In a mental rotation task, participants must determine whether two stimuli match when one undergoes a rotation in 3-D space relative to the other. The key evidence for mental rotation is the finding of a linear increase in response times as objects are rotated farther apart. This signature increase in response times is also found in recognition of rotated objects, which has led many theorists t...

We are able to extract detailed information from mental images that we were not explicitly aware of during encoding. For example, we can discover a new figure when we rotate a previously seen image in our mind. However, such discoveries are not "really" new but just new "interpretations." In two recent publications, we have shown that mental imagery can lead to perceptual learning (Tartaglia et...

We present for mental processes the program of mathematical mapping which has been successfully realized for physical processes. We emphasize that our project is not about mathematical simulation of the brain's functioning as a complex physical system, i.e., mapping of physical and chemical processes in the brain on mathematical spaces. The project is about mapping of purely mental processes on...

Objectives: Throughout history, peoples live through the vicissitudes of time, from situations of security, peace, recovery and development to situations of war and the vicissitudes of nature and its cruelty over the diversity, intensity, duration or shortness of life.The study aimed to assess the self-esteem of patients who are amputees in Hilla City at Babylon Province, in Middle Iraq. Me...

OBJECTIVE To assess the prevalence and the factors associated with common mental disorders among adolescents in Pelotas, a southern Brazilian city. METHOD A population based cross-sectional study was carried out in the urban area of Pelotas. Multi-stage sampling was used to obtain a sample of adolescents aged between 15 and 18 years. Adolescents were interviewed using a self-report confidenti...

In order to perform effective communication agents must be able to foresee the effects of their utterances on the addressee’s mental state. In this paper we investigate on the update of the mental state of an hearer agent as a consequence of the utterance performed by a speaker agent. Given an agent communication language with a STRIPSlike semantics, we propose a set of criteria that allow to b...

Several experiments are presented to evaluate the development of visuo-spatial short term memory from childhood to old age (from five-year-olds to about 70-year-olds). Visuospatial short term memory was assessed through transformational imagery tasks. The first set of experiments (chapters 3, 4 and 5) concerned the development of mental rotation abilities. A review of the literature suggested t...

Recent multi-voxel pattern classification (MVPC) studies have shown that in early visual cortex patterns of brain activity generated during mental imagery are similar to patterns of activity generated during perception. This finding implies that low-level visual features (e.g., space, spatial frequency, and orientation) are encoded during mental imagery. However, the specific hypothesis that lo...

Navigational impairments have previously been reported in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The present study examined the ability of individuals with ASD to generate and scan their mental image of a previously viewed map. Twenty-one ASD adults and 20 ageand IQ-matched comparison adults memorised a map of a fictitious island containing a number of landmarks. They then mentally imagined the map an...

AIM The aim of this article is to present a case of an accessory mental foramen (AMF). BACKGROUND The mental foramen is an important anatomical structure of particular importance in local anesthesia and surgical procedures in terms of achieving effective mandibular nerve blocks and avoiding injuries to the neurovascular bundles. Although rare, multiple mental foramina have been described in h...