Memory means both the ability of an individual or a group of people to remember past events and to remember himself.

Considered one of the main faculties of the human mind , memory has been the subject of the first scientific investigations. Progress in understanding the mechanisms of memory take a part in the study of exceptional cases (patients with amnesia or otherwise endowed with exceptional memory capacity, called eidetic memory ) and secondly, application methods of experimental psychology. Since the beginning of the ^twentieth century many models have been proposed to account for experimental observations. And from the second half of the century, the cognitive neuroscience have provided new information concerning the biological basis of memory in the human being that he shares with other animals.

Memory biology

It is important to note that biologists have not yet consensus on the biological functioning of memory, also presents three plausible hypotheses on the subject.

According to some researchers, the long-term potentiation determine some of the dimensions of memory. Synapses in the hippocampus improves transmission (potentiation) for hours or weeks after a brief period of stimulation at high frequency. So after a certain period of time, nerve impulses from potentiations occur earlier and thereby form the memories, so the memory ...

According to a second theory, memories are generated by reverberating networks: a nerve impulse stimulates the first neuron, which stimulates a second, which would stimulate a third and so on. The ramifications of second and third neurons synapse (connection) with the first, so that the nerve impulse travels repeatedly in the network. Thus, such a cycle, the nerve impulse would continue and would be responsible for this storage. Once issued, the signal could last from several seconds to several hours depending on the arrangement of neurons in the network. So one thought could persist in the brain, even after the initial stimulus. In other words, the retention time of thought correspond to the reverberation time (comparison with amphitheater). ^,

Finally, the information could follow this path: where sensory perception is formed in the sensory cortex (parietal) cortical neurons would distribute impulses in two parallel networks for the hippocampus and amygdala, which all have connections with the diencephalon (thalamus and hypothalamus), telencephalon and ventral prefrontal cortex. The ventral forebrain then shut the loop memory by referring to the influx sensory areas that had originally formed the collection. It is believed that this feedback is transforming the perception of a relatively lasting memories. Thus, neural connections were established between the cortical regions which would be the long-term memory via a conference call and until that data can be consolidated. The recent memories resurface during stimulation of the same cortical neurons. ^,

Brief in Philosophy

Descartes

Descartes was interested very early on means of access to knowledge, in the Rules for the Direction of the Mind ( 1629 ), rules it will use later in his philosophical career.

He mentioned the relationship of memory with the intuition and deduction in the third rule:

"The inference need not present evidence such as intuition, but it takes Bergson

Bergson ( 1,851 - 1,941 ) addresses the memory in Matter and Memory (1896), through the duality problem of body-mind.

Maurice Halbwachs

Maurice Halbwachs ( one thousand eight hundred and seventy-seven - 1 945 ) explains that "the process of locating a memorial in the past (...) is not at all to dive into the bulk of our memories like a bag, to remove memories of more frequent among which the remembrance will take place to locate. "The use of benchmarks can facilitate the expression of a particular memory, without which it is directly related to the referent. "The benchmarks are states of consciousness which, by their intensity, fight better than others against forgetting, or by their complexity, are likely to generate many reports, increasing the chances of revival. "The main points of support, they are involved in personal or national history, are necessary for the proper psychological functioning of individuals. Theodule Ribot says: "If, to reach a distant memory, we had to follow the whole series of terms that separate us, the memory would be impossible because of the length of the operation. "The collective memory is the set of past events that may have the effect of structuring the group identity. P. Nora said: (...) there as much memory as groups: it is by nature multiple and multiplied, collective, multifaceted and individualized. "The cohesion within a group can be achieved through shared memory, it can inspire these actions. The events set in whenever the individual actions in various groups. Remember this location using the landmarks of our memories is because we are social beings. Memories related to social groups with which we are closer and sustainable retain vivid memories there. The phenomenon of memory seems to exist only through social relations that collect and organize memories. Localization occurs by the presence of a common area of interest which relates to memory. Halbwachs, offering a reinterpretation of the social morphology of Durkheim, argues that social life rests on a substrate material, substrate material compared to what existed only as a socialized. It's social existence that follows the social logic that reflects the need for a form of social life. Memory thereby updates the social referents that are language, space and time that can locate and define social practices. Families breed "of rules and customs that are not dependent on us, and that existed before us, that set us. . The family structure common memory by the roles of each other. Only the "community" family can cause the transmission of origins that is now part of his identity. Reproduction of rules and customs that do not depend on each individual but the family group fixed place of each. For Halbwachs: "We retain events collectively made that are in the flow of life both in the sense of kinship and the common occupations. "

In its work on the psychology of social classes, Maurice Halbwachs questions the place assigned to everyone in the whole society. It demonstrates that it is in the extra work that elaborated collective memories. "Each social group determines the conduct of the members it comprises, it imposes well-defined causes of action. "Each individual enrolled in a community is an idea of what is necessary for its perpetuation. This therefore leads to an interpretation of the said company. Thus, in each group, "is the representation of the group itself and what suits him. "Halbwachs said that collective memory is made up of memories adhering to an interpretation of the living conditions of the group. Halbwachs considered more or less conscious, everyone has ideas of what should be the role of everyone in a family. Individuals inherit a "general conception of the family", what should be a family. The application of these standards is not dependent implicit feelings of affection that everyone feels for those around him. But "the expression of his feelings do not resolve it unless the family structure that the group retains its authority and cohesion. The family can structure the memory of children by their respective roles in common events. The memory can also be a vector of the habitus. Bourdieu defines habitus as "a system of lasting dispositions acquired by the individual during the process of socialization. "This is confirmed by Bourdieu as the representations are built on an objective reality inducing new behaviors adapted to the environment. "The habitus which, each time frame according to the structures produced by past experiences and new experiences that affect structures within the limits defined by their power of selection, carries a unique integration, dominated by early experiences (.. .). "

Paul Ricoeur

The brief raises three problems for Paul Ricoeur. First, the question is formulated, that of a representation of what was and therefore necessarily subjective. The memory gives this track of what is missing since past. This raises the problem of the border between reality and fantasy because the report with anticipation raises the question of its representations. In contrast to this, history is a certain objectivity, it is not subject to a special look. Then, in the same statement also appears gaze focused today on the event narrated. Bergson fixed this problem on the recognition and survival of the images. Thus, there is "a match this image the thing absent whose memory has kept track. "So, the memory can not know that by selecting what should be forgotten. The memory includes a method of reading is told. Finally, this reading will be perceived by others based on the personality of the speaker. The memory belongs to an individual. Thus, it has also its own designation to the subject. Individual memory is that by which the individual is his own identity. We add to this that the memory does not necessarily care about the temporal sequence of images. The time scale is however relevant to the story and it reflects the times and standards. In his book The social frameworks of memory, Maurice Halbwachs defines individual memory from its social dimensions: "If we look at how we remember, we recognize that many of our memories come back when our parents friends or other men we remember. "It appears that in this situation is that we the people asked to make their life story. Number of memories emerge only because the situation may wish. The social frameworks of memory are the instruments which the individual uses to reconstruct an image of the past in harmony with the demands of the moment.

Pierre Nora

For Pierre Nora , "because it is affective and magical, memory does not accommodate the particulars with it; it feeds on fuzzy memories, telescoping, global or floating, special or symbolic, sensitive to all transport, screens, projections or censorship. "

Memory Anthropology

The study of how human groups maintain and transmit memories (real or mythical) pertaining to their culture is the subject of an important work in anthropology.

Brief history

Main article: Location of memory.

In the opposition between a story for the objectivity and a brief subjective dominated by the emotion that results from a reconstruction of personal and collective past, overlap since the late 1980s the work of a current historiographical which raises memory object of historical study . The intensity of memory in the public debate opens up new fields of study in history.

Territories ( countries , provinces , regions, historical, natural areas ) have a memory, and even invented largely built by local scholars and historians of the ^nineteenth and ^twentieth centuries. Is the case with traditional countries such as Vendome , the Gtine Tours , the Brenne Loire in the provinces. The territory which seeks a strong identity can become a major historical memory as demonstrated by work on the Wars of Vende Vende and space .

The concept of place of memory , be it a physical place ( monument ) reinvested through a process of commemoration or an institutional ( symbols Republicans, for example), was coined from 1984 through the book The places of memory of Pierre Nora. The book opens with a series of works of historians who are intended to study the collective memory , but also the competing memories specific . This competition between memories of victims and translates, in concrete terms, both by legislative initiatives in this area (recognition of the slave trade across the Atlantic as a crime against humanity by the law "Taubira" of 21 May 2001 the law of 29 January 2001 on the recognition of the Armenian genocide or the Act of February 23, 2005 for the recognition of the nation and national contribution in favor of the French returnees) that legal actions by ad hoc (cf. especially the Barbie trial, Touvier, Papon) . The publication in 1987 of the work of Henry Rousso, The Vichy syndrome, analyzing posterity the memory of the Occupation in French society over several decades, lays the methodological foundations of a story memory .

References

1. Tortora, Gerard J. and Bryan H. Derrickson, Principles of Anatomy and Physiology, 11th Edition
2. Marieb, Elaine N. Human Anatomy and Physiology
3. Tortora, Gerard J. and Bryan H. Derrickson, Principles of Anatomy and Physiology, 11th Edition
4. Marieb, Elaine N. Human Anatomy and Physiology
5. Tortora, Gerard J. and Bryan H. Derrickson, Principles of Anatomy and Physiology, 11th Edition
6. Marieb, Elaine N. Human Anatomy and Physiology
7. On this dualism and the debates surrounding the treatment of memory in history, see, eg, Tzvetan Todorov , "The memory to history," Land, No. 25 (September 1995), read online. Accessed January 4, 2008.
8. Jean-Clment Martin , La Vendee Memory, 1800-1900, Seuil , 1989.
9. Highlighting including Jean-Michel Chaumont in the competition of victims. Genocide, identity, recognition, La Dcouverte , 1997, repr. 2002
10. Milhat Cedric , "The legal representation of the memory. The French example," Revue Juridique Themis, 2009, No. 43, http://www.editionsthemis.com/uploaded/revue/article/rjtvol43num1/milhat.pdf
11. Henry Rousso , The Vichy Syndrome, Paris, Seuil , 1987, repr. 1990, "The field of memory ', p.11

Links

Related articles

• Saint Augustine.
• Prospective memory
• Time
• Commemoration | Lest We Forget | memorial Act | Competition briefs

External Resources

• Magali Crochard (2007) The memory. Guide for those who complete ... or return to school. , Ed Franel.
• Comparative anthropology of "arts of memory" , a series of lectures on video by an anthropologist Carlo Severi

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