Does neuronal loss associated with dementia necessarily impair the ability to learn new information and recall old memories? In a recent report in Nature, Fischer et al. (2007) show that the ability to learn and remember can be reestablished in a mouse model of dementia through either environmental enrichment or chronic treatment with an inhibitor of histone deacetylase.

Kevin Bales, through his study in Understanding Global Slavery: A Reader, provides an important quantitative analysis on the predictive factors of modern slavery. Upon examining his study though, several issues arise including too few observations for several of the variables and the lack of a regional variable. The author decided to rerun his study with replacements for the problematic variabl...

Recognition memory is thought to consist of two component processes--recollection and familiarity. It has been suggested that the hippocampus supports recollection, while adjacent cortex supports familiarity. However, the qualitative experiences of recollection and familiarity are typically confounded with a quantitative difference in memory strength (recollection > familiarity). Thus, the ques...

Forgetting is a common, often troubling, experience. Failing to remember where we left our keys, the name of a colleague, the meaning of a word we once knew, or an errand that needed to be done on the way home, can be embarrassing and, at times, quite costly. Not all instances of forgetting are unpleasant, however. More often than we realize our goal is actually to forget, rather than remember....

OBJECTIVE To explore the prevalence of, characteristics of, and factors associated with forgetting of childhood sexual abuse memories in a large non-clinical sample (N = 1712). METHOD Using an anonymous survey, we asked respondents about (a) the nature and severity of their childhood abuse; (b) the continuity of their abuse memories; and (c) their experiences with others suggesting to them th...

Many of us will always remember the distressing scenes from various incidents during the troubles. I have vivid memories of looking after the victims of the Omagh bomb during my second week as JHO in the Royal Victoria Hospital in 1998. In the weeks following the Omagh bomb I re-read Marie by Gordon Wilson and it brought me to tears again. Gordon will always be remembered for forgiving those wh...

Emotion strengthens the subjective experience of recollection. However, these vivid and confidently remembered emotional memories may not necessarily be more accurate. We investigated whether the subjective sense of recollection for negative stimuli is coupled with enhanced memory accuracy for contextual details using the remember/know paradigm. Our results indicate a double-dissociation betwee...