老化对睡眠依赖性记忆巩固的影响

随着老化的发生和发展, 老年人的睡眠和记忆问题变得越来越突出。研究显示老年人针对程序性记忆的睡眠依赖性巩固能力受损, 而针对陈述性记忆的睡眠依赖性巩固研究结果尚存分歧。此外, 患有神经退行性疾病的老年人在正常老化的基础上伴有情景记忆睡眠依赖性巩固能力受损。未来研究应考虑同步采集脑电和脑成像数据, 探索增龄通过睡眠影响记忆的神经通路, 尝试搭建老化、睡眠以及记忆三因素的交互模型, 并从睡眠对记忆巩固影响的角度提出针对老年人记忆问题的干预措施。     

A Return to Form in the Philosophy of Mind

In recent decades philosophy of mind has undergone a number of important transformations. In the first part of this essay I review a survey of the subject provided by Daniel Dennett some twenty years ago and consider the current state of affairs. Notwithstanding the rise of physicalist causal theories, the field now displays a degree of diversity that suggests disarray. In the second part of the essay I examine three central issues: the nature of persons, of thought, and of action, and present a series of hylomorphic accounts of each.     

当前心灵哲学中的核心课题

本文的目的是以心灵哲学中的核心课题为线索,试图对当前心灵哲学的研究状况作一个总体的介绍和讨论。文章将围绕意识、心灵内容、心灵形而上学和认知科学这四个主题来展开,对于每一个主题,我在评介各种重要课题的同时,也注意给出这一方面的主要哲学家的代表性著作的文献出处,以便对具体问题感兴趣的读者进一步专研。     

亚里士多德的心灵哲学

亚里士多德是一个广义的物活论者(Animist),与其他物活论者不一样,他不认为灵魂存在于万物中,而认为灵魂只存在于有生命的活的事物中.他的灵魂概念与我们现在的观点也不一样,他认为植物是有灵魂的.灵魂(soul)在希腊语中是"psyche",即生命的原则或生命的原理,在拉丁语中被转译为"anima',它是使活的事物与非活的事物相区别的东西.他又把它叫做"生命的原理"(entelechy).     

A Buddhist Explanation of Episodic Memory: From Self to Mind

In this paper, I argue that some of the work to be done by the concept of self is done by the concept of mind in Buddhist philosophy. For the purposes of this paper, I shall focus on an account of memory and its ownership. The task of this paper is to analyse Vasubandhu’s heroic effort to defend the no-self doctrine against the Nyāya-Vai?e?ikas in order to bring to the fore the Buddhist model of mind. For this, I will discuss Vasubandhu’s theory of mind in the early Abhidharma as well as post-Abhidharma period to show the continuity in his work.     

The Development of Memory for Serial Order: A Temporal-contextual Distinctiveness Model

A model of adult human memory, OSCAR, is applied to the development of memory for serial order. In the model, development of serial order memory is assumed to result from age-related changes in a dynamic learning-context signal that underpins memory for serial order. Developmental improvement in this dynamic learning-context signal leads to more temporally distinctive representations in memory, and this leads in turn to a reduction in order errors. It is shown that the model correctly predicts developmental changes in the movement error gradients in children's serially ordered recall, as well as developmental changes in the number of movement errors obtained. The model is also applied to repetition errors across development.     

Recent work in the Philosophy of Mind

Peter Carruthers, Language, Thought and Consciousness
David J. Chalmers, The Conscious Mind
Fred Dretske, Naturalizing the Mind
Steven W. Horst, Symbols, Computation and Intentionality
Jaegwon Kim, Philosophy of Mind
Michael Tye, Ten Problems of Consciousness     

Adaptive Memory: Fitness Relevance and the Hunter-Gatherer Mind

ABSTRACT— Recent studies suggest that human memory systems are "tuned" to remember information that is processed in terms of its fitness value. When people are asked to rate the relevance of words to a survival scenario, performance on subsequent surprise memory tests exceeds that obtained after most other known encoding techniques. The present experiments explored this effect using survival scenarios designed to mimic the division of labor thought to characterize early hunter-gatherer societies. It has been suggested that males and females have different cognitive specializations due to the unique survival tasks (hunting and gathering, respectively) they typically performed during periods of human evolution; the present experiments tested whether such specializations might be apparent in memory for words rated for relevance to these activities. Males and females were asked to rate the relevance of random words to prototypical hunting and gathering scenarios or to matched, non-fitness-relevant control scenarios (gathering food on a scavenger hunt or in a hunting contest). Surprise retention tests revealed superior memory for the words when they were rated for relevance to hunting and gathering scenarios, compared with when they were rated for relevance to the control scenarios, but no sex differences were found in memory performance.     

Episodic Indexing: A Model of Memory for Attention Events

People often remember what they attend to in the world. Such memory can be cast as a kind of mental catalog or index of attended objects. To investigate how such an index is acquired and used, protocol data were collected from a programmer who scrolled to off-screen objects from time to time as she worked. These protocol data were modeled using Soar, which constrains how the index is constructed. In the model, an index entry is an episodic trace encoded during attention. The trace associates the attention event with a time symbol denoting the event's occurrence. Later, the model can ask itself whether it saw that object by calling to mind an image of the attention event. If this image retrieves a time symbol, then the model infers that the object exists and can reason about bringing the object back into view. Episodic indexing is a theory of these encoding and retrieval processes. It posits that information about attention events is encoded automatically, but that retrieval requires effort and knowledge. Episodic indexing is congruent with a range of results on episodic and temporal codes and recognition and recall processes. It incorporates source monitoring (Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993) and is a simple and pervasive form of long-term working memory (Ericsson & Kintsch, 1995).     

Reid, Kant and the Philosophy of Mind

I suggest a possible rehabilitation of Reid's philosophy of mind by a constructive use of Kant's criticisms of the common sense tradition. Kant offers two criticisms, explicitly claiming that common sense philosophy is ill directed methodologically, and implicitly rejecting Reid's view that there is direct epistemological access by introspection to the ontology of mind. Putting the two views together reveals a tension between epistemology and ontology, but the problem which Kant finds in Reid also infects his own system, as his weaker ontological claims are undermined to such an extent by the necessary reintroduction of self-consciousness that the justification he seeks for reason fails to be reached epistemologically. Plausible solutions to these parallel tensions imply that both Reid and Kant have a pre-systematic concept of mind, and may lead to the conclusion that Reid's method is more economical in the elaboration of an ontology for the philosophy of mind.     

Arousal-Mediated Memory Consolidation: Role of the Medial TemporalLobe in Humans

Although the influence of emotional arousal on declarative memory has been documented behaviorally, the mechanisms underlying arousal-memory interactions and their representation in the human brain remain uncertain. One route through which arousal achieves its effects on memory performance is by regulating consolidation processes. Animal research has revealed that the amygdala strengthens hippocampal-dependent memory consolidation in a limited time window following participation in an arousing task. To examine whether this integrative function of amygdalo-hippocampal structures extends to the human brain, we tested unilateral-temporal-lobectomy patients on an adaptation of a classic paradigm in which levels of physiological arousal at encoding modulate retention over time. Subjects rated emotionally arousing (taboo) and neutral words on an arousal scale while their skin conductance responses (SCRs) were monitored. Recall for the words was assessed immediately and after a 1-hr delay. Both temporal-lobectomy patients and control subjects generated enhanced SCRs and arousal ratings for the arousing words at the time of encoding. However, only control subjects exhibited an increase in memory for the arousing words over time. This group difference in the effect of arousal on the rate of forgetting suggests that the role of medial temporal lobe structures in memory consolidation for arousing events is conserved across species.     

Consciousness in Spinoza's Philosophy of Mind

Spinoza's philosophy of mind is thought to lack a serious account of consciousness. In this essay I argue that Spinoza's doctrine of ideas of ideas has been wrongly construed, and that once righted it provides the foundation for an account. I then draw out the finer details of Spinoza's account of consciousness, doing my best to defend its plausibility along the way. My view is in response to a proposal by Edwin Curley and the serious objection leveled against it by Margaret Wilson and Jonathan Bennett.     

Animal Mind: Science,Philosophy, and Ethics

Although 20^th-century empiricists were agnostic about animal mind and consciousness, this was not the case for their historical ancestors – John Locke, David Hume, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and, of course, Charles Darwin and George John Romanes. Given the dominance of the Darwinian paradigm of evolutionary continuity, one would not expect belief in animal mind to disappear. That it did demonstrates that standard accounts of how scientific hypotheses are overturned – i.e., by empirical disconfirmation or by exposure of logical flaws – is inadequate. In fact, it can be demonstrated that belief in animal mind disappeared as a result of a change of values, a mechanism also apparent in the Scientific Revolution. The “valuational revolution” responsible for denying animal mind is examined in terms of the rise of Behaviorism and its flawed account of the historical inevitability of denying animal mentation. The effects of the denial of animal consciousness included profound moral implications for the major uses of animals in agriculture and scientific research. The latter is particularly notable for the denial of felt pain in animals. The rise of societal moral concern for animals, however, has driven the “reappropriation of common sense” about animal thought and feeling.     

记忆编码之后的情绪对中性词语记忆巩固现象的影响

在被试记忆中性词语之后加入情绪图片,人为地诱发被试的正中负三种情绪,旨在考察情绪通过影响记忆的巩固过程对记忆中性词语的影响。实验结果发现,再认时与正负情绪图片配对的词语再认率显著高于与中性情绪图片配对的词语,且正负两种条件下的再认率差异不显著;性别主效应和交互作用都不显著,即在所有被试中都发现了类似的情绪记忆优势效应。