"the matrix of a reminiscing cogitation, shuffling and collating ‘things’ stored in a random-access memory scheme"
A placeholder post to “A Brief Guide to Embodied Cognition: Why You Are Not Your Brain,” a Scientific American guest blog post by Samuel McNerney. A direct challenge to Cartisean dualism, embodied cognition argues that not only shouldn’t we believe in a mind/body split, the way we think is structured by the fact that we [...]
Tue, November 8 2011 » Cognitive Studies, Memory » No Comments
From Research Digest: Blogging on Brain and Behavior: A new study led by Gabriel Radvansky shows that the simple act of walking through a doorway creates a new memory episode, thereby making it more difficult to recall information pertaining to an experience in the room that’s just been left behind. [Read more.]1 Radvansky, G., [...]
Thu, November 3 2011 » Cognitive Studies, Memory » No Comments
[Note: You may find this post less confusing if you first read "Of Time Machines and Memory, Part 1." Among other things, I explain the difference between author Charles Yu's How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (aka, the novel) and character Charles Yu's How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe [...]
Wed, November 2 2011 » Cognitive Studies, Memory, Science Fiction/Fantasy » No Comments
Within a science fictional space, memory and regret are, when taken together, the set of necessary and sufficient elements required to produce a time machine. I.e., it is possible, in principle, to construct a universal time machine from no other components than (i) a piece of paper that is moved in two directions through a [...]
Tue, November 1 2011 » Memory, Science Fiction/Fantasy » 1 Comment
Summary of some studies on the internet’s affects on memory: A second experiment was aimed at determining whether computer accessibility affects precisely what we remember. “If asked the question whether there are any countries with only one color in their flag, for example,” the researchers wrote, “do we think about flags — or immediately think [...]
Thu, July 21 2011 » Cognitive Studies, Digital Studies/New Media, Media Ecology, Memory » No Comments
“The Memory Studies Bank (MSB) is a collaborative bibliography and virtual repository for the growing community of memory scholars. It is an initiative of the Memory and the Disciplines project at Stony Brook University, founded by Daniel Levy and Andrew Newman.”
Tue, July 5 2011 » Memory » No Comments
Bartlett was a pioneer in memory studies and his 1932 book Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology is one of the founding texts of modern memory studies. The archive is well worth exploring.
Tue, June 21 2011 » Memory » No Comments
From The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities: When we see words on a page, do these words stand directly for external realities? No. As we gave seen, words and the patterns into which words fit are triggers to the imagination. They are prompts we use to try to get one [...]
Thu, October 21 2010 » Cognitive Studies, Memory, Quotes » No Comments
One of the questions I struggle with in this blog is how personal I should get. It is, after all, an academic blog, but that doesn’t preclude the personal1 and and especially when mnemonic practices is itself a topic. For instance, I touch upon a five-year struggle with situational depression and the end of a [...]
Tue, August 24 2010 » Life, Memory, Mnemonic Practices » 3 Comments
And here’s part 2. Another mix of academic and non-academic. Your Memory: How It Works & How to Improve It, Kenneth L. Higbee Higbee is a Brigham Young U psychologist who pioneered a college course on memory improvement. Part crash course in memory theory and part crash course into practical mnemotechniques, I’m interested in this [...]
Sun, June 27 2010 » Charles Stross, Cognitive Studies, Digital Studies/New Media, Memory, Reading, Science Fiction/Fantasy » 2 Comments
