Retention deficit after d-amphetamine treatment: memory defect or performance change?

Retention deficits in discrete trial delayed alternation and delayed matching to sample tasks following administration of d-amphetamine have been interpreted to support the view that arousal facilitates the decay of information from shortterm memory (STM) (Kesner, 1973). But since amphetamine causes numerous changes in performance, alternative explanations of the deficit are also plausible. In an attempt to separate drug effects on memory from those on performance, the effects of d-amphetamine on spatial memory in the radial maze were studied in rats. The unusually long span of accurate working memory in this setting permits drug administration within the retention interval as well as prior to the to-be-remembered event (TBRE). In rats tested at a 5-hr retention interval d-amphetamine (2 mg/kg) disrupted retention when given 0.5 hr before or 4.5 hr after the TBRE, but the same treatment 0 or 2 hr after the TBRE or 3 hr before the TBRE was without effect. At a 5-hr retention interval 3 mg/kg d-amphetamine impaired performance if given 2 hr after the TBRE, but not when given 0 hr after the TBRE or 3 hr before the TBRE. However, when the retention interval was lengthened to 7 hr, administering 3 mg/kg d-amphetamine 2 hr after the TBRE did not disrupt performance. The effects of d-amphetamine on spatial memory are best explained in terms of the well established effects of the drug on motor activity and appetite. Similar changes in performance may account for the \"memory\" impairments observed after amphetamine treatment in other tasks.     

The Availability of Heidegger?s Later Thought

Beginning with his work in the mid-1930s, Heidegger's later thought is generally considered to pose severe interpretative difficulties, even for those well acquainted with Being and Time. It is often claimed that his later thought either defies reconstruction because of its arcane nature or that it should not be reconstructed because doing so compromises its subtleties. It is argued that this 'availability problem' with Heidegger's later thought is not insurmountable, at least not with regard to one of its major strands, his views on the relation of art to truth. An interpretation of 'The Origin of the Work of Art' is proposed that views its major arguments as extensions of Heidegger's view on truth and the nature of worlds in Being and Time. To this end, a new account of the relationship of two pairs of terms crucial to the understanding of the ontological significance of the work of art and its truth is offered: (a) 'earth' and 'world' and (b) 'concealment' and 'un-concealment'. What emerges is a Kant-like claim that a necessary condition for the possibility of worlds is that things stand to be taken up into worlds in virtue of a character they have abstracted from their involvements in any one world. Artworks, if they are 'true' art, show this by allowing the thing that they are to support a wide range of possible understandings, displaying the fact that no one set of understandings can exhaust the 'thingly' nature of the work. In addition to clarifying that aspect of Heidegger's account of truth that requires un-concealment to depend on residual concealment, this understanding of the structure of the artwork accounts for the power Heidegger ascribes to certain art to inaugurate worlds. I conclude by making some suggestions, against the background of the interpretation of the art essay, on how to understand the 'turn' in Heidegger's thought as a deepening inquiry into the nature of truth.     

Recent Publications In Journals

[Authors are asked to send off-prints of articles in learned journals on subjects relevant to this section. Offprints of articles in books on other publications will not be reported on here since they constiute part of a volume that can be made the subject-matter of a review.]
D ieckmann , H. (Berlin): 'Das Lieblingsmärchen der Kindheit als therapeutisher Faktor in der Analyse' ('The favourite fairy-tale of childhood as a therapeutic factor in analysis')
D ieckmann , H. (Berlin). 'Über das Bewusstsein der Frau im 20. Jahrhundert' ('On women's consciousness in the twentieth centuary')
Dr L orenzo , S ilvia (Rome). 'Il metodo dell'immaginazione attiva nella pratica della Psicologia Analitica' ('Active imagination as a method in the practice of analytical psychology')
F ierz , H. (Zürich). 'Utbildningen i psykoterapi i Schweiz' ('Training in psychotherapy in Switzerland')
M arshak , M. D. (London). 'A psychological approach to mythology II.'
S cott , R. D. and A insworth , P. L. (London). 'The Shadow of the ancestor: a historical factor in the transmission of schizophrenia'
B iäsch , H ans : 'Die Psychologie innerhalb der Vielfalt der Wissenschaften' ('The place of psychology within the multiplicity of the sciences')
K erényi , K arl : 'Hegel e gli Dei della Grecia' ('Hegel and the Greek gods')
Z iegler , A lfred J.: 'Die abendländische Aggressivität' ('Aggression in Western countries')     

Cognitive biases and depression

Compared symptomatically depressed, clinically remitted, and normal controls using cognitive measures designed to be traitlike and statelike in cross-sectional and longitudinal designs, respectively. Remitted depressives and normal subjects did not differ in their attributional biases, endorsement of dysfunctional attitudes, or interpretation of schema-relevant ambiguous events, but both groups differed from symptomatic depressives. Depressive episodes thus affect cognition, but cognitions measured by self-reports are more statelike than traitlike.