Determining the Intensity of a Memory :: Biology Essays Research Papers

Determining the Intensity of a Memory Two people can have the same exact experience but remember the event differently. This has always amazed me, especially when I am reminiscing with a friend and our memories of our relationship are slightly different. For example, we went on a road trip to the shore and when I recall the vacation, my first thought is of the car ride and how much fun it was. My friend thinks of our night at Seaside Heights. It isn't that I have repressed the memory of the rickety old rides and carnival games, I just don't think of that part of the vacation first. For some reason, the experience of singing along with our "road trip" cassette tape with our hair blowing in the wind made more of an impression on me. There are obviously different kinds of memories. There are memories concerning facts and figures, learned skills, emotions, faces, survival skills, long term, short term, vacations, etc. All of these types of memories are different for all people, and are different from experience to experience . This is due to the fact that the brain is always changing, and no two situations are identical. This is further clarified by the cliche; "You only get one chance to make a first impression." Once a person has an experience, her brain is permanently altered. Memory is a vast topic and only the very surface will be scratched here. Several areas are mentioned, repressed memories and False Memory Syndrome, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. These topics enabled me to learn how some memories are purposely "forgotten", how memories effect behavior in the aftermath, and what dictates memory storage. Two structures of the brain linked to memory are the hippocampus and amygdala. Both are discussed with respect to their role in memory storage and what trends are noticed in subjects who are damaged in some manner either by experience or for the purposes of research. All this information is used to address the following question. Why are some experiences remembered so clearly and vividly while others are completely forgotten? As I mentioned above in my personal anecdote, some memories seem to be "at the back of the mind" and are not recalled as strongly as others. Repressed memory is an extreme example of this. The person basically forgets a traumatic experience and this is associated with victims of physical and sexual assault, rape, and other devastatingly traumatic experiences. Determining the Intensity of a Memory :: Biology Essays Research Papers Determining the Intensity of a Memory Two people can have the same exact experience but remember the event differently. This has always amazed me, especially when I am reminiscing with a friend and our memories of our relationship are slightly different. For example, we went on a road trip to the shore and when I recall the vacation, my first thought is of the car ride and how much fun it was. My friend thinks of our night at Seaside Heights. It isn't that I have repressed the memory of the rickety old rides and carnival games, I just don't think of that part of the vacation first. For some reason, the experience of singing along with our "road trip" cassette tape with our hair blowing in the wind made more of an impression on me. There are obviously different kinds of memories. There are memories concerning facts and figures, learned skills, emotions, faces, survival skills, long term, short term, vacations, etc. All of these types of memories are different for all people, and are different from experience to experience . This is due to the fact that the brain is always changing, and no two situations are identical. This is further clarified by the cliche; "You only get one chance to make a first impression." Once a person has an experience, her brain is permanently altered. Memory is a vast topic and only the very surface will be scratched here. Several areas are mentioned, repressed memories and False Memory Syndrome, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. These topics enabled me to learn how some memories are purposely "forgotten", how memories effect behavior in the aftermath, and what dictates memory storage. Two structures of the brain linked to memory are the hippocampus and amygdala. Both are discussed with respect to their role in memory storage and what trends are noticed in subjects who are damaged in some manner either by experience or for the purposes of research. All this information is used to address the following question. Why are some experiences remembered so clearly and vividly while others are completely forgotten? As I mentioned above in my personal anecdote, some memories seem to be "at the back of the mind" and are not recalled as strongly as others. Repressed memory is an extreme example of this. The person basically forgets a traumatic experience and this is associated with victims of physical and sexual assault, rape, and other devastatingly traumatic experiences.

The play ‘The Birthday Party’ Analysis

The play ‘The Birthday Party' is about an everyday, domestic lifestyle/ characters with mixed emotions. The whole play is based on a boarding house with one guest, Stanley. It starts off with the owners, Meg and Petey, leading a normal day with Stanley. Two men come to look at the house to stay and Stanley gets nervous. The two men, McCann and Goldberg hold Stanley's birthday party and make it a living hell! Throughout the play McCann shows signs of confusion and innocence at the task-in-hand. However this is not always the case, for example McCann, later on in the play, attempts to strike Stanley with a chair. When McCann and Goldberg arrive at the boarding house in Act 1, McCann states, ‘what are we doing here Nat?' this gives off signals that McCann is there as Goldberg's aid and not a leading figure. As the play goes on, the audience may start to feel sorry for Stanley due to unfortunate circumstances and more hatred and dislike towards Goldberg and McCann for making him feel so negative. McCann: He killed his wife! Goldberg: Why did you kill your wife? Stanley: What wife? (Back turned, facing the audience) The above quote shows how McCann and Goldberg continue to bully Stanley. Pinter uses the language in the above quote as if McCann and Goldberg were ‘pressing' Stanley for information and as if Stanley found it hard to lie whilst looking at them so he turned his back. The prospect of McCann being more innocent may counter the dislike and tempt the audience to feel sorry for McCann as he gets dragged deeper and deeper into the unknown. Pinter does this to, yet again, represents the plays psychotic nature and obscure mentality. Read also Analysis of Characters in Flannery O’Connor’s â€Å"The Life You Save May Be Your Own† At the beginning of act two McCann is said to be sitting at a table tearing newspapers into 5 equal strips. This may make the audience uncomfortable as it is a rather curious thing to do and may make the audience paranoid as to why he is doing this and what he is thinking as it never tells you this in the play. Stanley picks up a strip of paper McCann moves in McCann: Mind that. McCann clearly has a motive for tearing the paper or he wouldn't mind it being touched. It is a fine example of the plays paranormal mentality. Also Pinter wrote McCann's line like this to make the audience uncomfortable as it is a rather subtle, commanding statement. During Stanley's birthday party in act 2, McCann offers to take Stanley's glasses for him during a game of blind mans buff Stanley stand blindfold. McCann backs slowly across the stage to the left. He breaks Stanley's glasses, snapping the frames. McCann picks up the drum and places it in Stanley's path Stanley walks over and puts his foot through it. Here McCann proves to be quite a bully and may convince the audience to feel disgust towards him, due to the audiences feeling towards the main character, Stanley, countering the possible sorrow from earlier on in the play. Pinter may do this to make sure that the audience can never set on a real feeling for McCann which may add to the ‘fog' of confusion surrounding the play. As a conclusion I think that McCann is a character the brings emotion and excitement and you can never really settle on a feeling for him

Pornography Men Possessing Women - 1614 Words

In 1981 Andrea Dworkin, a radical feminist, a supporter of the anti-pornography movement, and writer, released Pornography: Men Possessing Women, later referred to here as MPW. In her book, Dworkin delivers an extensive and emotionally-charged critique of pornography as an industry that profits from the perpetuation of harm against women, analyzing examples of both historical and contemporary pornography to make her case. Key to this analysis is the declaration of male power. According to Dworkin, this power is maintained by men themselves as well as society as a whole through means of reinforcing a metaphysical assertion of self, physical strength, the capacity to terrorize, the power of naming, the power of owning, the power of money,†¦show more content†¦However, no explanation is given for how the connection between pornographic representations and beliefs or physical actions is made. As Demare, Lips and Briere note in their study of the relationship between pornography and violence, as much as we may want it to, correlation does not prove a causal relationship. While MPW demonstrates the prevalence of sexual abuse within pornographic material and within society, the only explanation as to how the consumption of pornography is directly related to violence against women amounts to little more than an extended, poetic variation of â€Å"monkey see, monkey do†. Dworkin’s information on pornography-based violence, as she states in the introduction of her book, is partially based on one-step-removed accounts of pornography by â€Å"only a few of the thousands† of women who she says to have known personally, all of which blame porn as the catalyst of their sexual assault. Other sources include novels, pornographic fiction, excerpts from the biographies of Marquis de Sade and Marilyn Monroe, and excerpts from ‘scientific’ works by Alfred Kinsey and his co-workers - none of which contain a sex-positive perspective on femal e sexuality. Dworkin’s sources, listed in the ‘Notes’ section of her book, are many, and paint a heart-wrenching image of pornography and female heterosexuality at the time of the book’s publication. One cannot deny the extent to which women endured family sexual abuse, rape, battery, and coercion during theShow MoreRelatedA Realm Of Pure Bliss1603 Words   |  7 Pagesoffensive, she immersed herself into the tacit realm of patriarchy, seeking to enlighten and expose the sinister sexual methodologies of man that preserve the role of women as besmirched objects of male indulgence and exploitation. 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