Why do we remember events from our childhood as if they happened yesterday, but not what we did last week? Why does our memory seem to work well sometimes and not others? What happens when it goes wrong? Can memory be improved or manipulated, by psychological techniques or even 'brain implants'? How does memory grow and change as we age? And what of so-called 'recovered' memories? This book brings together the latest research in neuroscience and psychology, and weaves in case-studies, anecdotes, and even literature and philosophy, to address these and many other important questions about the science of memory - how it works, and why we can't live without it. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

This international collection brings together scientists, scholars and artist-researchers to explore the cognition of memory through the performing arts and examine artistic strategies that target cognitive processes of memory. The strongly embodied and highly trained memory systems of performing artists render artistic practice a rich context for understanding how memory is formed, utilized and adapted through interaction with others, instruments and environments. Using experimental, interpretive and Practice-as-Research methods that bridge disciplines, the authors provide overview chapters and case studies of subjects such as: * collectively and environmentally distributed memory in the performing arts; * autobiographical memory triggers in performance creation and reception; * the journey from learning to memory in performance training; * the relationship between memory, awareness and creative spontaneity, and * memorization and embodied or structural analysis of scores and scripts. This volume provides an unprecedented resource for scientists, scholars, artists, teachers and students looking for insight into the cognition of memory in the arts, strategies of learning and performance, and interdisciplinary research methodology.

In Perceptual Imagination and Perceptual Memory a group of distinguished contributors examine how perceptual imagination and memory resemble and differ from each other and from other kinds of sensory experience.They question the role each plays in perception and in the acquisition of knowledge. The collection discusses the epistemic roles that the imagination and memory play in our mental lives. It pushes forward the debates about the nature of perceptual imagination and perceptual memory. This innovative study will encourage future discussions on these interesting topics by students and scholars in the field. This volume presents ten new essays on the nature of perceptual imagination and perceptual memory, framed by an introductory overview of these topics. How do perceptual imagination and memory resemble and differ from each other and from other kinds of sensory experience? And what role does each play in perception and in the acquisition of knowledge? These are the two central questions that the contributors seek to address.

Learning and memory are necessary, fundamental functions that animals need in order to survive and adapt to any environment. The ability to learn and form memory depends on changes occurring in neuronal circuits. These changes occur at both the synaptic level and at the level of changes in intrinsic membrane properties of neurons. Such changes involve physical, structural changes (including growth of new processes as well as retractions of other processes). Some of these changes may persist throughout the life of the organism while others last for relatively short times. While learning and memory are related, they are separate processes with their own 'rules and regulations'. Longer lasting memories involve changes in protein synthesis as well as gene activity. The molecular changes that occur in neurons and glia that underlie learning and memory result in structural and biophysical changes in single neurons and neuronal circuits. Some of the chapters in this book present the authors' findings from specific model systems while other chapters present research concerned with memory consolidation in humans, which can be referred to the process by which the changes in neuronal functioning that occur as a result of learning (ie: new behaviour).

Memory is one of the earliest cognitive functions to show decline during aging and some neurodegenerative diseases and this decline has a social and economic impact on individuals, families, the health care system, and society as a whole. This book examines spatial, long-and short term memory loss. The aim of the first chapter is to discuss and detail several well-established spacial-memory behavioral tests, focusing specially on the MWM, describing the principal advantages or disadvantages of these memory tasks. Chapter two examines the importance of the AMPAr and its specific subunits in LTP processes as well as the formation and utilisation of spatial memory representations. Chapter three studies grizzly bears and examines their spatial and visual memory. Chapter four introduces a study to show that difficulty encoding relational information between spatial locations presented in random positions simultaneously is responsible for impaired visuospatial working memory. Chapter five describes short and long term memory functions in children with idiopathic epilepsy and assesses a novel cognitive behavioral group intervention aiming to improve memory deficits in this population whose deficits are specified and their background capacities are preserved. Chapter six studies the emergence of self-reference effect in episodic memory during early childhood. Chapter seven analyses an optical memory model of the human brain. Chapter eight studies an fNIRS study on adaptive memory. The final chapter identifies the synaptic and structural mechanisms that drive plasticity, as well as describes the purported processes responsible for short- and long-term memory.

This is the eighteenth volume of the ongoing series of papers and submissions to the Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery, the longest running food history conference in the world. The subject this year is more peculative than is often the case and contributors have ranged widely over a topic which allows them to explore the sychological bases of food consumption and the development of cookery, as well as more obvious excursions down memory lane in pursuit of food and drink. There are upwards of 30 papers from food historians based in Britain, United States, Japan and the Far East, Australia, and Northern Europe.

This is the first practical guide to research methods in memory studies. The 12 chapters provide students and researchers with clear descriptions of particular methods of research for: investigating community remembering and memory in personal narratives; exploring national memory and commemoration, and cultural memory and heritage; attending to disrupted memory; examining how memory is communicated in everyday life, and how it is manifested in emergent and resurgent ethnicities; focusing on the production of social memory in the media; and analysing the dynamics of remembering in public apologies, and in testimonies offered by Holocaust survivors. It provides expert appraisals of a range of techniques and approaches in memory studies. It focuses on methods and methodology as a way to help bring unity and coherence to this new field of study.

This clear and accessible textbook introduces the brain's remarkable capacity for memory. The text was developed for undergraduate and beginning graduate students, but it will also be of use to cognitive scientists, biologists, and psychologists who seek an introduction to biological investigations of memory. Like the first edition, this fully-updated second edition begins with a history of memory research, starting with a 'Golden Era' at the turn of the 20th century, and progressing to our current understanding of the neurobiology of memory. Subsequent sections of the book discuss the cellular basis of memory, amnesia in humans and animals, the physiology of memory, declarative, procedural, and emotional memory systems, memory consolidation, and the control of memory by the prefrontal cortex. The book is organized into four sections, which highlight the major themes of the text. The first theme is connection, which considers how memory is fundamentally based on alterations in the connectivity of neurons. This section of the book covers the most well studied models of cellular mechanisms of neural plasticity that may underlie memory. The second theme is cognition, which involves fundamental issues in the psychological structure of memory. This section of the book considers the competition among views on the nature of cognitive processes that underlie memory, and tells how the controversy was eventually resolved. The third theme is compartmentalization, which is akin to the classic problem of memory localization. However, unlike localization, the notion of "compartments" is intended to avoid the notion that particular memories are pigeon-holed into specific loci, and instead emphasize that different forms of memory are accomplished by distinct modules or brain systems. This section of the book surveys the evidence for multiple memory systems, and outlines how they are mediated by different brain structures and systems. The fourth and final theme is consolidation, the process by which memories are transformed from a labile trace into a permanent store. This text encapsulates the major concepts in the field of memory research, and makes this area accessible to students who pursue a variety of related disciplines.