The self-defining period in autobiographical memory: Evidence from a long-running radio show.

This study is the first to demonstrate that a self-defining period (SP) for personally relevant music emerges spontaneously in a public naturalistic setting. While previous research has demonstrated that people tend to have better memory and preference for songs from their teenage years, the theoretical relevance of these studies has been limited by their reliance on forced-choice methodology and a confinement to contemporary popular Western music. Here, we examine the record choices of famous guests (n = 80; mean age = 61.6 years) interviewed for Desert Island Discs, a long-running popular radio programme on BBC Radio 4. Half of all choices were shown to have been most important between the ages of 10 and 30 years, and the most popular reason for their relevance was the song's link to memories of a person, period, or place. We suggest that music is a defining feature of the SP, intrinsically connected to the developing self

Lessons from the endothelial junctional mechanosensory complex

Mechanotransduction plays a key role in both normal physiology and in diseases such as cancer, atherosclerosis and hypertension. Nowhere is this more evident than in the vascular system, where fluid shear stress from blood flow plays a critical role in shaping the blood vessels and in determining their function and dysfunction. Responses to flow are mediated in part by a complex of proteins comprised of PECAM-1, VE-cadherin and VEGFR2 at endothelial cell-cell junctions; all proteins that clearly have other, non-mechanical functions. We review recent progress toward understanding the functions and mechanisms of mechanotransduction by this complex and suggest some principles that may apply more broadly

Entanglement Distillation Protocols and Number Theory

We show that the analysis of entanglement distillation protocols for qudits of arbitrary dimension $D$ benefits from applying basic concepts from number theory, since the set \zdn associated to Bell diagonal states is a module rather than a vector space. We find that a partition of \zdn into divisor classes characterizes the invariant properties of mixed Bell diagonal states under local permutations. We construct a very general class of recursion protocols by means of unitary operations implementing these local permutations. We study these distillation protocols depending on whether we use twirling operations in the intermediate steps or not, and we study them both analitically and numerically with Monte Carlo methods. In the absence of twirling operations, we construct extensions of the quantum privacy algorithms valid for secure communications with qudits of any dimension $D$. When $D$ is a prime number, we show that distillation protocols are optimal both qualitatively and quantitatively.Comment: REVTEX4 file, 7 color figures, 2 table

The Self and Autobiographical Memory: Correspondence and Coherence

Introduces a modified version of Conway and Pleydell-Pearce\u27s Self Memory System (SMS) account of autobiographical memory and the self. Discussion of a fundamental tension between adaptive correspondence and self-coherence; Examination of tension; Application of SMS to personality and clinical psychology

Remembering, imagining, false memories & personal meanings

The Self-Memory System encompasses the working self, autobiographical memory and episodic memory. Specific autobiographical memories are patterns of activation over knowledge structures in autobiographical and episodic memory brought about by the activating effect of cues. The working self can elaborate cues based on the knowledge they initially activate and so control the construction of memories of the past and the future. It is proposed that such construction takes place in the remembering–imagining system – a window of highly accessible recent memories and simulations of near future events. How this malfunctions in various disorders is considered as are the implication of what we term the modern view of human memory for notions of memory accuracy. We show how all memories are to some degree false and that the main role of memories lies in generating personal meanings

A tour of contemporary color vision research

The study of color vision encompasses many disciplines, including art, biochemistry, biophysics, brain imaging, cognitive neuroscience, color preferences, colorimetry, computer modelling, design, electrophysiology, language and cognition, molecular genetics, neuroscience, physiological optics, psychophysics and physiological optics. Coupled with the elusive nature of the subjective experience of color, this wide range of disciplines makes the study of color as challenging as it is fascinating. This overview of the special issue Color: Cone Opponency and Beyond outlines the state of the science of color, and points to some of the many questions that remain to be answered in this exciting field

Spectral line and continuum radiation propagation in a clumpy medium

We discuss the propagation of spectral line and continuum radiation in a clumpy medium and give general expressions for the observed absorption or emission from a cloud population. We show that the affect of the medium clumpiness can usually be characterised by a single number multiplying the mean column opacity. Our result provides a simpler proof and generalisation of the result of Martin et al (1984). The formalism provides a simple way to understand the effects of clumping on molecular line profiles and ratios, for example how clumping effects the interpretation of 13CO(1-0) to 12CO(1-0) line ratios. It can also be used as a propagation operator in physical models of clumpy media where the incident radiation effects the spectral line emissivity. We are working to extend the formalism to the propagation of masers in a clumpy medium, but in this case there are special difficulties because formal expectation values are not characteristic of observations because they are biased by rare events.Comment: 6 pages, 1 Figure. Accepted for publication by ApSS. Proc of conference on 'Dense Molecular gas around protostars and in galactic Nuclei'. Zwolle, Netherlands, Feb 17th - 20th, 200

In my life: memory, self and The Beatles

© 2024 Informa UK Limited. This is the accepted manuscript version of an article which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2024.2314510In a large-scale study, we asked people for their memories of The Beatles. Over four thousand respondents completed an online questionnaire. The memory could be related to a song, album, event, TV, film, or even a personal encounter. Respondents judged the age at which the event remembered had occurred and rated the memory for vividness, emotional intensity, valence and rehearsal. We found 38% of the memories were classified as “seeing The Beatles live”, 25% “buying Beatles music”, 20% “love of The Beatles” and 17% of the memories were “listening to Beatles songs with other people” – what we refer to as cascading memories. Among the younger respondents (aged 26 and under), 84% of the memories were cascading in nature. The memories dated to what we term the “self-defining period” in autobiographical memory (previously termed “the reminiscence bump”), with a mean age-at-encoding of 13.6 years, which is consistent with other studies of memories associated with music. We propose that these memories reflect the formation of generational identity [Mannheim, K. (1952). The problem of generations. In K. Mannheim (Ed.), Essays on the sociology knowledge (pp. 276–321). Routledge & Keegan Paul].Peer reviewe

Playing the flashbulb memory game: A comment on Cubelli and Della Sala

Flashbulb memory (FBM) is a term coined in 1977 by Brown and Kulik referring to vivid, detailed, and long-lasting memories for the reception context of important public events. Across the years, different authors have tried to establish that FBMs either exist or are virtually indistinguishable from ordinary autobiographical memory formations. In the present study we review studies in favour/against the FBM hypothesis focusing on two main issues: First, FBM accuracy appears to be difficult if not impossible to prove; secondly memory distortions and forgetting do not exclude that FBMs are formed and maintained. Personal and social consequentiality are considered to be crucial factors in determining real FBMs, although reconstructive processes also operate on these formations. We finally propose that, striving to play a kind of FBM game, researchers have sometimes failed to focus on real FBMs, misinterpreting the meaning of the camera metaphor and adopting research strategies open to criticisms and invalidation

Application and Analysis of Bounded-Impulse Trajectory Models with Analytic Gradients

In the companion paper, analytic methods were presented for computing the Jacobian entries for two-sided direct shooting trajectory models that utilize the bounded-impulse approximation. In this paper we discuss practical implementation considerations. Efficient computation of the mathematical components required to compute the partials is discussed and a guiding numerical example is provided for validation purposes. A solar electric power model suitable for preliminary mission design is presented, including a method for handling thruster cut-off events that result in non-smooth derivatives. The challenges associated with incorporating the SPICE ephemeris system into an optimization framework are discussed and an alternative is presented that results in smooth time partials. Application problems illustrate the benefits of employing analytic Jacobian calculations vs. using the method of finite differences. The importance of accurately modeling hardware and operational constraints at the preliminary design stage, and the benefits of using an analytic Jacobian in a solver that combines the monotonic basin hopping heuristic method with a local gradient search are also explored