The Lumière Lyon 2 University implements mediation actions for the PRC and JCJC 2021 research projects in consultation with their respective coordinators and according to the programming of the University’s Science and Society staff division. These mediation actions open to non-academic audiences can take the form of comic strips, articles, video capsules, workshops for events. They will be evaluated internally.

The present proposal aims to study the effects of emotion and attention on memory in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Particularly, we are interested in combined effects of emotion and attention on this function. This is the main novelty of this project. We combine the expertise of researchers with a multidisciplinary scientific basis (cognitive psychology, geriatrics, neuropsychology and neuroimaging) and with multi-domain basis (attention, emotion, memory) in order to respond to the following questions: (1) Do Alzheimer's patients memorize and recognize better emotionally significant information' (2) How attention modulates retention and recognition of emotionally significant information in AD' (3) What is the role of amygdala in retention and recognition of emotionally significant versus emotionally neutral information in AD and normal elderly subjects' Emotions are thought to play an important role in encoding and retrieval of memories, as expressed by emotional memory enhancement (EME) of performance. This enhancement is probably mediated by amygdala, the structure involved in emotional processing. Recent studies point out that pathological changes affect amygdala early in the Alzheimer's disease. Thus it is important to understand the effects of emotional processes on memory in AD. The existing data are rather controversial. Particularly, the nature of the memory task (implicit/explicit) may be involved in a discrepancy of results. The question we ask here has not been systematically investigated to date. Usually, studies examine EME in AD either with explicit or implicit tasks. We propose to investigate this discrepancy by using two experimental tasks and by varying instructions given to subjects in order to cross explicit and implicit encoding with explicit and implicit recall. The tasks will be categorization and recognition of emotionally significant or neutral stimuli. In order to better understand the role of amygdala in the EME a volumetric measure of amygdala will be performed in AD patients and control elderly subjects, and a correlation between its volume and the memory performance will be examined. In addition, we will use the fMRI approach to study implication of amygdala in EME with normal elderly subjects. Attention seems central to all cognitive activities and this raises-up the question of relation between attention and mnemonic processes. Recent studies suggest greater functional and neuropathological changes in the frontal lobes in AD than it was though. Attention deficits in this population are predominant when the situation requires inhibition of irrelevant information or cognitive control over highly active but inappropriate responses, or requires prioritizing of information. Thus, an understanding of AD related changes in memory cannot be achieve without an understanding of AD related changes in selective attention, particularly in inhibition. However, there is few evidence of how impairment of inhibition and impairment of prioritizing might influence memory performance in AD. We will use tasks inspired from psychophysical experimental paradigms. The main paradigm will, in a first part, constrain subjects to respond to some stimuli and to inhibit other according to their physical characteristics. In addition, some of the stimuli will be characterised by priority physical characteristic. In a second part we will investigate subjects' recognition of stimuli in function of their inhibition and their priority physical information. Selective attention may be modulated by emotional nature of the information. Thus, we will study the combined effects of the emotional valence of information and attention abilities of AD patients on their memory performance. The same paradigms, as here above, will be used and in addition we will vary emotional valance of the stimuli. This project, studying influence of emotional and attentional processes on memory in AD, should contribute to a better understanding of memory function in this population. We expect to clarify the discrepancy of results concerning emotional memory enhancement. The second part of this project should precise involvement of inhibitory and prioritizing processes in memory impairment in AD. The third part of this protocol attempts to bring together usually separated investigations. Exploration of combined influences of emotional and attentional processes on memory in AD patients may bring new insight on the memory impairment in these patients and on the normal memory function. Functional neuroimaging study and Voxel Based Morphometry will precise the role of amygdala in memory processes of emotional stimuli. Eventually, better understanding of emotional memory enhancement in Alzheimer's patients may help in elaboration of memory remediation programs.

A historical approach of the « Environmental Transition » : socio-political innovations to manage environmental risks in urban environments (1950s-2000s) The TRANSENVIR project is conceived to propose a coherent and well-documented framework to understand the role held by French cities in the rise, institutionalisation and reconfiguration of environmental policies. It is an answer to the questions raised in the 8th challenge of the 2016 call for projects and particularly to its first theme, "Relation to risk and social innovation". TRANSENVIR is designed to investigate the relationships between contemporary urban and suburban societies and their environment during the second half of the 20th century. It aims to show how the risks (real or perceived) entailed by urbanization and the urban way of life have served as a lever for the implementation of social and political innovations. Our historical inquiry, starting before the birth of institutions devoted to the environment (that can be dated to the beginning of the 1970s), will focus on a rich panel of actors implied in what we will call the « environmental transition » of industrialized societies since the 1950s : local associations, scientists, political leaders, trade unions, industrial managers, etc. The urbanization process and the cities and suburban areas will be at the core of the investigation, in order to assess the role of urban risks in environmental management's innovations. The research team will pay careful attention to the multiple levels of action, in particular at a transnational level, where most norms have been produced and discussed before being applied to urban society and its environment. By embracing into the enquiry all these scales where environmental problems can be addressed, TRANSENVIR's results will contribute to the understanding of the current methods of environmental risks management. The project is structured around three main research topics, each of them giving rise to a collective enquiry conducted with different methodologies. In the first one, « city, environment and social innovation », the research will be conducted both at a national level (elaboration of national strategies, role of State experts...) and at a local one, by comparing two agglomerations, Lyons and Grenoble, with interesting environmental conditions, such as industrial zones, car trafic issues, but also with different socio-political configurations in the 1960s-1980s. The second one, « risks definition and management » interface science/société is devoted to a series of transdisciplinary seminars that will address the evolution of words and definitions linked to risks and environment, and to four precise case-studies : the first French policies against air pollution, in particular the pollution by automobile exhausts ; the setting of action plans against noise pollution, suspected to cause specific nervous illnesses in the cities ; the definition and management of risks attributed to the big planned housing programmes of the 1950s-1960s ; the ecological risks for aquatic biota caused by the increasing urban sewerage systems. The team will still approach them with a strong territorial dimension (French nation-State / Lyons / Grenoble). The third subject consists in a careful examination of the links between the transnational sphere of policy-making and scientific networks, and the local scene of urban environments. Indeed, the urban environmental risk is not confined to cities or agglomerations, but it a problem that crosses national boundaries, under different forms, as major industrial accidents have clearly demonstrated since the 1970s. The case-studies around which the second axis was structured will provide good topics to analyse the cross-border interconnectedness of environmental issues and the functioning of the experts' networks, either official (WHO, Council of Europe and EEC, etc.) or unofficial, such as NGO and cities' international associations.