[Cognition, memory and affect].

Abstract

The flow of information within the brain and the sequence of operations which process it get enriched through a twofold mediation, that of the current affective states and that of the references made to an individual life-history. Affectivity and memory are closely linked in the elaboration of action (thought acts, speech acts, behaviours) since it is especially through the mediation of affective states and emotions that the current action is both a partial reactualization of the past and one of the major determinants of future action. Whenever the processing of information derived from the present real world induces a certain affective state, the latter acts in return so as to filter, reorient and focalize the reading of the real, while it further facilitates the memorizing--and later on the recalling--of the very information that induced it. In the elaboration of the historical and affective dimensions of mental life and of the behaviours that express it, one may distinguish--within the brain--three levels of integration, organization and adaptation. It matters to know the role played by each of these functional levels. Indeed, though the latter closely interact with one another under normal conditions, various pathological processes are likely to provoke a dissociation, together with a possibly resulting functional "regression".