Memory is a general attribute of living species, whose diversification reflects both evolutionary and developmental processes. Episodic-autobiographical memory is regarded as the highest human ontogenetic achievement and as probably being uniquely human. EAM, autonoetic consciousness and the self are intimately linked, grounding, supporting and enriching each other’s development and cohesiveness. Their development is influenced by the socio-cultural–linguistic environment in which an individual grows up or lives. On the other hand, through language, textualization and social exchange, all three elements leak into (...) the world and participate to the dynamic shaping and re-shaping of the cultural scaffolding of the self, mental time traveling and EAM formation. Deficits in self-related processing, autonetic consciousness, emotional processing and mental time traveling can all lead to or co-occur with EAM disturbances, as we illustrate by findings from EAM impairments associated with neurological or psychiatric disorders. (shrink)

Barzykowski and Moulin link déjà vu and involuntary autobiographical memories to the process of retrieval. They make no reference to Tulving's SPI-model. In this, it is proposed that information is acquired serially (S), stored in parallel (P), and retrieved independently (I). This model offers an alternative, elegant, view of involuntary autobiographical memory retrieval, as well as of déjà vus.

It is argued that Llewellyn's hypothesis about the lack of rapid eye movement (REM)-sleep dreaming leading to loss of personal identity and deficits in episodic memory, affectivity, and prospection is insufficiently grounded because it does not integrate data from neurodevelopmental studies and makes reference to an outdated definition of episodic memory.

Der Begriff ‚Gedächtnis‘ wird im Deutschen in verschiedenen Bedeutungen gebraucht: Im Sinne eines kollektiven Gedächtnisses, das in erster Linie ein kulturelles Gedächtnis ist; im Sinne von Gedenken (memoria) und im Sinne von Erinnerung, also dem Aufnehmen, Abrufen und Ordnen von Informationen, Begebenheiten und Ereignissen aus der Vergangenheit. Letzteres hat primär eine Funktion für einzelne lebende Organismen und betrifft deren Fähigkeit, aus vergangenen Ereignissen Orientierung für ihr gegenwärtiges und künftiges Verhalten zu gewinnen – eine Fähigkeit, die auch vielen Lernprozessen zugrunde liegt (...) und beim Menschen für die Herausbildung eines Selbst zentral ist. Die beiden ersten Bedeutungen betreffen hingegen die kulturelle Identität von Gemeinschaften. (shrink)

The article develops a theoretical framework that is capable of integrating the biological foundations of emotions with their cultural and semantic formation.

Autobiographical–episodic memory is the conjunction of subjective time, autonoetic consciousness and the experiencing self. Understanding the neural correlates of autobiographical–episodic memory might therefore be essential for shedding light on the neurobiology underlying the experience of being an autonoetic self. In this contribution we illustrate the intimate relationship between autobiographical–episodic memory and self by reviewing the clinical and neuropsychological features and brain functional imaging correlates of psychogenic amnesia – a condition that is usually characterized by severely impaired retrograde memory functioning, in (...) absence of structural brain damage as detected by standard imaging. We demonstrate that in this disorder the autobiographical–episodic memory deficits do not exist in isolation, but occur with impairments of the autonoetic self-consciousness, emotional processing, and theory of mind or executive functions. Furthermore functional and metabolic brain alterations involving regions that are agreed upon to exert crucial roles in memory processes were frequently found to accompany the psychogenic memory “loss”. (shrink)

Lindquist et al. remark that not all fear instances lead to heightened amygdalar activity and, instead, point to roles of the amygdala in detecting or stimuli. By reviewing research on the amygdala's functions in episodic-autobiographical memory, we further emphasize the involvement of the amygdala in coding the subjective relevance and extracting the biological and social significance of the stimuli.

The memory impairment of neurological and psychiatric patients is seen as occurring mainly in the autobiographical-episodic memory domain and this is considered to depend on limbic structures such as the amygdala or the septal nuclei. Especially the amygdala is a hub for giving an emotional flavor to personal memories. Bastin et al. fail to include the amygdala in their integrative memory model.

We addressed the questions whether stimuli presented below the threshold of verbal awareness are nevertheless perceived and whether there are perceptual differences between the two cerebral hemispheres. Pictures of line drawn objects and animals were subliminally presented to each visual half-field for subsequent identification in a form as fragmented as possible. The performance of 40 healthy subjects was compared to that of 63 controls. Whereas identification performance after blank presentation in the experimental group did not differ from that of controls, (...) identification in a significantly more fragmented form was achieved after the presentation of the complete picture. This effect, however, occurred only after subliminal stimulation in the left visual field, i.e., of the right hemisphere. Our results show that pictures presented below the threshold of verbal awareness can be perceived, and that only the right hemisphere can perceive them and make use of the perception. It remains an open question whether this kind of hemispheric specialization represents a right hemisphere dominance for subliminal perception or reflects an inability of the left hemisphere to access and behaviorally use unaware percepts via fragmented picture identification, for which a right hemisphere advantage is known. (shrink)

The idea of distinct brain systems for the processing of episodic and other forms of memory is welcome. The two brain systems actually proposed however, appear to be stripped of further existing connections and could be integrated with one another. If integrating them, it seems more logical to propose one enlarged system of limbic structures whose individual components make partly different contributions to the forms of memory under discussion.

Originally published in 1973 the editors of this book collected together those studies which had been considered at the time to yield the best evidence in support of Freudian theory, and found on close examination that they failed to provide any such proof. Each paper is printed in full and is followed by a critical discussion which raises questions of statistical treatment, sufficiency of controls and alternative interpretations. The particular usefulness of this format is that it allows readers to form (...) their own opinions while providing helpful suggestions and guidelines on how to approach experimental studies with a critical mind. (shrink)

Fragment of an Intellectual Autobiography:- BY HANS J. MORGENTHAU h My first political memories go back to the Tripolitan War M of between Italy and Turkey ...

The activities of Fulani nomads in Ghana have gained considerable media attention and engendered continuing public debate. In this paper, we analyze the prejudiced portrayals of the nomads in the Ghanaian news media, and how these contribute to an exclusionist and a discriminatory discourse that puts the nomads at the margins of Ghanaian society. The study employs a critical discourse analysis framework and draws on a dataset of 160 articles, including news stories, editorials and op-ed pieces. The analysis reveals that (...) the nomads are discursively constructed as undesirables through an othering process that centers on three discourses: a discourse of dangerousness/criminalization, a discourse of alienization, and a discourse of stigmatization. This anti-nomad/fulani rhetoric is evident in the choice of sensational headlines, alarmist news content, organization of arguments, and use of quotations. The paper concludes with a call for more balanced and critical news reporting on the nomads, especially since issues surrounding them border on national cohesion and security. (shrink)

Can we sensibly attribute some of the happenings in our world to the agency of some of the things around us? We do this all the time, but there are conceptual challenges purporting to show that attributable agency, and specifically one of its most important subspecies, human free agency, is incoherent. We address these challenges in a novel way: rather than merely rebutting specific arguments, we discuss a concrete model that we claim positively illustrates attributable agency in an indeterministic setting. (...) The model, recently introduced by one of the authors in the context of artificial intelligence, shows that an agent with a sufficiently complex memory organization can employ indeterministic happenings in a meaningful way. We claim that these considerations successfully counter arguments against the coherence of libertarian free will. (shrink)

The biochemistry of geotropism in plants and gravisensing in e.g. cyanobacteria or paramacia is still not well understood today [1]. Perhaps there are more ways than one for organisms to sense gravity. The two best known relatively old explanations for gravity sensing are sensing through the redistribution of cellular starch statoliths and sensing through redistribution of auxin. The starch containing statoliths in a gravity field produce pressure on the endoplasmic reticulum of the cell. This enables the cell to sense direction. (...) Alternatively, there is the redistribution of auxin under the action of gravity. This is known as the Cholodny-Went hypothesis [2], [3]. The latter redistribution coincides with a redistribution of electrical charge in the cell. With the present study the aim is to add a mathematical unified field explanation to gravisensing. (shrink)