[The therapeutic meal, a moment of sharing]. / Le repas thérapeutique, un moment de partage.

Therapeutic meals were set up at Château-Gombert geriatric clinic in Marseille on the initiative of the hospital's dietician and psychologist. They are an opportunity for elderly people who may or may not have cognitive disorders and who are suffering from eating disorders to enjoy and share in a convivial moment and to rediscover a sometimes forgotten ritual. The initiative has had a positive effect on the quantity of food eaten.

[Implications of mental image processing in the deficits of verbal information coding during normal aging]. / Implications des processus d'imagerie mentale dans le déficit du codage imagé des informations verbales au cours du vieillissement normal.

Our study specifies the contributions of image generation and image maintenance processes occurring at the time of imaginal coding of verbal information in memory during normal aging. The memory capacities of 19 young adults (average age of 24 years) and 19 older adults (average age of 75 years) were assessed using recall tasks according to the imagery value of the stimuli to learn. The mental visual imagery capacities are assessed using tasks of image generation and temporary storage of mental imagery. The variance analysis indicates a more important decrease with age of the concretness effect. The major contribution of our study rests on the fact that the decline with age of dual coding of verbal information in memory would result primarily from the decline of image maintenance capacities and from a slowdown in image generation.