On Oct 19, 2008, at 5:21 PM, William Conger wrote:
"...every memory is inseparable from the moment of its recollection". He is referring not only to Proust's intuitive recognition of how memories are remade (falsely) each time we remember but also to scientist Karim Nader (and colleagues) at NYU who experimented (2000-2002) with memory in rats and demonstrated how the process of remembering is easily subverted. Lehrer summarizes "...The more you remember something the less accurate the memory becomes." The term used is copied from Freud: reconsolidation.
Israel Rosenfield published "The Invention of Memory" in 1988. Quoting the Innovation Watch website: " Rosenfield, whose writing on neuroscience has kept readers of the New York Review of Books up-to- date on this fast-moving field, here describes a theory of the brain as not the repository, but the creative generator, of memory." Memories are not stored, as in a vast wall of pigeonholes, but are recreated dynamically at the moment of recall. A crucial aspect of memory, Rosenfield observed, is the affect that is attached to the memory: without a discernible affect or feeling, memories cannot be recalled, that is, recreated.
http://www.innovationwatch.com/deepchange/books/bks_0465035922.htm NY Times review http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DEEDE1038F931A15756C0A96E948260 Long review at http://cogprints.org/443/0/113_Review_of_Rosenfields_IOM_Rev.html A long bibliography of Rosenfield's essay for NY Review of Books at http://www.nybooks.com/authors/2362 Another citation http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/new_literary_history/v026/26.1rosenfield.html | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady [EMAIL PROTECTED]
