Thought Piece, Week 1

Tasnim Azad
Thought Piece on Reading Assignments for 9/19

Regarding his speech at the “Practical Aspects of Memory” conference, Neisser’s intention is to inspire his contemporaries to reconsider already asked questions in new directions, but I feel that changes in the way memory is studied were already in motion. The fact that Neisser gave this speech at such a conference makes a prediction about the amount of energy that would be spent on the field in the coming years. But still, I agree with Bourtchouladze in his comment that despite tremendous advances in studying the enigma that is memory, we are in some ways still as lost as the ancient Greeks. After reading these two works first, I was relieved to receive some clarification and uncover more interesting questions in Schacter’s Searching for Memory.

Schacter’s introduction and opening chapters struck me because they made points that were obvious, but I had never considered them of great importance. Of course, we utilize memory constantly. How else would we be able to recall our own names or the hundreds of names and faces stored in our brains? Or remember how to turn on a computer and access a variety of programs and files without pause? By acknowledging some simple truths about how memory is used, I believe we can more easily move forward with important questions. I also appreciated the exercises Schacter suggests to readers in order to test our own memories and realize its limits and potential.

Some questions that I had in mind while reading were in regard to the specific cases Schacter describes. I have read works of fiction and seen episodes of Law and Order: SVU where a victim of sexual abuse will discover repressed memories deep in his or her mind when interrogated the right way or when facing a similar event. For whatever reason, I never doubted that this was possible. Can some part of our subconscious really take control and block out memories too painful for our minds to handle? Why is it a common idea that we tend to remember the good memories rather than the negative when we think back to a period of time, such as high school or past relationships? Could this repression of certain traumatic memories be similar to the way our bodies physically heal wounds? In addition, the story of the Italian man known as GR has left me to wonder if such cases could have a standard treatment. Could any physically taxing experience reignite damaged regions of our brains? Finally, when discussing people who have committed greats works of considerable length to memory, such as the Koran or Shakespeare’s sonnets, what role, if any, do patterns and the mathematical significance of these works have in mastering them?

(Sorry for the late post; while checking for responses, I realized I hadn't posted it properly the first time around.)