Since
we
descended
from mount Ararat 4314 years ago (or was it 5546?) our
memories have been sometimes painful, often imprecise*,
occasionally outright false, but overall remarkably articulate.
Yet
only recently our understanding of memory functions in humans – and in
other species – has significantly advanced. Scientific research has
been pursued along several approaches, including in vivo
neurophysiological recording of neural activity, lesion and genetic
manipulation studies, functional imaging, experimental psychology,
comparative / evolutionary psychology and neural computation.
Although these approaches are discussed in great depth and sometimes
contrasted with each other at several meetings, there are limited
opportunities for students as well as for established researchers to
confront their combined theoretical challenges, especially
those implied by their mutually
contradictory findings. Under the symbolic shadow of Mount Ararat, we
have tackled such challenges, by bringing together inquisitive students
and advanced researchers for a two-component, one-week event. |
* for example,
most of us remember the Ark to be a huge elongated vessel; yet the
instructions Atram-Hasis appears to have been given, according to a
recent report,
were
to build a circular reed raft. It remains entirely possible that
those instructions were incorrectly stored, or only partially
retrieved, or even that Noah embellished the story when scooping
Atram-Hasis for early publication.
|
