Search results for "Memory."

The Dreaming Variational Autoencoder for Reinforcement Learning Environments

2018

Reinforcement learning has shown great potential in generalizing over raw sensory data using only a single neural network for value optimization. There are several challenges in the current state-of-the-art reinforcement learning algorithms that prevent them from converging towards the global optima. It is likely that the solution to these problems lies in short- and long-term planning, exploration and memory management for reinforcement learning algorithms. Games are often used to benchmark reinforcement learning algorithms as they provide a flexible, reproducible, and easy to control environment. Regardless, few games feature a state-space where results in exploration, memory, and plannin…

The re-emergence of memory recovery: return of seduction theory and birth of survivorship

2005

This paper comprises an analysis of an aspect of the history of psychiatric/psychological knowledge. The case in point is the transience of the notion of memory recovery in the context of childhood sexual abuse. By transience is meant that the concept of memory recovery apparently vanished and re-emerged despite the fact that its source, childhood sexual abuse, did not disappear. Such abuse is a fairly common phenomenon worldwide, whereas memory recovery seems to be temporally and locally limited. Is it possible to say that psychiatric/psychological knowledge of memory recovery is also context-dependent and culture-bound? If so, what would this mean in relation to the applicability of this…

A Dopaminergic Basis for Fear Extinction.

2019

It is a joyous relief when an event we dread fails to materialize. In fear extinction, the appetitive nature of an omitted aversive event is not a mere epiphenomenon but drives the reduction of fear responses and the formation of long-term extinction memories. Dopamine emerges as key neurobiological mediator of these related processes.

Synaptic Scaling Enables Dynamically Distinct Short- and Long-Term Memory Formation

2013

Memory storage in the brain relies on mechanisms acting on time scales from minutes, for long-term synaptic potentiation, to days, for memory consolidation. During such processes, neural circuits distinguish synapses relevant for forming a long-term storage, which are consolidated, from synapses of short-term storage, which fade. How time scale integration and synaptic differentiation is simultaneously achieved remains unclear. Here we show that synaptic scaling – a slow process usually associated with the maintenance of activity homeostasis – combined with synaptic plasticity may simultaneously achieve both, thereby providing a natural separation of short- from long-term storage. The inter…

Modulating Long Term Memory at Late-Encoding Phase: An rTMS Study

2021

Despite a huge effort of the scientific community, the functioning of Long-Term Memory (LTM) processes is still debated and far from being elucidated. Functional and neurophysiological data point to an involvement of Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex (DLPFC) in both encoding and retrieval phases. However, the recently proposed Explicit/Implicit Memory Encoding and Retrieval (EIMER) model proposes that LTM at the encoding phase consists of anatomically and chronologically different sub-phases. On this basis, we aimed to investigate the role of right DLPFC during a late-encoding phase by means of low-frequency rTMS. Thirty right-handed healthy subjects were divided into three experimental groups…

Memoria, spazio, identità in Grecia e a Roma

2023

The Brain, Memory, and Oral Tradition in Music

2009

Recent studies of the brain in various subfields have shown that memory is really a type of re-creation—piecing together many elements stored separately. Memory, creativity and their connections have been focal points in cognitive studies of music, but seldom have they been approached from the vantage point of music in oral tradition, which is the primary mode of transmitting music in the world. This paper argues that the oral transmission of music provides a fertile ground for learning about memory and creativity and their connections. Traditional musicians often know hundreds of tunes and are ready to perform them at a moment’s notice—but seldom in exactly the same way. Depending upon the…

Voci sovversive e gerarchie familiari in "They Make a Desert and Call It Peace" di Marina Warner

2020

This essay examines the way Marina Warner's radio play They Make a Desert and Call it Peace (2014) and its fictional reworking of contemporary news such as the Bloody Sunday report and the investigation of the Gaza Flotilla Raid of 30 May 2010. After a presentation of the development of radio plays in England, the essay shows what interest they have generated among feminist writers and how Warner uses the voice of women in her play, which also serves as a rewriting of the biblical story of Salome, to question the transmission of the memory of traumatic events such as the Bloody Sunday. The play overturns the point of view from that of the master narrative, emphasized by media and institutio…

Risky Memory. Preventive Strategies and Emancipatory Resistance in Cancellanda by Marina Warner

2009

Alla luce di critiche e teorie su riscrittura e narrativa storica femminista esaminiamo le intersecazioni tra rappresentazioni di memoria, corpo e identità (di genere, etnica e nazionalista) strutturate in Cancellanda di Marina Warner che, tramite storie specifiche di donne in fuga, svela rischi e ambiguità della riarticolazione narrativa della memoria identitaria e culturale. Si tratta di in particolare di una figura di madre situata entro processi mobili o di anticipazione della perdita di identità (personale e comunitaria), con il ricorso preventivo a una definizione memoriale (epigrafica) di sé come resistenza anticipata, o di adattamento progressivo agli effetti delle condizioni di fug…

Serial position effects in a singer's long term recall identify landmarks and lacunae in memory

2009

An experienced singer learned Stravinsky’s Ricercar 1, for soprano and small instrumental ensemble for public performance and annotated copies of the score to indicate the location of musical features that she attended to during practice and performance cues that she attended to during performance. During the next five years, she wrote out the words and music from memory six times. Recall was initially perfect, but declined over time as portions of the piece were progressively forgotten. Landmarks in recall were marked by a sharp increase in the probability of recall followed by a gradual, linear decrease as the serial cuing of successive bars broke down. Landmarks occurred at important poi…