The Memory Process: Neuroscientific and Humanistic Perspectives

by Suzanne Nalbantian (Editor)

The convergence of neuroscience, philosophy, art, music, and literature offers valuable new insights into the study of memory.

The Memory Process offers a groundbreaking, interdisciplinary approach to the understanding of human memory, with contributions from both neuroscientists and humanists. The first book to link the neuroscientific study of memory to the investigation of memory in the humanities, it connects the latest findings in memory research with insights from philosophy, literature, theater, art, music, and film.

Chapters from the scientific perspective discuss both fundamental concepts and ongoing debates from genetic and epigenetic approaches, functional neuroimaging, connectionist modeling, dream analysis, and neurocognitive studies. The humanist analyses offer insights about memory from outside the a taxonomy of memory gleaned from modernist authors including Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and William Faulkner; the organization of memory, seen in drama ranging from Hamlet to The Glass Menagerie; procedural memory and emotional memory in responses to visual art; music's dependence on the listener's recall; and the vivid renderings of memory and forgetting in such films as Memento and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The chapters from the philosophical perspective serve as the bridge between science and the arts. The volume's sweeping introduction offers an integrative merging of neuroscientific and humanistic findings.

Contributors John Bickle, Jean-Pierre Changeux, Valérie Doyère, Yadin Dudai, Atillio Favorini, John Burt Foster, David Freedberg, Walter Glannon, Robert Stickgold, David Hertz, William Hirstein, Joseph LeDoux, Paul Matthews, James L. McClelland, Suzanne Nalbantian, Isabelle Peretz, Alan Richardson, Edmund Rolls, Séverine Samson, Alcino Silva, Barbara Tillmann, Fernando Vidal

448 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 1, 2010

About the author

Suzanne Nalbantian is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Long Island University and an interdisciplinary scholar in the humanities and neuroscience. She holds the BA from Barnard College (’71) and the PhD from Columbia University (’75), and she is a permanent member of Columbia University’s Society of Fellows in the Humanities. At LIU, she has been the winner of the TASA Award for Lifetime Scholarly Achievement and the David Newton Award for Excellence in Teaching. Dr. Nalbantian is the author of four scholarly books and two edited volumes. She is the principal editor of The Memory Process: Neuroscientific and Humanistic Perspectives (MIT Press 2010). Her pioneering book Memory in Literature: From Rousseau to Neuroscience (Palgrave 2003) forged new pathways linking literary memory studies to neuroscience. She has lectured nationally and internationally on the interdisciplinary study of memory and has directed several conferences on that topic. Since 2012, she has been the Chair of the International Comparative Literature Association Research Committee on Literature and Neuroscience.

Reviews

[Víctor Bermúdez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Table of Contents

- Acknowledgments vii

- Introduction 1
- Suzanne Nalbantian

I Scientific Foundations 27
1 The Engram Revisited: On the Elusive Permanence of Memory 29
Yadin Dudai
2 Molecular Genetic Approaches to Memory Consolidation 41
Alcino J. Silva
3 The Epigenetic Variability of Memory: Brain Plasticity and Artistic Creation 55
Jean-Pierre Changeux
4 Memory in Sleep and Dreams: The Construction of Meaning 73
Robert Stickgold

II. Scientific Phenomena and Functioning 97
5 The Mnemonic Brain: Neuroimaging, Neuropharmacology, and Disorders of Memory 99
Paul M. Matthews
6 Memory as a Constructive Process: The Parallel Distributed Processing Approach 129
James L. McClelland
7 Emotional Memory Processing: Synaptic Connectivity 153
Joseph E. LeDoux and Valérie Doyère
8 Functions of Human Emotional Memory: The Brain and Emotion 173
Edmund T. Rolls

III. Crossroads to the Humanities 193
9 Memory and Neurophilosophy 195
John Bickle
10 Confabulations about Personal Memories, Normal and Abnormal 217
William Hirstein
11 The Neuroethics of Memory 233
Walter Glannon

IV. Literary Data for Memory Studies 253
12 Autobiographical Memory in Modernist Literature and Neuroscience 255
Suzanne Nalbantian
13 Memory and Imagination in Romantic Fiction 277
Alan Richardson
14 Memory in the Literary Memoir 297
John Burt Foster, Jr.
15 Memory in Theater: The Scene Is Memory 315
Attilio Favorini

V. Manifestations in the Arts 335
16 Memory in Art: History and the Neuroscience of Response 337
David Freedberg
17 Memory in Musical Form: From Bach to Ives 359
David Michael Hertz
18 Neurocognitive Approaches to Memory in Music: Music Is Memory 377
Barbara Tillmann, Isabelle Peretz and Séverine Samson
19 Memory, Movies, and the Brain 395
Fernando Vidal

About the Authors 417
Index 425