Unconscious Memory

Three speakers examine Authenticity in the 8th Unconscious Memory seminar. ‘Trust in Experts’ Prof Andrew Parker, Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, Oxford, will discuss how brain activity is altered by trusting the advice of experts and will explore the extent to which we can trust the images of neural activity delivered to us by modern brain scanners. 'The Experience of Spontaneity' Dr Hannah Drayson, Digital Art and Technology, Plymouth University, will talk about Nail Biting Tigers: Hypnotic Metaphors, with special reference to psychotherapy and literature. ‘Realisations’ Prof Matthew Reynolds, English, Oxford, will explore ways in which accuracy, honesty or fidelity are asserted in translation, autobiography, and other modes of writing and re-writing

Annie Freud, the award-winning poet and artist, will talk about where her poems come from, her development as an artist and writer, and the relationship between her poems and paintings. Also Sowon S Park gives her talk, 'Memory and the New Unconscious' where she discusses the role of memory in the history of the idea of the unconscious and the impact of the neuroscience of memory on the earlier models of the unconscious.

Semir Zeki gives a presentation entitled; The Neurobiology of Beauty, and Gerhard Lauer gives a talk entitled, Is there an Aesthetic Experience in this Experiment? The Chair is Professor Andrew Parker.

Andrew Mayes, and Angus Nicholls, give a talk for the Unconscious Memory seminar series. THE NEURAL BASES OF THE UNCONSCIOUS Andrew Mayes, Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Manchester University, will discuss whether conscious and unconscious memory have radically different neural bases or whether they, in fact, share a system. IS THE UNCONSCIOUS A CONCEPT OR A METAPHOR? Angus Nicholls, Reader in German and Comparative Literature at Queen Mary University of London, will discuss why the unconscious cannot be rendered conceptually and requires a metaphorical approach.  

Professor Gordon Shepherd (Yale) ‘Reassessing Mechanisms of Autobiographical Memory’ and Dr Kirsten Shepherd-Barr (St Catherine’s, Oxford) ‘Madeleines and Neuromodernism’. Chaired by Dr Sowon Park (Corpus Christi, Oxford)

Richard Brown( Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, Dalhousie University) and Mark Solms (Chair of Neuropsychology, University of Cape Town) give the fourth talk in the Unconscious Memory series. Richard Brown - Multiple Memory Systems in the Brain: Integrating Conscious and Unconscious Memory Pathways Multiple memory systems include both explicit (Conscious) and implicit (Unconscious) memory networks. What is the neural basis of these memory systems and how are they related? What happens in neurodegenerative diseases? Do all memory systems fail or do some survive? Mark Solms- A Neuropsychoanalytical Perspective on Consciousness and the Unconscious The primary state of consciousness is affective, not perceptual. Perception is unconscious in itself and is only rendered conscious by dint of its (affective) salience. The implications of this framework for unconscious memory will be outlined, with reference to both cognitive and Freudian notions of the unconscious. Chair: Professor Laura Marcus (New College, University of Oxford) Convenor: Dr Sowon Park (Corpus Christi, University of Oxford)

Professor Masud Husain and Dr Ben Morgan give the third Unconscious Memory talk. Priming refers to an improved ability to identify or produce a word on the basis of previous encounters, independently of any recollection of the learning episode. This seminar will examine the phenomenon of unconscious memory called priming, discuss existing EEG and fMRI studies results on the effects of priming on the brain, clarify what experimental approaches can hope to accomplish and consider the feasibility of conducting new experiments. Chaired by: Simon Kemp (Somerville, Oxford). Dr Masud Husain (New College, Dept of Experimental Psychology & Nuffield Dept of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford): The Neuroscience of Unconscious Memory. Masud Husain, Professor of Neurology & Cognitive Neuroscience at Oxford, will present evidence regarding the effects of unconscious memory on behaviour. He will examine findings from patients with focal brain damage as well as neuroimaging studies in healthy individuals. The talk will consider the range of levels at which priming may occur, from perception through to associative memories and actions. Dr Ben Morgan (Worcester, Oxford): Automaticity and Priming.

Professor Michael Burke and Dr Sebastian Groes give the second Unconscious Memory talk. Chaired by: Dr Ben Morgan (Worcester, Oxford) Professor Michael Burke (Utrecht): 'Implicit Memory in Literary Discourse Processing' Michael Burke, Professor of Rhetoric at Utrecht University, explores the role of implicit memory during acts of literary reading. Drawing on his theory of the literary reading loop, he looks at the role that unconscious top-down inputs play and what it takes for such inputs to be able to overrule the incoming rhetorical bottom-up linguistic prompts and reach conscious awareness. Dr Sebastian Groes (Roehampton): 'Neurofictions? Literary and Neuroscientific Perspectives on Psychogeography' Principal Investigator of the AHRC and Wellcome Trust-funded Memory Network and English Literature lecturer, Dr Sebastian Groes talks about his collaboration with writer and psychogeographer Will Self and neuroscientist Hugo Spiers (UCL) on research into the brains of London's black cab drivers, memory and spatial navigation. The project shows that consillience between literature and neuroscience is hard to achieve, but that our capacity to process narratives arose from a primal spatial processing system in the hippocampus, which has a vital role in creating semantic maps for spatial sentences, and for narrative memory and narrative processing.

Professor Larry Squire and Dr Simon Kemp give the first Unconscious Memory Seminar. Larry Squire: ‘Conscious and Unconscious Memory Systems of the Mammalian Brain’ Distinguished Professor Larry Squire (UCSD), whose pioneering work established the distinction between conscious and unconscious memory, discusses the structure and organization of memory. Simon Kemp: 'Unconscious Memory from Proust to the Present' Dr Simon Kemp (Somerville, Oxford), explores how memory and the unconscious intertwine in literature from Proust to the contemporary novel, and consider what light might be shed by new perspectives on the nature and functioning of unconscious memory offered by cognitive neuroscience.