activated geolocation (for mobile phone studies).
• Able to navigate in virtual reality with a help of the keyboard (for virtual reality studies).
• Not using glasses.
• All subjects will give their written consent for participation in the study.
• They will be right-handed
• They will have French social coverage.

You may not qualify if:

• Previous neurologic or psychiatric disease.
• Cognitive deficits restricting understanding of the tasks.
• Pregnant or breath-feeding women.
• Persons under guardianship, curatorship or any other administrative or judicial measure of deprivation of rights or liberty.
• Subjects currently participating in other study.
• Neurologic, cardiac electrostimulation or defibrillator.
• Cardiac prostheses
• Intracranial clips or clamps
• Cerebrospinal fluid disorders
• Metal particles in the eyes
• Metal dental or articular prostheses
• Diffusion pomp or other infusion system
• Claustrophobia
• Head tattoo , makeup, hair gel

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Hospices Civils de Lyon: lead

Study Sites (1)

U1028 INSERM - CNRS UMR 5292 Equipe ImpAct

Bron, 69500, France

Location

Related Publications (2)

• Foudil SA, Macaluso E. The influence of the precuneus on the medial temporal cortex determines the subjective quality of memory during the retrieval of naturalistic episodes. Sci Rep. 2024 Apr 4;14(1):7943. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-58298-y.

  PMID: 38575698 BACKGROUND

• Foudil SA, Pleche C, Macaluso E. Memory for spatio-temporal contextual details during the retrieval of naturalistic episodes. Sci Rep. 2021 Jul 16;11(1):14577. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-93960-9.

  PMID: 34272405 BACKGROUND

MeSH Terms

Interventions

Functional Neuroimaging

Intervention Hierarchy (Ancestors)

Neuroimaging; Diagnostic Imaging; Diagnostic Techniques and Procedures; Diagnosis; Diagnostic Techniques, Neurological; Investigative Techniques

Study Officials

• Emiliano MACALUSO, PhD

  INSERM U1028 - Impact - CRNL

  PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Study Design

• Study Type: interventional
• Phase: not applicable
• Allocation: NA
• Masking: NONE
• Purpose: BASIC SCIENCE
• Intervention Model: SINGLE GROUP
• Sponsor Type: OTHER
• Responsible Party: SPONSOR

Study Record Dates

• First Submitted: September 14, 2017
• First Posted: September 18, 2017
• Study Start: October 11, 2018
• Primary Completion: August 13, 2019
• Study Completion: August 13, 2019
• Last Updated: September 3, 2025

Record last verified: 2025-08

Locations

FR (1)