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Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is used to treat otherwise treatment-resistant depression. Despite clear mood-enhancing effects, it is associated with complaints of memory loss. This chapter outlines a brief history of ECT, its effects on the brain and on memory, and why subjective memory loss may surpass the objectively measured loss. It also presents results from an ongoing study assessing autobiographical memory following ECT using the Autobiographical Interview, which separates episodic from semantic autobiographical memory. Initial analyses suggest a disproportional impairment of episodic memory, although semantic memory to some extent is also affected. In spite of some recovery, this impairment persists three months after treatment. This research validates the subjective impairments reported by ECT patients, and supports theoretical constructs of memory that assume a behavioural and neural separation between episodic and semantic autobiographical memory.

The nature of retrograde amnesia (RA) in brain disease is a particularly intriguing problem. Recent research has emphasized differing patterns (dissociations) of memory loss in RA. Less emphasis has been placed upon important associations (correlates) of retrograde memory loss, which may contribute to or explain these differing patterns. There can also be differential patterns of deficit in the retention of ‘old’ memories (RA), on the one hand, and the acquisition of ‘new’ memories (anterograde amnesia (AA)), on the other. One obvious factor which may putatively influence these varying patterns of deficit is the site or sites of focal brain pathology. However, psychological factors are increasingly recognized to have an important influence on the retrieval of ‘old’ memories; RA seems to be particularly vulnerable to psychogenic phenomena. This chapter reviews these various factors, and considers current theories of RA in the light of them.

Clinically occurring memory disorders are difficult to classify on the basis of the hypothetical stages of memory. Since memory functions are widely distributed in the brain, memory disturbance forms part of the clinical picture in many pathological states. These include acute conditions associated with alterations in consciousness and chronic conditions secondary to vascular, infective, neoplastic, traumatic, metabolic, and other causes. Such memory disturbances are usually non-specific, involving several stages of memory, and are overshadowed by other clinical features. Much less commonly, relatively selective memory loss occurs and memory disturbance forms the major clinical symptom. These clinical disorders provide a window through which to study the organization of memory in man.

This chapter illustrates an account of the shift, commencing in the late 1980s, to the molecularization of Alzheimer disease (AD), and the attempt to identify significant bodily changes as much as 20 years before behavioral changes can be diagnosed in individuals. It considers the rationale for efforts to formulate a “prodromal” diagnosis before behavioral symptoms or memory loss are detected, followed by a presentation of the involved molecular diagnostic tools (biomarkers) with emphasis on spinal taps, neuroimaging, and genetic testing. The significance of the first two of these biomarkers is attributed to their apparent ability to detect the onset of the amyloid cascade process. The chapter also discusses the anomalies and uncertainties associated with biomarker testing.

This chapter explains how memory loss creates problems for Conditionalization, the traditional Bayesian norm for updating degrees of belief. It first presents stories in which agents suffer from memory loss (or the threat thereof) and shows how these stories are counterexamples to Conditionalization. It then argues that memory loss does indicate a failure of rationality on the part of the agent. The chapter then presents a new updating norm, Generalized Conditionalization (GC), which properly handles memory loss stories. GC is applied to a somewhat more complex story in which memory loss occurs multiple times, then the norm is used to derive a generalized version of Bas van Fraassen’s Reflection Principle applying to cases in which agents both gain and lose information.

Drawing on symbolic interactionism and social constructionism, the final chapter reexamines the biomedicalization of memory loss and sociological illness narratives. Since there is nothing intrinsic to the feelings expressed by these respondents that necessarily and inevitably leads to a definition of forgetfulness as a disease, the chapter contemplates how our current preoccupation with memory loss and its construction as a medical problem shape experiences of Alzheimer’s, the values of society members not directly affected by the condition, and our overarching cultural views on aging. Given the central place of memory in the lives of (many) Americans in modern times, this book asks readers to consider whether or not memory loss being seen primarily (or exclusively) as a medical problem is good for seniors (with or without reports of memory loss), is good for any of us as we ourselves are aging, and is good for society at large.

This book has argued that a traditional Bayesian framework using Conditionalization as its updating constraint cannot adequately model stories involving memory loss and context-sensitivity, because of the rational loss of certainties in such stories. The book has advocated a new modeling framework, the Certainty-Loss Framework (CLF), as a replacement. This chapter first explains why the rational requirements in stories involving memory loss and context-sensitivity cannot be settled by Dutch Book arguments. Next the chapter explains why the difficulties traditional Bayesian frameworks have with certainty loss could not have been solved by moving to a framework based on Jeffrey Conditionalization. Finally, the chapter explains why cases involving certainty loss due to the acquisition of evidential defeaters are not best modeled using CLF.

This chapter introduces Subjective Bayesianism and describes its recent rise to prominence in many areas of philosophy, especially epistemology. The chapter then discusses how Bayesianism’s traditional updating norm for degrees of belief—updating by Conditionalization—fails for applications involving the loss of certainties, most particularly cases involving memory loss and context-sensitivity. The book introduces a new Bayesian framework (the Certainty-Loss Framework, or CLF) for modeling rational requirements in such cases. This chapter situates CLF within the contemporary Bayesian literature and briefly outlines its advantages over other modeling frameworks. It also stresses the importance of viewing CLF as a modeling tool and of carefully specifying the framework’s normative implications. The chapter then lays out the goals for the entire book, describes the content of each chapter to come, and makes some suggestions for how to read the text.

This chapter focuses on Henry Gustav Molaison (H.M.), who died on the early evening of December 2, 2008 at the age of 82. After his death images were made of his brain, which was then removed from the skull and prepared for transport to the Brain Observatory. It has since been cut into 2,401 slices, each of them photographed and digitalized, resulting in a virtual brain that can be accessed online for research purposes. The story of H.M. has been embedded in hundreds of neurological textbooks and introductions to neuropsychology. It begins in the summer of 1953, when H.M., then 27 years old, was admitted to a hospital in Hartford due to severe epileptic seizures that were occurring with increasing frequency. Because his condition was unresponsive to medication, the surgeon proposed the removal of part of both hemispheres of his brain, in the hope of eliminating the focus of his epilepsy. While the operation reduced his seizures, parts of his past were also wiped from his memory. But far worse was that he was no longer able to form new memories, a type of memory loss known as “anterograde amnesia”. For many years, H.M. was the purest case of anterograde amnesia known to the medical world.

The previous chapter introduced Generalized Conditionalization (GC), an updating norm for degrees of belief that properly models rational requirements in stories involving memory loss. This chapter explains the intuitive idea behind GC: suppositional consistency, which requires an agent to evaluate a hypothesis the same way whenever she considers it relative to the same evidence. Suppositional consistency is easy to defend if Feldman’s and White’s Uniqueness Thesis is true—that is, if every body of evidence dictates a required attitude for every hypothesis. Uniqueness defenders dating back to Carnap have offered updating rules obeying suppositional consistency. But if Uniqueness is false, suppositional consistency (and GC) must be defended by considering when an agent’s permitted but not required attitude assignments rationally commit her to similar assignments in the future. The chapter examines a number of examples and objections concerning such commitments, including cases involving memory loss.

This chapter discusses Woolf’s later short stories, from ‘The Lady in the Looking Glass’ to ‘The Shooting Party’, as well as Woolf’s concern with ‘The Searchlight’ and ‘The Symbol’, which are stories about the operation of memory and loss. Memory and loss are represented in these stories by field glasses or a telescope, whose close-up on a distant spot both isolates and focuses on a certain experience.

A methodology of embodied interaction is presented in this article using a case study of Howard, a Danish 83-year old, who is a representative of elderly Danish residents living in Turkey. Howard is struggling with memory loss, which is impeding his life as a retired migrant. The method of embodied interaction is used in order to sense and understand his sensing of the process of mental decline. The methodology presented contributes with a focus on understanding based on sensuous theory which implies embodied interaction and an active co-construction of meaning by ethnographer as well as by reader. The methodology presented contributes to an understanding of sensuous theory, which implies embodied interaction and an active co-construction of meaning by ethnographer as well as by reader. This chapter’s discussion of a methodology that values the senses adds richness to research on the lifecourse, drawing attention to aspects of our lives that often seem intangible yet are full of meaning.

The conclusion illustrates how societal valuations of different kinds of bodies continue to shape our conception of the afterlife not only in theological speculation, but also in the scientific ambitions of modern technology. It examines how modern technologies continue to be shaped by cultural concerns about memory loss and identity.

This introduction considers the editorial and authorial partnership of Ellen Tucker Emerson and James Elliot Cabot, whose reshaping of Emerson’s late writings amounted to a reconfiguration of Emersonian transcendentalist thought. Embroiled in a process of communal thought and composition as they maneuvered through and mined the manuscript archives out of which they composed works like Letters and Social Aims, “Fortune of the Republic,” Natural History of Intellect, and many others, Cabot and Ellen Emerson produced the archive of what I consider Emerson’s late style. These works perturb and revise Emerson’s earlier considerations of individuality and self-reliant cognition, now theorizing a host of mental processes that are decidedly social.

This is a chapter about suspensions, about the moments in our lives when we can’t move, when we don’t know which way to turn. Suspensions slow us down enough to feel space enter time. Using our breath to find spaciousness attunes us to a heightened sense of three-dimensionality, including a critical recognition of the importance of thinking backwards as well as forwards. In lives filled with screen-based, two-dimensional interactions, this sense of amplitude can make a big difference in the quality of our being present in the moment. Moving from a discussion of improvisation to a meditation on breathing through the elusive quality of air and into a final discussion of dwelling, this chapter explores how suspensions can open new ways of being in the world. Attending to the breath can lead us into the under-charted territory of largely unseen but nonetheless deeply felt situations, including those of loss, memory, and grace.