Eidetic memory

Abstract: What has to be accepted, the given, is – so one could say – forms of life . L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations , 1955 The statement ‘Corgis and basset hounds have ears of different lengths’ is meaningful and useful when it comes to recognizing these life forms, but is uninformative about their hearing ability. ‘Sharks have longer flippers than whales’ also has some kind of meaning, even if the life forms belong to different families, but fails to indicate which one is the better swimmer. However, ‘squid have more fingers than humans’ is a somewhat misleading statement (squid hardly ever wear gloves, even in cold seas), and it is difficult to find a context where such a statement would be useful. The usefulness of a statement about one form of life using descriptive units relevant to another form of life depends on how members of these families resemble one another, and such a statement is not informative about the consequences of the described difference. A la manirede L. Wittgenstein Normocentrism and deficit-oriented explanations: ubiquitous problems in neurocognitive research in autism Cognitive neuroscientists working on autism are looking for an ‘uneven cognitive profile’ (Happe, 1999) characterizing the specificity of autism compared to typical development and other neurodevelopmental disorders. Similarly and at a finer scale, thirty years of research on memory in autism has resulted in the compilation of a complex profile of ‘spared’ and ‘impaired’ areas in memory (see Bowler & Gaigg, this volume, Chapter 17).

Abstract: What is eidetic memory? It is the ability “in the literal sense of the word to see again an object that has been displayed, either only immediately after viewing it, or after a long interval of tim...

Abstract: Psychiatry is inherently complex and vast amounts of material have been written on the topic. One of the largest collections of the extant material is archived in German Berrios’ personal library. The synthesis of this material has come to life through his rare powers of intellect, eidetic memory, and decades of early morning reading in a variety of languages. Its expression has taken many forms, including a series of conceptual histories on psychiatric topics. Conceptual history teases out the historical semantics of a concept, what it meant to people using the term in different ages, in different languages, against what contextual background. Accompanying German Berrios on these journeys has for many clinicians, academics, and others been a stimulating, thought-provoking, and mind-opening experience. An early adopter of and advocate for information technology in publishing both old and new, Berrios continues to influence the way we think, and his legacy will shape the minds of many people addressing the mysteries in the mind and brain sciences in years to come. This paper attempts to bring together some of the extraordinary characteristics of German the person and his remarkable contributions to scholarship.

Abstract: Learning and memory have been classified into various patterns in physiology and psychology, although cellular architectures underlying these patterns of information acquisition and storage remain largely unknown. It is critically important to reveal the correlation of memory cells and their circuits with various memory patterns in order to have a comprehensive view of learning and memory as well as develop therapeutic strategies for memory deficits. In the acquisition of information, knowledge, and experiences, learning has been classified into associative learning and nonassociative learning, in which associative learning is a major style in information acquisition. In terms of the pattern of memories to acquired signals, various classifications are assigned based on memory contents. For instance, declarative (explicit) memory or nondeclarative (implicit) memory is judged whether memories are associated with consciousness state or not. In declarative memory, episodic memory refers to the storage of events, place, time, their associated emotions, and other conception-based knowledge in relevance to specific experience, whereas semantic memory involves episodic memory relevant to generalized and summarized knowledge, theories, and views. Based on input and output, there are working memory and perceptual memory. Working memory is featured as a short-term memory from the sensory input guidance to the processing manipulation, whereas perceptual memory is featured as long-term memories to visual, auditory, and other perceptual signals. In terms of the capacity and efficiency of signal retrievals about perceptual memory, eidetic memory is used to describe that the signals learned in short time can be retrieved vividly, especially in the childhood stage. Regardless of these patterns classified for learning and memory, the purpose of studying memory formation and retrieval is to uncover cellular architectures that are suitable to interpret all of these types of memories. In this chapter, author intends to figure out a diagram constructed from these types of memories and to propose testable cellular networks for them.