Natalie BouchardUniversity of Quebec in Montreal | UQAM · Philosophy / Cognitive Science
Natalie Bouchard
M.Sc.A. Urban Planning
interdisciplinary PhD researcher [ cognitive science + environmental design + architecture ]
About
16
Publications
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Introduction
Natalie Bouchard is an interdisciplinary researcher. She study human perception of reality, especially in relation to time and mnemic territories. She holds a B.A. in Environmental Design (UQAM) / minor in Architecture (University of Strathclyde), and a M.Sc.A. in Planning (UdM). Her Master's thesis is about the power of smells to trigger various spatio-temporalities in the environment. She is currently pursuing this research within the field of cognitive science.
Publications
Publications (16)
Smells seem to offer a great opportunity to restructure the reality of the individual. Yet, the olfactory dimension is rarely part of design strategies in architecture, urban planning or landscape urbanism. As designers, we learn to compose mainly with shapes, shapes whose full scale and effects on our senses we will experience only when constructe...
A summary of the ideas I'm working on and the model that I am currently building to study the influence of smells on human spatiotemporal perception. A model powered by two field surveys (2011 and 2018) where a commented course method and cognitive mapping tools where combined to collect data.
According to the enactive approach to the mind, we enact the world mentally through our interactions with it (Thompson, 2010; Varela et al., 1991, Maturana & Varela, 1987). Moreover, according to Andy Clark (2016), our brain is active all the time, dashing off thousands of predictions of what we might encounter and thus preparing our body to deal w...
Excerpt from my contribution to a collective work whose theme is 'Encounters between smell and architecture.' Will be published by the end of 2019. Scientific editors are Xavier Bonnaud & Victor Fraigneau, Groupe d'Études et de Recherches Philosophie, Architecture, Urbain (GERPHAU), Paris, France.
There is now a solid set of studies and empirical evidence on the relationship between olfactory and affective information processing. According to many researchers, smells can modulate mood, cognition, and behavior. As a designer, learning about this raises in me several questions:
• if architects and environmental designers wanted to use smells...
According to Clark’s Predictive Processing (PP) version of the enactive approach, our perception of smells are predictions determined by the olfactory signal as well as the many other sensory signals present at the same time, predictions that attempt to reduce the overall error signal coming from the sensory stimulations.
The environment’s olfactor...
By maintaining close ties with imagination and memory, olfactory fluxes, which form an intangible topography in motion, exert a significant influence on our definition of space. Smells allow a form of circulation in the temporal thickness of the environment. In other words, the fragrant harmonies we perceive allow us to evolve, by conscious or dist...
Le paysage olfactif, expression mentale d'une sensations vécue suite à une expérience dans l'environnement, a un impact important sur notre définition de la réalité. Distinct de l'ambiance olfactive qui est essentiellement la mer odorante dans laquelle nous baignons, le paysage olfactif (smellscape), infusé de la subjectivité de l'observeur, est un...
Affiche scientifique présentée le 8 mai 2017 au congrès de l'association francophone pour le savoir (ACFAS) Session 205 - Cognition visuelle : du stimulus objectif à l'expérience subjective, McGill University, Montréal.
La réalité de l'environnement est modelée en partie par le terrain mouvant de notre mémoire olfactive qui nous entraîne sur une diversité de rythmes temporels qui font irradier l'instant en une myriade de moments. Car du fait qu'elle encode nos expériences, nos rencontres et autres associations vécues à différents moments, notre mémoire olfactive n...
Façonnées par l'environnement géographique, les conditions climatiques, les pratiques économiques et l'activité humaine, les odeurs occupent un espace de propagation ayant une certaine qualité dans l’instant. Elles tracent une topographie mouvante offrant à chacun une forme de circulation dans l’épaisseur temporelle de l'espace. Entre les mains d'u...
The geometry of the environment is static, yet constantly flooded by various dynamic atmospheres; thus, it transmits a range of signals which are all possibilities for the individual to make sense of the space. Nonetheless, we perceive the world as we are willing to understand it and we call upon our memory —which encodes our experiences, our encou...
The experience that we can have of the environment depends on the events that happen there, and the memories of our past experiences. Thus, in every instant a space is flooded with a complex assemblage of ambiances that we, in turn, make sense of. From that combination of sensory stimuli, the incessant flux of smells form a mobile and intangible to...
Questions
Question (1)
bonjour! my name is Natalie Bouchard. I am a PhD student in Cognitive Science / Philosophy at Université du Québec à Montréal. My research is about the influence of the olfactory memory over our spatiotemporal perception of the environment. Can I learn more about your research on Odor perception in space? thank you.