Physiological Memory Research Articles

Empirical analysis of phase-amplitude coupling approaches.

Analysis of the coupling between the phases and amplitudes of oscillations within the same continuously sampled signal has provided interesting insights into the physiology of memory and other brain process, and, more recently, the pathophysiology of parkinsonism and other movement disorders. Technical aspects of the analysis have a significant impact on the results. We present an empirical exploration of a variety of analysis design choices that need to be considered when measuring phase-amplitude coupling (PAC). We studied three alternative filtering approaches to the commonly used Kullback–Leibler distance-based method of PAC analysis, including one method that uses wavelets, one that uses constant filter settings, and one in which filtering of the data is optimized for individual frequency bands. Additionally, we introduce a time-dependent PAC analysis technique that takes advantage of the inherent temporality of wavelets. We examined how the duration of the sampled data, the stability of oscillations, or the presence of artifacts affect the value of the “modulation index”, a commonly used parameter describing the degree of PAC. We also studied the computational costs associated with calculating modulation indices by the three techniques. We found that wavelet-based PAC performs better with similar or less computational cost than the two other methods while also allowing to examine temporal changes of PAC. We also show that the reliability of PAC measurements strongly depends on the duration and stability of PAC, and the presence (or absence) of artifacts. The best parameters to be used for PAC analyses of long samples of data may differ, depending on data characteristics and analysis objectives. Prior to settling on a specific PAC analysis approach for a given set of data, it may be useful to conduct an initial analysis of the time-dependence of PAC using our time-resolved PAC analysis.

Neurophysiology and signaling pathways

An important starting step in understanding the neurobiology of memory lies in identifying locations of physical and chemical changes that follow cognition. As Hebb indicated, and as shown on computer models, memory is a consequence of subtle alterations in synapses. Synaptic response is not invariant, but can be altered by a variety of homo and hetero-synaptic factors, such as modulatory neurotransmitters. This approach helps branching the search for the very physiology of memory - synaptic modification, but rises many questions about modulation of synaptic transmission. The synaptic modification associated with memory capacity can be too small and too widely distributed in the brain, which consequently makes observation and experimental studies more difficult. Explorations of nervous system in invertebrates proved Hebb's theory that memories can be formed by synaptic alterations, therefore it's also possible to identify some molecular mechanism that leads to this synaptic plasticity. Although non-synaptic changes may also occur in studies of certain types of memory, there is little doubt that the synapse is an important location of information storage. Hippocampus is confirmed in declarative memory (explicit type, relational type of memory). The focus of this work is on biological perspective that propose memory systems with different functions and distinct anatomical organization. Interdisciplinary approach is of great importance for complete understanding of the very physical basis of memory.

Neurons versus Networks: The Interplay between Individual Neurons and Neural Networks in Cognitive Functions

The main paradigm of cognitive neuroscience is the connectionist concept postulating that the higher nervous activity is performed through interactions of neurons forming complex networks, whereas the function of individual neurons is restricted to generating electrical potentials and transmitting signals to other cells. In this article, I describe the observations from three fields—neurolinguistics, physiology of memory, and sensory perception—that can hardly be explained within the constraints of a purely connectionist concept. Rather, these examples suggest that cognitive functions are determined by specific properties of individual neurons and, therefore, are likely to be accomplished primarily at the intracellular level. This view is supported by the recent discovery that the brain’s ability to create abstract concepts of particular individuals, animals, or places is performed by neurons (“concept cells”) sparsely distributed in the medial temporal lobe.

Signaling molecules and disturbances of cognitive functions in brain diseases

Data on the roles of signaling molecules in the organization and control of cognitive functions of healthy and “ill” brains are analyzed. As an initial mechanism of memory physiology, we determine the complex of biochemical processes that are triggered by signal transmission in a synapse and finish with the fixation of information in the genomic apparatus. The center of these events is a coordinated system that includes transduction, transcription, epigenetic, and regulatory (neurotrophic) proteins. Dissonance of these mechanisms is a primary cause of memory disturbances, cognitive dysfunction, and psychic disorders. We consider the data of experimental and clinical observations on the role of the multilevel system of signaling molecules during aging, neurodegenerative (Alzheimer’s), and psychic disorders (depression). However, signaling molecules may be considered as well-defined targets for the development of novel therapeutic approaches.

Highly Expressed Genes within Hippocampal Sector CA1: Implications for the Physiology of Memory.

As the CA1 sector has been implicated to play a key role in memory formation, a dedicated search for highly expressed genes within this region was made from an on-line atlas of gene expression within the mouse brain (GENSAT). From a data base of 1013 genes, 16 were identified that had selective localization of gene expression within the CA1 region, and included Angpt2, ARHGEF6, CCK, Cntnap1, DRD3, EMP1, Epha2, Itm2b, Lrrtm2, Mdk, PNMT, Ppm1e, Ppp2r2d, RASGRP1, Slitrk5, and Sstr4. Of the 16 identified, the most selective and intense localization for both adult and post-natal day 7 was noted for ARHGEF6, which is known to be linked to non-syndromic mental retardation, and has also been localized to dendritic spines. Further research on the role played by ARHGEF6 in memory formation is strongly advocated

Involuntary Metrics and the Physiology of Memory

AbstractThis article is part of a cluster that draws material from the recent conference Metre Matters: New Approaches to Prosody, 1780–1914. It comprises an introduction by Jason David Hall and six articles presented at the conference, whose aim was to address renewed scholarly interest in versification and form across the long nineteenth century, as well as some of the methodologies underpinning it. The papers included in the cluster look both to the minutiae of Romantic and Victorian metres and to their cultural intertexts. The conference, hosted by the University of Exeter's Centre for Victorian Studies, was held 3–5 July 2008.The cluster is made up of the following articles: Jason David Hall, ‘Metre, History, Context: Introduction to the Metre Matters Cluster’.Emma Mason and Rhian Williams, ‘Reciprocal Scansion in Wordsworth's “There Was a Boy” ’.Ross Wilson, ‘Robert Browning's Compounds’.Margaret A. Loose, ‘The Internationalism of Ernest Jones's Dialectical Prosody’.Nancy Jiwon Cho, ‘Gender and Authority in British Women Hymn‐Writers’ Use of Metre, 1760–1900’.Ashley Miller, ‘Involuntary Metrics and the Physiology of Memory’.Summer Star, ‘ “For the Inscape's Sake”: Sounding the Self in the Metres of Gerard Manley Hopkins’.***Metre has played a prominent role in the recent turn towards embodiment in criticism of nineteenth‐century poetry. The regular rhythms of poetry have an effect on the reader's body, both echoing the rhythms of the heart and assisting in the process of memorization. But what happens when metre is missing or disrupted? This paper examines the relationship between poetry and physiological memory, extending our understanding of poetry's impact on the body. In theories of the physiology of memory and hallucination, poetry becomes irregular but autonomous, subsuming the reader's body to its own textuality. Similarly, irregular metre (as in Coleridge's Christabel) promotes a kind of involuntary repetition – which is tied, in these studies, to the materiality of print.

‘For the Inscape's Sake’: Sounding the Self in the Metres of Gerard Manley Hopkins

AbstractThis article is part of a cluster that draws material from the recent conference Metre Matters: New Approaches to Prosody, 1780–1914. It comprises an introduction by Jason David Hall and six articles presented at the conference, whose aim was to address renewed scholarly interest in versification and form across the long nineteenth century, as well as some of the methodologies underpinning it. The papers included in the cluster look both to the minutiae of Romantic and Victorian metres and to their cultural intertexts. The conference, hosted by the University of Exeter's Centre for Victorian Studies, was held 3–5 July 2008.The cluster is made up of the following articles: Jason David Hall, ‘Metre, History, Context: Introduction to the Metre Matters Cluster’.Emma Mason and Rhian Williams, ‘Reciprocal Scansion in Wordsworth's “There Was a Boy”’.Ross Wilson, ‘Robert Browning's Compounds’.Margaret A. Loose, ‘The Internationalism of Ernest Jones's Dialectical Prosody’.Nancy Jiwon Cho, ‘Gender and Authority in British Women Hymn‐Writers’ Use of Metre, 1760–1900’.Ashley Miller, ‘Involuntary Metrics and the Physiology of Memory’.Summer Star, ‘“For the Inscape's Sake”: Sounding the Self in the Metres of Gerard Manley Hopkins’.***This article explores the nature of (and makes an argument for) the relationship between Gerard Manley Hopkins's interests in the primary otherness in language and his philosophy of selfhood. To consider both the crucial and problematic nature of such a union, I contextualize Hopkins's own interest in primitive language with the ‘natural language’ theories that influenced and bourgeoned in the nineteenth century, arguing that Hopkins's ‘sprung rhythm’ was his own contribution to the search for the primitive roots of human speech. Hopkins's metrical expressions of physical movement in his poems with human subjects (specifically in the ‘St. Dorothea’ poems and ‘Harry Ploughman’) are a representation of the deep distinctiveness of subjective experience: the experience of ‘pitch’, which Hopkins theorized in his sermons, or of one's own instress. In this way, metre itself was for the poet a manifestation of an original union between the physical, bodily, and spiritual realms – enacting incarnation. Yet how can we reconcile the poeticizing of the pitch of another with Hopkins's own insistence on the utter and unapproachable difference of that other's own ‘self‐taste’? Responding to resonances between this problem and modern ethical theory, particularly Merleau‐Ponty's notion of how we conceive of otherness through physical observation, I consider Hopkins's metrical expressions of physical embodiment as a possible answer to their own ethical problem. Looking into his often‐employed concept of ‘sake’, defined by Hopkins himself as ‘that being which a thing has outside itself’, this article finally compares the sounding of this human pitch, of hearing its echo, to Hopkins's religious faith in language as a manifestation of divine being in the world – and in a divine distinctiveness of self destined to transcend mortal limits.

The Internationalism of Ernest Jones's Dialectical Prosody

AbstractThis article is part of a cluster that draws material from the recent conference Metre Matters: New Approaches to Prosody, 1780–1914. It comprises an introduction by Jason David Hall and six articles presented at the conference, whose aim was to address renewed scholarly interest in versification and form across the long nineteenth century, as well as some of the methodologies underpinning it. The papers included in the cluster look both to the minutiae of Romantic and Victorian metres and to their cultural intertexts. The conference, hosted by the University of Exeter's Centre for Victorian Studies, was held 3–5 July 2008.The cluster is made up of the following articles: Jason David Hall, ‘Metre, History, Context: Introduction to the Metre Matters Cluster’.Emma Mason and Rhian Williams, ‘Reciprocal Scansion in Wordsworth's “There Was a Boy” ’.Ross Wilson, ‘Robert Browning's Compounds’.Margaret A. Loose, ‘The Internationalism of Ernest Jones's Dialectical Prosody’.Nancy Jiwon Cho, ‘Gender and Authority in British Women Hymn‐Writers’ Use of Metre, 1760–1900’.Ashley Miller, ‘Involuntary Metrics and the Physiology of Memory’.Summer Star, ‘ “For the Inscape's Sake”: Sounding the Self in the Metres of Gerard Manley Hopkins’.***The poems, essays and fiction of the Chartist Ernest Jones (1819–69) consistently demonstrate his notion that British labourers cannot attain social justice without a principled solidarity with the labourers of other countries. This essay examines some prosodic tensions in ‘A Song for May’ (1847), an unlikely example of his internationalism because its topic has nothing to do with it. However, the formal features of the poem – from its stanzaic organization to its metrical choices, its focus on the plight of individuals to its communal nature as a Chartist song – call for a dialectical negotiation of its public and private qualities that maps onto Jones's nuanced treatment of personal and collective identities in his internationalist writing. His emphasis on the individual's ability to define itself would seem to contradict his broader intention to foster a mass, class‐based identity that seeks social justice through collective action. But it is precisely that power which permits one to choose one's loyalties and national identity, choices that might not coincide with the accidents of birth and ancestry, and which thus open the way for a border‐crossing solidarity. A dialectical prosody illuminates Jones's poetics and could also cast light on the junction of poetry and politics in the writing of authors both within and beyond Chartism.

Gender and Authority in British Women Hymn‐Writers’ Use of Metre, 1760–1900

AbstractThis article is part of a cluster that draws material from the recent conference Metre Matters: New Approaches to Prosody, 1780–1914. It comprises an introduction by Jason David Hall and six articles presented at the conference, whose aim was to address renewed scholarly interest in versification and form across the long nineteenth century, as well as some of the methodologies underpinning it. The papers included in the cluster look both to the minutiae of Romantic and Victorian metres and to their cultural intertexts. The conference, hosted by the University of Exeter's Centre for Victorian Studies, was held 3–5 July 2008.The cluster is made up of the following articles: Jason David Hall, ‘Metre, History, Context: Introduction to the Metre Matters Cluster’.Emma Mason and Rhian Williams, ‘Reciprocal Scansion in Wordsworth's “There Was a Boy” ’.Ross Wilson, ‘Robert Browning's Compounds’.Margaret A. Loose, ‘The Internationalism of Ernest Jones's Dialectical Prosody’.Nancy Jiwon Cho, ‘Gender and Authority in British Women Hymn‐Writers’ Use of Metre, 1760–1900’.Ashley Miller, ‘Involuntary Metrics and the Physiology of Memory’.Summer Star, ‘ “For the Inscape's Sake”: Sounding the Self in the Metres of Gerard Manley Hopkins’.

Metre, History, Context: Introduction to the Metre Matters Cluster

AbstractThis article introduces a cluster drawing material from the recent conference Metre Matters: New Approaches to Prosody, 1780–1914. It comprises this introduction by Jason David Hall and six articles presented at the conference, whose aim was to address renewed scholarly interest in versification and form across the long nineteenth century, as well as some of the methodologies underpinning it. The papers included in the cluster look both to the minutiae of Romantic and Victorian metres and to their cultural intertexts. The conference, hosted by the University of Exeter's Centre for Victorian Studies, was held 3–5 July 2008.The cluster is made up of the following articles:Jason David Hall, ‘Metre, History, Context: Introduction to the Metre Matters Cluster’.Emma Mason and Rhian Williams, ‘Reciprocal Scansion in Wordsworth's “There Was a Boy” ’.Ross Wilson, ‘Robert Browning's Compounds’.Margaret A. Loose, ‘The Internationalism of Ernest Jones's Dialectical Prosody’.Nancy Jiwon Cho, ‘Gender and Authority in British Women Hymn‐Writers’ Use of Metre, 1760–1900’.Ashley Miller, ‘Involuntary Metrics and the Physiology of Memory’.Summer Star, ‘ “For the Inscape's Sake”: Sounding the Self in the Metres of Gerard Manley Hopkins’.

Robert Browning's Compounds

AbstractThis article is part of a cluster that draws material from the recent conference Metre Matters: New Approaches to Prosody, 1780–1914. It comprises an introduction by Jason David Hall and six articles presented at the conference, whose aim was to address renewed scholarly interest in versification and form across the long nineteenth century, as well as some of the methodologies underpinning it. The papers included in the cluster look both to the minutiae of Romantic and Victorian metres and to their cultural intertexts. The conference, hosted by the University of Exeter's Centre for Victorian Studies, was held 3–5 July 2008.The cluster is made up of the following articles: Jason David Hall, ‘Metre, History, Context: Introduction to the Metre Matters Cluster’.Emma Mason and Rhian Williams, ‘Reciprocal Scansion in Wordsworth's “There Was a Boy” ’.Ross Wilson, ‘Robert Browning's Compounds’.Margaret A. Loose, ‘The Internationalism of Ernest Jones's Dialectical Prosody’.Nancy Jiwon Cho, ‘Gender and Authority in British Women Hymn‐Writers’ Use of Metre, 1760–1900’.Ashley Miller, ‘Involuntary Metrics and the Physiology of Memory’.Summer Star, ‘ “For the Ins?ape's Sake”: Sounding the Self in the Metres of Gerard Manley Hopkiṅs’.***This article is a study of the use of compound words in Robert Browning's poetry. It explores the use of compounds in Sordello, The Ring and the Book and The Agamemnon of Aeschylus in particular. Although it addresses the semantic aspects of compound words, it especially focuses on their metrical aspects and thus makes a contribution to our current understanding of Browning's versification. I claim that the metrical features of compound words are central to the formation of meaning in Browning's verse. In order to conduct this investigation, I draw on work by a number of literary critics, metrists and linguists, including Derek Attridge, Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle.

The physiology of memory: recordings of things past.

The physiology of memory: recordings of things past.

K‐Lines: A theory of Memory

Most theories of memory suggest that when we learn or memorize something, some drepresentation of that something is constructed, stored and later retrieved. This raises questions like:How is information represented?How is it stored?How is it retrieved?Then, how is it used?This paper tries to deal with all these at once. When you get an idea and want to “remember” it, you create a “K‐line” for it. When later activated, the K‐line induces a partial mental state resembling the one that created it. A “partial mental state” is a subset of those mental agencies operating at one moment. This view leads to many ideas about the development, structure and physiology of memory, and about how to implement framelike representations in a distributed processor.

Anatomy and Physiology of Memory

Anatomy and Physiology of Memory

The Physiology of Memory

The Physiology of Memory

Physiology of Memory

Physiology of Memory