Memory In Science For Society

Memory is essential for every day life. The understanding and study of memory has continued to grow over the years, thanks to well controlled laboratory studies and theory development. However, major challenges arise when attempting to apply theories of memory function to practical problems in society. A theory might be robust in explaining experimental data but fail to capture all that is important when taken out of the lab. The good news is that the application of memory in science to challenges in society is rapidly expanding, and Memory in Science for Society bridges that gap. Inspired by the synergy between theory and application in memory research, leading international researchers share their passion for combining memory in science with applications of that science to a wide range of challenges in society. Chapters demonstrate how that scientific passion has addressed challenges in education, life attainment, second language learning, remembering life events and faces of strangers, future planning and decision making, lifespan cognitive development and age-related cognitive decline, following instructions, and assessment and rehabilitation of cognitive impairment following brain damage. Written and edited by the leading researchers in the field, the book will be an important and influential addition to the memory literature, providing a new and comprehensive focus on the connection between theory and practice in memory and society.

Memory is essential for every day life. The understanding and study of memory has continued to grow over the years, thanks to well controlled laboratory studies and theory development. However, major challenges arise when attempting to apply theories of memory function to practical problems in society. A theory might be robust in explaining experimental data but fail to capture all that is important when taken out of the lab. The good news is that the application of memory in science to challenges in society is rapidly expanding, and Memory in Science for Society bridges that gap. Inspired by the synergy between theory and application in memory research, leading international researchers share their passion for combining memory in science with applications of that science to a wide range of challenges in society. Chapters demonstrate how that scientific passion has addressed challenges in education, life attainment, second language learning, remembering life events and faces of strangers, future planning and decision making, lifespan cognitive development and age-related cognitive decline, following instructions, and assessment and rehabilitation of cognitive impairment following brain damage. Written and edited by the leading researchers in the field, the book will be an important and influential addition to the memory literature, providing a new and comprehensive focus on the connection between theory and practice in memory and society.

How the way we hold knowledge about the past—in books, in file folders, in databases—affects the kind of stories we tell about the past. The way we record knowledge, and the web of technical, formal, and social practices that surrounds it, inevitably affects the knowledge that we record. The ways we hold knowledge about the past—in handwritten manuscripts, in printed books, in file folders, in databases—shape the kind of stories we tell about that past. In this lively and erudite look at the relation of our information infrastructures to our information, Geoffrey Bowker examines how, over the past two hundred years, information technology has converged with the nature and production of scientific knowledge. His story weaves a path between the social and political work of creating an explicit, indexical memory for science—the making of infrastructures—and the variety of ways we continually reconfigure, lose, and regain the past. At a time when memory is so cheap and its recording is so protean, Bowker reminds us of the centrality of what and how we choose to forget. In Memory Practices in the Sciences he looks at three "memory epochs" of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries and their particular reconstructions and reconfigurations of scientific knowledge. The nineteenth century's central science, geology, mapped both the social and the natural world into a single time package (despite apparent discontinuities), as, in a different way, did mid-twentieth-century cybernetics. Both, Bowker argues, packaged time in ways indexed by their information technologies to permit traffic between the social and natural worlds. Today's sciences of biodiversity, meanwhile, "database the world" in a way that excludes certain spaces, entities, and times. We use the tools of the present to look at the past, says Bowker; we project onto nature our modes of organizing our own affairs.

A novelist and a neuroscientist uncover the secrets of human memory. What makes us remember? Why do we forget? And what, exactly, is a memory? With playfulness and intelligence, Adventures in Memory answers these questions and more, offering an illuminating look at one of our most fascinating faculties. The authors—two Norwegian sisters, one a neuropsychologist and the other an acclaimed writer—skillfully interweave history, research, and exceptional personal stories, taking readers on a captivating exploration of the evolving understanding of the science of memory from the Renaissance discovery of the hippocampus—named after the seahorse it resembles—up to the present day. Mixing metaphor with meta-analysis, they embark on an incredible journey: “diving for seahorses” for a memory experiment in Oslo fjord, racing taxis through London, and “time-traveling” to the future to reveal thought-provoking insights into remembering and forgetting. Along the way they interview experts of all stripes, from the world’s top neuroscientists to famous novelists, to help explain how memory works, why it sometimes fails, and what we can do to improve it. Filled with cutting-edge research and nimble storytelling, the result is a charming—and memorable—adventure through human memory.

Exploring the social factors which influence human memory and our conceptualisation of memory, this book examines the relationships between memory, society and culture and considers the relevance of theories of memory to real world issues. It will be useful for psychologists working in the fields of memory and society.

This book explores new points of view of human memory in the link among mind, brain, and society. Research of human memory traditionally has been in the field of experimental psychology, and a number of psychological researchers have come upon important findings regarding human memory. They have provided critical theories to explain human memory processes, but this approach is hitting a brick wall. The experimental psychological approach or laboratory-based approach to human memory functions is examined in a very controlled environment, but the evidence obtained from this approach may not necessarily reflect real-life events in our mind. In addition, findings from experimental psychology have often ignored the link with biological structures, or the brain. One solution is a cognitive neuroscience approach, in which functional neuroimaging techniques have enabled us to view how memory processes are represented in the brain. In addition, the new approach extends the traditional concept of human memory into a wider framework by reconsidering memory functions in a social context. These advanced approaches help us to understand how “social memory” is represented in the human brain and is processed in real-life situations. The work reported in this volume is at the forefront of cognitive neuroscience in the research of human memory in a social context and the potential application of memory research. This book will help to motivate young scientists and graduate and undergraduate students in psychology and neuroscience.

Steven Rose's The Making of Memory is about just that, in both its senses: the biological processes by which we humans - and other animals - learn and remember, and how researchers can explore these mechanisms. But it is also about much more. When the first edition of this fascinating book won the Science book Prize in 1993, the judges described it as 'a riveting read...a first-hand account by a practicing scientist working at the forefront of medical research and Rose does not duck the issues which that raises.' Now ten years on, research has itself moved forward, and Rose has taken the opportunity to fully revise the book. But this is more than mere revision. Where ten years ago he argued the case for research on memory because it is the most extraordinary of human attributes, Rose's own research has now opened the doors to a potential new treatment for Alzheimer's Disease undreamed of a decade ago, and in an entirely new chapter he describes how this potential breakthrough has occurred.

Shortlisted for the Royal Society Winton Prize 2013 and the 2013 Best Book of Ideas Prize. Memory is an essential part of who we are. But what are memories, and how are they created? A new consensus is emerging among cognitive scientists: rather than possessing a particular memory from our past, like a snapshot, we construct it anew each time we are called upon to remember. Remembering is an act of narrative as much as it is the product of a neurological process. Pieces of Light illuminates this theory through a collection of human stories, each illustrating a facet of memory's complex synergy of cognitive and neurological functions. Drawing on case studies, personal experience and the latest research, Charles Fernyhough delves into the memories of the very young and very old, and explores how amnesia and trauma can affect how we view the past. Exquisitely written and meticulously researched, Pieces of Light blends science and literature, the ordinary and the extraordinary, to illuminate the way we remember and forget.