Neuroscience and the Humanities
\nMeaghan Race<\/p>\n
Amongst a panel of neuroscientists, psychologists, and humanitarians the topic of memory was dissected and analyzed in term of human nature and historical events. Professor Elizabeth Casserly started the conversation with a presentation on the \u201ccognitive network\u201d that makes up human memory. Memories are a series of snapshots encoded by the brain and placed in connecting super-ordinate categories in a person\u2019s network of memory. Episodic memory, or an instant in time that one is remembering relative to a cue word or concept, was a key focus in the presentation due to the fact that it is highly distributed. Sensory areas and language areas of the brain can trigger memories and stimulate emotional responses. Remembering something is reconstructing an experience using many simultaneous sources such as a person\u2019s current state of mind, recent states, previous recall, and in-network links. Due to these various contributing factors memories tend to be highly inaccurate. Even so, people put very high trust in their own memories which creates a mismatch between metacognition and reality.
\nAaron M. Seider, professor at the College of the Holy Cross, discussed how in ancient Rome it was perceived that people would store their memories in their \u201cmemory palace\u201d where they could later go back and recall the event perfectly. He pointed out how Virgil\u2019s quote about 9\/11 reflected this way of thinking in the statement, \u201cNo day shall erase you from the memory of time.\u201d The Roman way of thinking suggested that memories are concrete and cannot be influenced or changed over time, which we now know is an inaccurate assumption.
\nLastly, memory was discussed through experiences documented by individuals in exile. In Benjamin\u2019s Berlin Childhood, he compares the retrieval of memories to an archeological dig. Memories are as incomplete as the specimen that archeologists discover, the more the archeologists explore the area of a certain specimen the more they find. This fact parallels the retrieval of memories; the more an individual investigates a thought the more reconstruction of a memory occurs. Benjamin and many others realize how memory is a work in progress and that reconnection and comprehension occurs over time and tend to be influenced by outside factors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Neuroscience and the Humanities Meaghan Race Amongst a panel of neuroscientists, psychologists, and humanitarians the topic of memory was dissected and analyzed in term of human nature and historical events. Professor Elizabeth Casserly started the conversation with a presentation on … Continue reading