Voyage

Un voyage est un déplacement dans l'espace, effectué vers un point plus ou moins éloigné dans un but personnel (par exemple tourisme) ou professionnel (affaires) ou autre (guerre, réfugiés politiques ou climatiques), déplacements motivés par des activités sportives ou socio-culturelles ou de grands événements , en un aller avec ou sans retour. Alors que le nombre de zones inaccessibles, non cartographiées ou inconnues diminuaient, le voyage s'est considérablement développé et démocratisé, au cours du avec l'avènement de moyens de transports modernes de plus en plus rapides et confortables, le chemin de fer d'abord, puis l'automobile et l'avion. Cette évolution s'est faite avec des conséquences négatives croissantes sur le plan de la consommation d'énergie et de carburants fossiles, de fragmentation des paysages et écosystèmes par les infrastructures de transport et d'émission de gaz à effet de serre et autres polluants. thumb|Compagnes de voyage, à l'époque des voyages en dilig

The role of the social network and the usage of communication in travel behavior measured with Smartphone data

Michel Bierlaire, Jeanne Ythier

In this paper we investigate the use of a smartphone database to explore influences on travel behavior. Our aim is to exploit the rich individual-level data available from the smartphone to study the influence of communication and social contacts (collected via phone call and sms logs) on spatial movement (collected via GPS). An advantage of smartphone data is the ability to collect such rich data without user input over a long period of time, and the disadvantage is the difficulty associated with processing the data. We work with three months of data from 111 people collected via a snowball sample. In studying travel behavior, we focus on high level measures of mobility as represented by the size of one's activity space and one's travel intensity (our dependent variables). We use as explanatory variables sociodemographics, spatial relationship between home and work, communication use (number of phone calls and sms), and the travel behavior of those in the sample who are connected to the respondent (where connectivity is measured by phone and sms contact). We describe how these variables were processed from the smartphone data and present estimation results from the regression analysis. We find that people tend to travel in a similar manner as those they are socially connected to (consistent with the social network and travel literature) and that communication use is a compliment to physical travel (consistent with the telecommunication and travel literature). The results, although preliminary, illustrate how smartphone data can be exploited to reveal complex features of travel behavior.

2012

Underlying mechanisms of episodic autobiographical memory and self-consciousness

Lucie Bréchet

Cognitive neuroscience has been examining consciousness associated with the subject, that is the self of the conscious experience and its related multisensory processing of bodily signals, the so-called bodily self-consciousness. Different line of research has highlighted the concept of the autobiographical self in memory and the associated autonoetic consciousness, that is the human ability to mentally travel in time. The subjective re-experiencing of past episodes is often described as re-living them from a viewpoint and location that is similar to the initial encoding. In the first part of my thesis, I have studied how self-relevant bodily cues and personal memories influence our sense of self. In the second part, I have examined how the self is involved in spontaneous thoughts. Through a collection of four studies, I will argue here that it is possible to explore the underlying characteristics of self-consciousness and its relation to bodily signals and memory by a number of cognitive neuroscience approaches, including virtual reality (VR), electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). First, I investigated how the presence or absence of multisensory bodily cues influences long-term episodic autobiographical memory by using immersive VR environment. Second, I examined the underlying brain mechanisms of bodily-self and autobiographical-self by combining a meta-analytical approach with recent fMRI results from (a) patients suffering with out-of-body experiences and (b) healthy participants with induced illusory states of bodily self. Third, I explored how the immersive VR technology can be used to selectively and retroactively strengthen episodic autobiographical memory. Fourth, I examined whether it is possible to capture the inner, self-relevant conscious thoughts and record them with both fMRI and EEG methods. The results from my thesis indicate that (a) the bodily cues fundamentally influence the autobiographical memory and (b) it is possible to manipulate the self-related nature of conscious thoughts. I will discuss my findings with reference to current understanding of bodily-self, autobiographical-self and their links to theories of self-consciousness. Finally, based on my results, I will suggest what should be the following, future step towards memory prosthesis.

EPFL2019

Underlying mechanisms of episodic autobiographical memory and self-consciousness

Lucie Bréchet

EPFL2019

The role of the social network and the usage of communication in travel behavior measured with Smartphone data

Context-aware Mobile Assistants for Optimal Interaction: a prototype for supporting the business traveler

Underlying mechanisms of episodic autobiographical memory and self-consciousness

Underlying mechanisms of episodic autobiographical memory and self-consciousness

The role of the social network and the usage of communication in travel behavior measured with Smartphone data

Context-aware Mobile Assistants for Optimal Interaction: a prototype for supporting the business traveler