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Abnormally slow processing of language may be a factor contributing to the poor verbal memory seen in many patients with lesions of the anterior temporal region in the left hemisphere. This possibility was examined by comparing the performance of 12 patients with left temporal-lobe resections (LT), 10 patients with similar lesions in the right hemisphere (RT) and 13 normal control (NC) subjects on a lexical-decision task, a sentence-plausibility-judgement task, and a story-recall task. Stimuli were presented aurally, and, in the latter two tasks, at 5 different speech rates ranging from 125 words per minute (wpm) to 325 wpm. Recall of stories by LT subjects was not abnormally sensitive to the effect of increasing rate, although it was inferior to that by NC subjects at all speeds. LT patients presented aurally but not visually (Frisk and Milner, 1991), suggesting that the left anterior temporal region plays a special role in the processing of speech sounds.

In Part I of this thesis, recognition of natural scenes was tested in 72 patients with unilateral frontal- or temporal-lobe excisions and 32 normal control subjects (NC). The occurrence of a novel scene in the midst of a series of other scenes normally induces forgetting of the scene that had preceded the novel one. This phenomenon was not observed following right frontal- and right temporal-lobe lesions, and was only partially present after left temporal-lobe excisions that included the hippocampus (LTH). These brain regions were thus seen as part of a circuit that codes novel stimuli. In Part 2, recall of lists of words was examined in 77 patients and 12 normal control subjects. Both the left frontal-lobe (LF) and LTH groups recalled fewer words overall than the other groups; their performance was normal, however, when the words were pre-organized into categories and when category labels were supplied during test. In another experiment it was demonstrated that the LF group was impaired when category exemplars were provided together with the category labels, the LTH group being unaffected in this condition. It was concluded that left frontal-lobe lesions may affect retrieval mechanisms.

An Examination of Print and Web Graphics’ Effect on Readers’ Recall Specific research regarding how information graphics, which are defined as charts, maps or diagrams, in print and online affect readers’ recall and understanding of information is scarce at best and at times, even contradictory. Previous print research suggests that information graphics does improve readers’ recall. Online graphics research notes that the freedom of the Web allows readers to learn more efficiently than traditional media. While, other research notes that the Web’s freedom causes users to spend more effort on orienting themselves with the Web site, and therefore, users don’t learn efficiently. This study examined whether the presentation of information graphics affects readers’ recall and found no statistical significance between readers’ recall scores who had read a print graphic and those who read an online graphic. / Department of Journalism

In Part I, recall of spatial location was studied in an incidental-learning situation, where patients with unilateral brain lesions, the amnesic patient, H. M., and normal control subjects were asked to estimate the prices of objects in an array. All patient groups could encode location normally, but patients with right temporal-lobe lesions that included extensive hippocampal removal showed abnormally rapid forgetting. For all groups, and for H. M., location-recall did not differ under automatic and under effortful encoding conditions. It is argued that these results point to the importance of hippocampal-ceocortical interactions in spatial memory. In Part II, patients with frontal-lobe lesions were shown to be impaired in judging the frequency with which words or designs occurred in a list. With words, the deficits were demonstrable for both examiner-provided and self-generated stimuli. This impairment may be attributable either to a disorderly search process or to a deficit in cognitive estimation, or both.

Reliving the past requires the integration of multi-modal sensory details into a coherent mental impression of the initial event. In most people, memory for life episodes, or Autobiographical Memory (AM), is rich in sensory-perceptual elements that provide the vivid impression of travelling back in time. Abundant evidence indicates that the hippocampus plays a central role in AM recollection, but much research is still needed to determine which AM attributes engage the hippocampus at retrieval. My work assessed the relationship between hippocampal function and the perceptual richness of memory episodes. I designed a paradigm that captured the complexity of AM, and that manipulated perceptual richness while controlling for other AM confounds, such as recency, rehearsal, personal relevance, and “story” content. Participants studied and recalled perceptually enriched and impoverished laboratory events (film clips and written narratives, respectively) matched for the complexity of their storyline. An AM condition was also included for comparison. I tested healthy individuals and participants with unilateral medial temporal lobe epilepsy (mTLE), a clinical population with well documented hippocampal damage, on this paradigm. Perceptual richness was greatly reduced in people with mTLE, an effect that was most salient in the perceptually enriched conditions (AM and film clips). In a functional MRI version of this paradigm conducted on healthy individuals, I identified neural regions sensitive to the perceptual richness of AM and laboratory events, which included the anterior portion of the right hippocampus and other regions known to play a role in imagery and visual processing. In patients with right-lateralized mTLE, activation in these brain regions was markedly reduced in all memory conditions, which was consistent with the reduced perceptual richness I observed behaviourally. I reveal a clear relationship between hippocampal function and the perceptual richness of episodic memory, suggesting that the hippocampus plays a central role among brain regions that support the integration of multi-modal details into enriched memory experiences. My findings also advance our knowledge of how pathology and the nature of memory representation affect the neural correlates of episodic memory.

Reliving the past requires the integration of multi-modal sensory details into a coherent mental impression of the initial event. In most people, memory for life episodes, or Autobiographical Memory (AM), is rich in sensory-perceptual elements that provide the vivid impression of travelling back in time. Abundant evidence indicates that the hippocampus plays a central role in AM recollection, but much research is still needed to determine which AM attributes engage the hippocampus at retrieval. My work assessed the relationship between hippocampal function and the perceptual richness of memory episodes. I designed a paradigm that captured the complexity of AM, and that manipulated perceptual richness while controlling for other AM confounds, such as recency, rehearsal, personal relevance, and “story” content. Participants studied and recalled perceptually enriched and impoverished laboratory events (film clips and written narratives, respectively) matched for the complexity of their storyline. An AM condition was also included for comparison. I tested healthy individuals and participants with unilateral medial temporal lobe epilepsy (mTLE), a clinical population with well documented hippocampal damage, on this paradigm. Perceptual richness was greatly reduced in people with mTLE, an effect that was most salient in the perceptually enriched conditions (AM and film clips). In a functional MRI version of this paradigm conducted on healthy individuals, I identified neural regions sensitive to the perceptual richness of AM and laboratory events, which included the anterior portion of the right hippocampus and other regions known to play a role in imagery and visual processing. In patients with right-lateralized mTLE, activation in these brain regions was markedly reduced in all memory conditions, which was consistent with the reduced perceptual richness I observed behaviourally. I reveal a clear relationship between hippocampal function and the perceptual richness of episodic memory, suggesting that the hippocampus plays a central role among brain regions that support the integration of multi-modal details into enriched memory experiences. My findings also advance our knowledge of how pathology and the nature of memory representation affect the neural correlates of episodic memory.

The goal of this thesis is ultimately to answer the two questions raised and left unresolved in Plato’s Protagoras: What is virtue? Is virtue teachable? Following the dramatic order of Plato’s dialogues as outlined by Catherine Zuckert, I intend to show that the Meno returns to the issues raised and left unresolved in the Protagoras, but now with the idea of recollection. My intention is to look at how the idea of recollection, developed and associated with eros in the intervening dialogues, can help explain the nature of virtue and its teachability. I believe that we can come to answer both questions, “What is virtue?” and “Is virtue teachable?” posed in the Protagoras and the Meno by drawing on the ideas of anamnesis and eros as they appear in the Meno, Phaedrus, and Symposium.

Thesis (M. Div. with Concentration : New Testament and Christian ministries)--Emmanuel School of Religion, 2005. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-99).

Thesis (Ph. D.) -- McMaster University, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 91-102). Also available via World Wide Web.