Memory and Forgetting: Analogous Processes on Individual and Collective Levels

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Memory and Forgetting Analogous Processes on
Individual and Collective Levels
Principle Investigators Thomas J. Anastasio
neuroscience Lillian Hoddeson history
Research Assistants Kristen Ehrenberger
history Anca Glont history Patrick Watson
neuroscience Wenyi Zhang anthropology
This multidisciplinary project is supported by
the Beckman Foundation.
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• Approach
• Start with an abstract but reasonable view of
  memory consolidation and retrograde amnesia.
• Find evidence that analogous phenomena occur on
  the individual and collective levels.
• Find new insights into memory formation and loss
  by comparing phenomena on the two levels.
• Main insight on individual level individual
  memory consolidation may be influenced by the
  self.
• Main insight on collective level memory
  formation and loss are similar on collective as
  on individual levels, suggesting that a process
  of memory consolidation occurs on the collective
  level.

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Retrograde Amnesia in Humans
Retrograde amnesia in patient HM for the
famous-faces task (gray, HM black, other brain
injury white, normal). (from Cohen and Corkin
1981)
Retrograde amnesia in PZ, a Krosakoffs patient
who had written his autobiography. (from Butters
and Milotis 1992)
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Two-box Model of Memory Consolidation

• A Hopfield network (on the left) can learn items
  quickly (one-shot) but has a limited capacity,
  while a multilayered perceptron (on the right)
  can generalize over a potentially very large set
  of items but it learns slowly (iteratively).
• (adapted from McClelland, McNaughton and
  OReilly 1995)

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Entity (agent)
Individual person, self. Collective family,
tribe, group, community, state, corporation,
nation.
Buffer (labile)
Generalizer (stable)
Selector / Relater
Individual classification, schema,
narrative. Collective books, viewpoints, museums
, belief systems, paradigms.
Individual short-term storage, working
memory. Collective ephemera (media, journals),
data, archives, artifacts.
Individual association of items (hippocampus). C
ollective debate, agreement, dialog, contest
and negotiation.
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Buffering
Neurons in LIP (lateral interparietal cortex)
have increased activity during short-term
(working) memory of a target location.
(from Gnadt and Andersen 1988)
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Generalization
Neurons in IT (inferior temporal cortex) respond
to stimuli that could be characterized as faces,
and so generalize over stimuli in this
category. (from Desimone et al. 1984)
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Relationality
Associative transitivity and symmetry
(relationality) in paired associate learning
requires hippocampus. (from Bunsey and Eichenbaum
1996)
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Influence of the Agent
Original Piece One objection to the views of
those who, like Mr Gulick, believe isolation to
be a cause of modification of species deserves
attention, namely, the entire absence of change
where, if this were a vera causa, we should
expect to find it. In Ireland we have an
excellent test case, for we know that is has been
separated from Britain since the end of the
glacial epoch, certainly many thousand years.
Yet hardly one of its mammals, reptiles, or land
mollusks has undergone the slightest change, even
though there is certainly a distinct difference
of environment Recalled Version Mr Garlic says
isolation is the cause of modification of
species. This seems proved by the test-case of
Ireland with regard to snakes, toads, and
reptiles. (from Bartlett 1932, who notes
consistently but anecdotally that errors in
recall are influenced by the occupation,
interests, national origin, and ethnicity of
subjects)
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The Elements of Collective Memory Consolidation
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Collective Retrograde Amnesia?
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Compare the Collective Memory of Two, Large
Groups of Chinese People

• Mainland Chinese as exemplified by Héshùn people
  in Southwest China.
• The trauma is the Chinese communist movements
  from the early 1950s to the late 1970s,
  especially the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to
  1976.
• Taiwanese, and Northern Thailand KMT soldiers as
  well as their families.

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Confucianism in Mainland China and in Taiwan and
Northern Thailand
From the second century BC until 1911,
Confucianism was the Chinese state ideology,
serving as the symbol of government legitimacy.
Mao famously stated that he hated
Confucianism and strove to wipe it out during the
Cultural Revolution. Ironically, many elements
of Confucianism remain in modern mainland
culture. Although mainland Chinese are aware of
Confucius and the Five Essential Relations, they
are unaware of the Confucian roots of much of
their modern culture (Wen-bin 1999, Gao 2000).
In comparison, the culture continuity of
Confucianism is well recognized and even
celebrated in Taiwan and Northern Thailand.
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Taoism and Buddhism in Mainland China and in
Taiwan and Northern Thailand
Taoism is the indigenous Chinese folk religion.
Buddhism was imported from India, but the two
have been melded together in the religious
practices of the Chinese. The CCP attacked
religion as the opium of the people. Mainland
Chinese know about Taoism and Buddhism, but know
little about how these religions were practiced
by their recent ancestors. Both religions have
been practiced continuously by Taiwanese and
Chinese in Northern Thailand.
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The Chinese Novelist Shen Congwen
One of the numbered finest writers in Chinese
literature (Ling 1985). He published all his
literary work before 1948. During the Cultural
Revolution, all works by Shen were forbidden to
be published, and Shen was forbidden to write (Li
2006). In the 19 volumes of a claimed complete
collection of Chinese new literature since 1927,
published in 1984, none of Shen Congwens works
were selected.
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The Chinese Novelist Zhang Ailing
Zhang published most of her work during the
1940s, and her name became the emblem Chinese
folk literature 1940s. Zhangs works were
almost completely forgotten in mainland China
before the middle 1980s. When Zhangs works were
re-introduced onto the mainland in the middle
1980s from Taiwan and Hong Kong, many Chinese
considered Zhang as a writer from Taiwan or Hong
Kong, rather than a mainland writer (Yu and Jin
1991).