In synaesthetic personification, personality traits and other human characteristics are attributed to linguistic sequences and objects. Such non-perceptual concurrents are different from those found in most frequently studied types of synaesthesia, in which the eliciting stimuli induce sensory experiences. Here, subjective reports from synaesthetes were analysed and the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying personification were investigated. Specifically, the neural bases of personification were examined using functional MRI in order to establish whether brain regions implicated in social cognition are involved in implementing personification. Additional behavioural tests were used to determine whether personification of inanimate objects is automatic in synaesthesia. Subjective reports describing general characteristics of synaesthetic personification were collected using a semi-structured questionnaire. A Stroop-like paradigm was developed in order to examine the automaticity of object personification, similarly to the previous investigations. Synaesthetes were significantly slower in responding to incongruent than to congruent stimuli. This difference was not found in the control group. The functional neuroimaging investigations demonstrated that brain regions involved in synaesthetic personification of graphemes and objects partially overlap with brain areas activated in normal social cognition, including the temporo-parietal junction, precuneus and posterior cingulate cortex. Activations were observed in areas known to be correlated with mentalising, reflecting the social and affective character of concurrents described in subjective reports. Psychological factors linked with personification in previous studies were also assessed in personifiers, using empathy, mentalising and loneliness scales. Neither heightened empathy nor mentalising were found to be necessary for personification, but personifying synaesthetes in the study felt lonelier than the general population, and this was more pronounced in those who personified more. These results demonstrate that personification shares many defining characteristics with classical forms of synaesthesia. Ascribing humanlike characteristics to graphemes and objects is a spontaneous and automatic process, inducer-concurrent pairings are consistent over time and the phenomenological character of concurrents is reflected in functional neuroanatomy. Furthermore, the neuroimaging findings are consistent with the suggestions that synaesthetes have a lower threshold for activation brain regions implicated in self-projection and mentalising, which may facilitate the personification processes in synaesthesia.

We give natural correspondences of odd-degree characters of the symmetric groups and some of their subgroups, which can be described easily by restriction of characters, degrees and multiplicities.

The term 'crossmodal correspondence' refers to the tendency for people to match information across the senses. In this thesis, the associations between taste/flavour (tastants and words) information with shapes and colours is investigated. Furthermore, such correspondences are addressed in the context of multisensory packaging design. The focus in this thesis is on the way in which taste/flavour information can be communicated by means of the visual elements of product packaging. Through a series of experiments, I demonstrate that people associate tastes and the roundness/angularity of shapes, and that taste quality, hedonics, and intensity influence such correspondences. However, packaging roundness/angularity does not seem to drive these associations. Additionally, I demonstrate that culture and context systematically influence colour/flavour associations. Importantly, the results reported in this thesis suggest that taste/shape correspondences can influence taste expectations as a function of the visual attributes of product packaging. The results reported here also reveal that colour can influence the classification of, and search for, flavour information on a product’s packaging. It turns out that the strength of the association between a flavour category and a colour is crucial to such an effect. The implications of these findings are discussed in light of the theories of crossmodal correspondences, its applications, and directions for future research.

We present a novel method for building 3D models from a user sketch. Given a 2D sketch as input, the approach aligns and deforms a chosen 3D template model to match the sketch. This is guided by a set of user-specified correspondences and an algorithm that deforms the 3D model to match the sketched profile. Our primary contribution is related to fitting the 3D deformable geometry to the 2D user sketch. We demonstrate our technique on several examples.

We present a novel method for building 3D models from a user sketch. Given a 2D sketch as input, the approach aligns and deforms a chosen 3D template model to match the sketch. This is guided by a set of user-specified correspondences and an algorithm that deforms the 3D model to match the sketched profile. Our primary contribution is related to fitting the 3D deformable geometry to the 2D user sketch. We demonstrate our technique on several examples.

We present a novel method for building 3D models from a user sketch. Given a 2D sketch as input, the approach aligns and deforms a chosen 3D template model to match the sketch. This is guided by a set of user-specified correspondences and an algorithm that deforms the 3D model to match the sketched profile. Our primary contribution is related to fitting the 3D deformable geometry to the 2D user sketch. We demonstrate our technique on several examples. / Science, Faculty of / Computer Science, Department of / Graduate

The physical properties of the distal stimuli activating our senses are often correlated in nature; it would therefore be advantageous to exploit such correlations to better process sensory information. Stimulus correlations can be contingent and readily available to the senses (like the temporal correlation between mouth movements and vocal sounds in speech), or can be the results of the statistical co-occurrence of certain stimulus properties that can be learnt over time (like the relation between the frequency of acoustic resonance and the size of the resonator). Over the last century, a large body of research on multisensory processing has demonstrated the existence of compatibility effects between individual features of stimuli from different sensory modalities. Such compatibility effects, termed crossmodal correspondences, possibly reflect the internalization of the natural correlation between stimulus properties. The present dissertation assesses the effects of crossmodal correspondences on multisensory processing and reports a series of experiments demonstrating that crossmodal correspondences influence the processing rate of sensory information, distort perceptual experiences and lead to stronger multisensory integration. Moreover, a final experiment investigating the effects of contingent signals’ correlation on multisensory processing demonstrates the key role of temporal correlation in inferring whether two signals have a common physical cause or not (i.e., the correspondence problem). A Bayesian framework is proposed to interpret the present results whereby stimulus correlations, represented on the prior distribution of expected crossmodal co-occurrence, operate as cues to solve the correspondence problem.

Dans cet article, nous présentons une approche générale pour construire des catégories de motifs et établissons une partie du formalisme des six foncteurs pour ces catégories. Dans le cas de la cohomologie MW-motivique, nous prouvons le th'eorème des fibrés quaternioniques et construisons un triangle de Gysin. Ceci nous permet de définir des classes de Pontryagin sur les anneaux de Chow-Witt pour des fibrés symplectiques. Appliquant ces outils, nous calculons le groupe des morphismes entre schémas lisses et propres dans la catégorie des MW-motifs (effectifs). / In this thesis, we present a general framework to construct categories of motives and build part of the six operations formalism for these categories. In the case of MW-motivic cohomology, we prove the quaternionic projective bundle theorem and construct a Gysin triangle, which enable us to define Pontryagin classes on Chow-Witt rings for symplectic bundles. Applying these tools together, we compute the group of morphisms between smooth proper schemes in the category of (effective) MW-motives.

Nous sommes, dans notre vie quotidienne entourés d'associations audio-visuelles : nous les percevons et les mémorisons tout au long de notre vie. Pourtant, les mécanismes impliqués dans leur apprentissage restent abscons. En particulier, les facteurs comme la motricité permettant de favoriser de tels apprentissages, sont rarement étudiés d'un point de vue mnésique.Ainsi, les objectifs généraux de cette thèse visent à : i) étudier les mécanismes cognitifs à la base de l'apprentissage d'associations audio-visuelles, ii) mieux comprendre l'impact de la motricité dans l'efficacité de ses mécanismes, et iii) proposer des méthodologies originales susceptibles d'augmenter l'efficacité de ces mécanismes et/ou de compenser d'éventuels déficits.Plus précisément, ce travail de thèse s'intéresse au bénéfice de la motricité dans l'apprentissage des correspondances grapho-phonémiques (CGP). En plus de l'intérêt purement théorique que suscite l'étude de cet apprentissage, l'importance de cette acquisition chez les jeunes enfants pré-lecteurs ajoute une portée pratique et pédagogique à ce travail. L’originalité de ce travail de thèse est de vouloir rapprocher deux grands domaines d'études, celui de l’apprentissage de la lecture/écriture et celui de la mémoire. Bien que les deux domaines traitent d'apprentissage et donc de mémoire, il n'y a jamais eu de véritable tentative d'application des modèles de la mémoire pour aider à la compréhension des mécanismes d'apprentissage de la lecture-écriture de mots, et inversement, les travaux sur la mémoire ont rarement regardé du côté des recherches sur l'apprentissage de la lecture-écriture pour valider leurs hypothèses. Or, l’un des intérêts du modèle Act-In servant de support à cette thèse est justement de proposer une approche intégrée du fonctionnement cognitif et pas seulement de la mémoire. / In our daily lives, we are surrounded by audiovisual associations: we perceive and memorize them throughout our lives. However, the mechanisms involved in their learning are not fully understood. In particular, factors such as motor skills that promote such learning are rarely studied from a memory point of view.Thus, the general objectives of this thesis are to: i) study the cognitive mechanisms underlying the learning of audio-visual associations, ii) better understand the impact of motor skills on the effectiveness of its mechanisms, and iii) propose original methodologies likely to increase the effectiveness of these mechanisms and/or compensate for possible deficits.More precisely, this thesis work focuses on the benefit of motor exploration in learning grapho-phonemic correspondences (GPC). In addition to the purely theoretical interest in studying this learning, the importance of this acquisition for young pre-readers adds a practical and pedagogical dimension to this work. What stands out from this thesis is that two areas of study, the one of learning to read and the one of memory are combined. Though both of them deal with learning hence memory, there has never been a real attempt to apply memory models to help understand the mechanisms of learning word reading and writing, and conversely, memory research has rarely looked to research on learning to read and write to validate their assumptions. However, one of the interests of the Act-In model used to support this thesis is precisely to propose an integrated approach to cognitive functioning and not only to memory.

Application of optimization techniques for determining the optimal operating policy for reservoirs is a major title in water resources planning and management. Genetic algorithms, ruled by evolution techniques, have become popular for solving optimization problems in diversified fields of science. The main aim of this research was to explore the efficiency and effectiveness of the applicability of genetic algorithm in optimization of multi-reservoirs. A computer code has been constructed for this purpose and verified by means of a reference problem with a known global optimum. Three reservoirs in the Colorado River Storage Project were optimized for maximization of energy production. Besides, a real-time approach utilizing a blend of online and a posteriori data was proposed. The results achieved were compared to the real operational data and genetic algorithms were found to be effective, competitive and can be utilized as an alternative technique to other traditional optimization techniques.