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Books > Social sciences > Psychology > Cognition & cognitive psychology > Memory
"Memory" is perhaps the most extraordinary phenomenon in the
natural world. Every person's brain holds millions of bits of
information in long-term storage. This vast memory store includes
our extensive vocabulary and knowledge of language; the tremendous
and unique variety of facts we've amassed; all the skills we've
learned, from walking and talking to musical and athletic
performance; many of the emotions we feel; and the continuous
sensations, feelings, and understandings of the world we term
consciousness. Without memory there can be no mind as we understand
it.
Focusing on cutting-edge research in behavioral science and
neuroscience, Memory is a primer of our current scientific
understanding of the mechanics of memory and learning. Over the
past two decades, memory research has accelerated and we have seen
an explosion of new knowledge about the brain. For example, there
now exists a wide-ranging and successful applied science devoted
exclusively to the study of memory that has yielded better
procedures for eliciting valid recollections in legal settings and
improved the diagnosis and treatment of memory disorders.
Everyone fascinated by the scope and power of the human brain
will find this book unforgettable.
How Nations Remember draws on multiple disciplines in the
humanities and social sciences to examine how a nation's account of
the past shapes its actions in the present. National memory can
underwrite noble aspirations, but the volume focuses largely on how
it contributes to the negative tendencies of nationalism that give
rise to confrontation. Narratives are taken as units of analysis
for examining the psychological and cultural dimensions of
remembering particular events and also for understanding the
schematic codes and mental habits that underlie national memory
more generally. In this account, narratives are approached as tools
that shape the views of members of national communities to such an
extent that they serve as co-authors of what people say and think.
Drawing on illustrations from Russia, China, Georgia, the United
States, and elsewhere, the book examines how "narrative templates,"
"narrative dialogism," and "privileged event narratives" shape
nations' views of themselves and their relations with others. The
volume concludes with a list of ways to manage the disputes that
pit one national community against another.
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.
Picture your twenty-first birthday. Did you have a party? If so,
do you remember who was there? Now step back: how clear are those
memories? Should we trust them to be accurate, or is there a chance
that you're remembering incorrectly? And where have the many
details you can no longer recall gone? Are they hidden somewhere in
your brain, or are they gone forever?
Such questions have fascinated scientists for hundreds of years,
and, as Alison Winter shows in "Memory: Fragments of a Modern
History," the answers have changed dramatically in just the past
century. Tracing the cultural and scientific history of our
understanding of memory, Winter explores early metaphors that
likened memory to a filing cabinet; later, she shows, that cabinet
was replaced by the image of a reel of film, ever available for
playback. That model, too, was eventually superseded, replaced by
the current understanding of memory as the result of an extremely
complicated, brain-wide web of cells and systems that together
assemble our pasts. Winter introduces us to innovative scientists
and sensationalistic seekers, and, drawing on evidence ranging from
scientific papers to diaries to movies, explores the way that new
understandings from the laboratory have seeped out into
psychiatrists' offices, courtrooms, and the culture at large. Along
the way, she investigates the sensational battles over the validity
of repressed memories that raged through the 1980s and shows us how
changes in technology--such as the emergence of recording devices
and computers--have again and again altered the way we
conceptualize, and even try to study, the ways we remember.
Packed with fascinating details and curious episodes from the
convoluted history of memory science, "Memory" is a book you'll
remember long after you close its cover.
Memory: Neuropsychological, Imaging and Psychopharmacological
Perspectives reviews critically the impact of recent
neuropsychological and biological discoveries on our understanding
of human memory and its pathology. Too often, insights from
clinical, neurological and psychopharmacological fields have
remained isolated and mutually unintelligible. Therefore the first
part of this book provides both clinicians and neuroscientists with
a broad view of the neuropsychology of memory, and the
psychobiological processes it involves, including recent advances
from imaging technology and psychopharmacology research. In the
second part the authors go on to cover a comprehensive range of
memory assessments, dysfunctions, impairments and treatments. This
compendium of current research findings will prove an invaluable
resource for anyone studying, researching or practising in the
field of memory and its disorders.
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.
Our brain is a muscle. Like our bodies, it needs exercise. In the
last few hundred years, we have stopped training our memories and
we have lost the ability to memorise large amounts of information.
Memory Craft introduces the best memory techniques humans have ever
devised, from ancient times and the Middle Ages, to methods used by
today's memory athletes. Lynne Kelly has tested all these methods
in experiments which demonstrate the extraordinary capacity of our
brains at any age. For anyone who needs to memorise a speech or a
play script, learn anatomy or a foreign language, or prepare for an
exam, Memory Craft is a fabulous toolkit. It offers proven
techniques for teachers to help their students learn more
effectively. There are also simple strategies for anyone who has
trouble remembering names or dates, and for older people who want
to keep their minds agile. Above all, memorising things can be
playful, creative and great fun.
The Rise of Homo sapiens provides an unrivalled interdisciplinary
introduction to the subject of hominin cognitive evolution that is
appropriate for general audiences and students in psychology,
archaeology, and anthropology. The book includes chapters on neural
anatomy, working memory, evolutionary methods, and non-human
primate cognition, but the bulk of the text reviews major
developments in cognition over the span of hominin evolution from
the ape-like cognition of Ardipithecus to the final developments
that enabled the modern mind. The most provocative chapters of the
first edition - the explicit discussion of the role of sleep in
hominin evolution and the difference between Neandertal and modern
human cognition - incorporate significant developments in both
areas since the publication of the first edition. This revised
edition updates the former text and adds greater emphasis to the
growing fields of epigenetic inheritance, embodied cognition, and
neuroaesthetics. The new edition provides greater emphasis on role
and status of Homo heidelbergensis.
Imagination allows individuals and groups to think beyond the
here-and-now, to envisage alternatives, to create parallel worlds,
and to mentally travel through time. Imagination is both extremely
personal (for example, people imagine unique futures for
themselves) and deeply social, as our imagination is fed with media
and other shared representations. As a result, imagination occupies
a central position within the life of mind and society. Expanding
the boundaries of disciplinary approaches, the Handbook of
Imagination and Culture expertly illustrates this core role of
imagination in the development of children, adolescents, adults,
and older persons today. Bringing together leading scholars in
sociocultural psychology and neighboring disciplines from around
the world, this edited volume guides readers towards a much deeper
understanding of the conditions of imagining, its resources, its
constraints, and the consequences it has on different groups of
people in different domains of society. Summarily, this Handbook
places imagination at the center, and offers readers new ways to
examine old questions regarding the possibility of change,
development, and innovation in modern society.
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