The Many Minds of Memory Saturday, January 30, 2021 at 2:30pm Past Event Watch the video » Memory is not a dusty cellar, open treasure chest, or sealed pandora’s box. It is a dynamic process, a stream of renditions and reflections. It conveys to us not what strictly happened, but embeds us in a retained internal moment, in an external encounter, or an imprint from another’s story. Memory re-enforces, revises, re-edits, and re-interprets as we grapple with the present and look forward to the imminent and not so immediate future. Memory is paradoxical: privately phenomenological and yet irreducibly entwined in family or group, subjective yet sculpted by others’ reflections; reflected in one’s mirror yet refracted through the lens of a culture, religion, and history. Our memory may resonate with the memories of others, individual and collective, and become thereby fortified, annexed, or diluted. Implicit memories are subliminal, subconscious, often dormant in the body of an organism until awakened by association, affordance, and circumstance. Explicit memories, on the other hand, form the quilt-like narratives of ourselves. The past may magnify or muffle the presence of our current selves. And it can do both. Throughout life, we form and reform particular memories from a protean sort of raw material, from the freshly perceived and from the recycled and reverberated. Memory can embitter and it can bring wisdom. It can soothe, entertain, or distress and re-traumatize. Whether implicit or explicit, positive or negative, we fear the loss of memory, both the short and the long term, and experience it as a theft of personhood, a ghostly vanishing of the self amidst recognized others and familiar settings. Simple lapses of recall can be frightening for some, an omen of a coming loss of one’s being in the world. The neuroscientist Gerald Edelman described consciousness as “the remembered present”, a dynamic, emergent, and ongoing narrative by which we continue the search to find ourselves both in the universe of generations, and our singular lived lives. Participants: Cristina Alberini Professor in the Center for Neural Science, New York University Cristina Alberini, Professor in the Center for Neural Science, New York University, has been studying the biological mechanisms of long-term memory for the last 20 years. Her studies explore the biological mechanisms of memory consolidation and reconsolidation, the processes by which newly learned information become long-lasting memories, and how memories are modulated and integrated into… read more » Richard Cohen Author, Writer View Papers / Presentations » Richard Cohen is the author of four well-received books of cultural history, By The Sword (a history of swordplay), Chasing The Sun (a history of our star), and How to Write Like Tolstoy, A Journey into the Minds of Our Greatest Writers. His latest book, The History Makers, is due out from Random House this November. Of it, Hilary Mantel has written: “What… read more » Gayatri Devi Director of Park Avenue Neurology Clinical Professor of Neurology, SUNY Downstate Medical Center Gayatri Devi M.D. is a New York City neurologist, board-certified in Neurology, Pain Medicine, Psychiatry, Brain Injury Medicine, and Behavioral Neurology. Born and raised in India, after post-graduate residency training at Downstate and Columbia University, she established a center for neurologic wellness. A past Director of the Long Island Alzheimer’s Disease Assistance Center, Assistant Professor of… read more » Alexandra Horowitz Professor of Psychology, Barnard College Dr. Alexandra Horowitz is a researcher and professor at Barnard College, Columbia University, where she teaches seminars in canine cognition, creative nonfiction writing, and audio storytelling. As Senior Research Fellow, she heads the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard, studying the behavior and mind of owned dogs. She has long been interested in understanding the umwelt… read more » Andy Lee Associate Professor of Psychology, University of Toronto Scarborough Andy Lee is a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Toronto, where he leads the Lee MTL Lab. Using a variety of methodological approaches including functional brain imaging and the study of individuals with memory disorders, his research group investigates how the brain supports memory processing, and how memory interacts with visual perception and motivational… read more » Setsuko Winchester Writer, Ceramicist, & Conceptual Artist Creator of the Freedom from Fear/Yellow Bowl Project View Papers / Presentations » Setsuko Winchester, creator of the Freedom from Fear/Yellow Bowl Project, is a writer, ceramicist and conceptual artist. Prior to moving to Western Massachusetts in 2006 to pursue a life-long interest in ceramics and the visual arts, she worked as a journalist, editor and producer at NPR’s Morning Edition and Talk of the Nation. In 2010,… read more »
Cristina Alberini Professor in the Center for Neural Science, New York University Cristina Alberini, Professor in the Center for Neural Science, New York University, has been studying the biological mechanisms of long-term memory for the last 20 years. Her studies explore the biological mechanisms of memory consolidation and reconsolidation, the processes by which newly learned information become long-lasting memories, and how memories are modulated and integrated into… read more »
Richard Cohen Author, Writer View Papers / Presentations » Richard Cohen is the author of four well-received books of cultural history, By The Sword (a history of swordplay), Chasing The Sun (a history of our star), and How to Write Like Tolstoy, A Journey into the Minds of Our Greatest Writers. His latest book, The History Makers, is due out from Random House this November. Of it, Hilary Mantel has written: “What… read more »
Gayatri Devi Director of Park Avenue Neurology Clinical Professor of Neurology, SUNY Downstate Medical Center Gayatri Devi M.D. is a New York City neurologist, board-certified in Neurology, Pain Medicine, Psychiatry, Brain Injury Medicine, and Behavioral Neurology. Born and raised in India, after post-graduate residency training at Downstate and Columbia University, she established a center for neurologic wellness. A past Director of the Long Island Alzheimer’s Disease Assistance Center, Assistant Professor of… read more »
Alexandra Horowitz Professor of Psychology, Barnard College Dr. Alexandra Horowitz is a researcher and professor at Barnard College, Columbia University, where she teaches seminars in canine cognition, creative nonfiction writing, and audio storytelling. As Senior Research Fellow, she heads the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard, studying the behavior and mind of owned dogs. She has long been interested in understanding the umwelt… read more »
Andy Lee Associate Professor of Psychology, University of Toronto Scarborough Andy Lee is a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Toronto, where he leads the Lee MTL Lab. Using a variety of methodological approaches including functional brain imaging and the study of individuals with memory disorders, his research group investigates how the brain supports memory processing, and how memory interacts with visual perception and motivational… read more »
Setsuko Winchester Writer, Ceramicist, & Conceptual Artist Creator of the Freedom from Fear/Yellow Bowl Project View Papers / Presentations » Setsuko Winchester, creator of the Freedom from Fear/Yellow Bowl Project, is a writer, ceramicist and conceptual artist. Prior to moving to Western Massachusetts in 2006 to pursue a life-long interest in ceramics and the visual arts, she worked as a journalist, editor and producer at NPR’s Morning Edition and Talk of the Nation. In 2010,… read more »