What Are the Key Points of Treatment for Cases of Mild Cognitive Impairment? Based on the Evaluation of Cognitive Function Tasks in the ADASJcog

<b><i>Background/Aims:</i></b> The aims of this study were to identify the degree of atrophy of the hippocampus in image findings and which cognitive function items should be focused on when treating mild cognitive impairment. <b><i>Methods:</i></b> A total of 66 cases with mild cognitive impairment were included in the study over a 1.5-year observation period. MR images were used to assess hippocampal atrophy, and cognitive function was assessed by the ADASJcog test. <b><i>Results:</i></b> In the mild dementia group, there was a hierarchical difference in the 4 cognitive impairments in which each degree was significantly higher hierarchically. In the normally improved group, memory and act dysfunction was significantly improved, and in deteriorated cases, memory, orientation, and act dysfunction increased significantly. The normally improved group tended to have lighter hippocampal atrophy than the deteriorating group. <b><i>Discussion:</i></b> In early treatment of mild cognitive impairment, it is important to focus on which cognitive items to treat, but there are no reports that present them numerically. Because it is not clear, there may be a risk that dementia may progress due to stunned treatment. It became clear that it was meaningful to show it, and it was the orientation and act function. <b><i>Conclusion:</i></b> It was suggested that hippocampal atrophy should be kept within the normal range and that the key treatment was mainly to improve memory and act dysfunction without reducing orientation function.

Young children remember specific transitions but not general groups from structured input

As early as infancy, humans extract patterns from structured input, and demonstrate the ability to distinguish between reliably experienced patterns and new ones. However, the nature of memories that support these behaviors—and how their structure might change across childhood—remains unknown. Here, we ask what children and adults remember after exposure to a continuous stream of shapes: the particular sequence in which the shapes occurred, their higher-level group structure, or both? We showed 5- to 9-year-olds and adults (N=211) a stream of shapes comprising three triplets (groups of three shapes) that always occurred in a fixed order, followed by an old-new memory test including lure sequences that matched the exposure stream on a particular dimension (e.g., group structure). Given the early emergence of simple associative memories that increase in complexity over development, we predicted that the youngest children in our sample would remember specific shape-shape sequences, while older children and adults would additionally represent groups. After accounting for developmental improvements in overall memory, we found all ages were sensitive to specific transitions: Participants responded “old” to lures with intact shape-shape transitions at above-baseline levels. In contrast, order-independent group memory—as measured by “old” responses to shuffled triplets—was only observed in older children and adults. Our results show that while young children form memories for specific aspects of a structured experience, memory for commonalities across events is refined later—underscoring that even after identical experiences, adults and young children form different memories for those events.

Enhancing Organizational Memory Through Virtual Memoryscapes: Does It Work?

Enhancing cognitive memory through virtual reality represents an issue, that has never been investigated in organizational settings. Here, we compared a virtual memoryscape (treatment) – an immersive virtual environment used by subjects as a shared memory tool based on spatial navigation – with respect to the traditional individual-specific mnemonic tool based on the “method of loci” (control). A memory task characterized by high ecological validity was administered to 82 subjects employed by large banking group. Memory recall was measured, for both groups, immediately after the task (Phase 1) and one week later (Phase 2). Results show that (i) in Phase 1, the method of loci was more efficient in terms of recalling information than the to the virtual memoryscape; (ii) in Phase 2, there was no difference. Compared to the method of loci, the virtual memoryscape presents the advantages – relevant for organizations – of being collective, controllable, dynamic, and non-manipulable.

Distinctive Association of the Functional Connectivity of the Posterior Cingulate Cortex on Memory Performances in Early and Late Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment Patients

BackgroundAttempts have been made to explore the biological basis of neurodegeneration in the amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI) stage, subdivided by memory performance. However, few studies have evaluated the differential impact of functional connectivity (FC) on memory performances in early- and late-MCI patients.ObjectiveThis study aims to explore the difference in FC of the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) among healthy controls (HC) (n = 37), early-MCI patients (n = 30), and late-MCI patients (n = 35) and to evaluate a group-memory performance interaction against the FC of PCC.MethodsThe subjects underwent resting-state functional MRI scanning and a battery of neuropsychological tests.ResultsA significant difference among the three groups was found in FC between the PCC (seed region) and bilateral crus cerebellum, right superior medial frontal gyrus, superior temporal gyrus, and left middle cingulate gyrus (Monte Carlo simulation-corrected p &lt; 0.01; cluster p &lt; 0.05). Additionally, the early-MCI patients displayed higher FC values than the HC and late-MCI patients in the right superior medial frontal gyrus, cerebellum crus 1, and left cerebellum crus 2 (Bonferroni-corrected p &lt; 0.05). Furthermore, there was a significant group-memory performance interaction (HC vs. early MCI vs. late MCI) for the FC between PCC and bilateral crus cerebellum, right superior medial frontal gyrus, superior temporal gyrus, and left middle cingulate gyrus (Bonferroni-corrected p &lt; 0.05).ConclusionThese findings contribute to the biological implications of early- and late-MCI stages, categorized by evaluating the impairment of memory performance. Additionally, comprehensively analyzing the structural differences in the subdivided amnestic MCI (aMCI) stages could deepen our understanding of these biological meanings.

Diaspora Literacy, Heritage Knowledge, and Revolutionary African-Centered Pedagogy in Black Studies Curriculum Theorizing and Praxis

The original mission of Black Studies is producing consciousness transforming knowledge, and teaching for social change in close connection with Black communities, not mimicking other disciplines in producing esoteric knowledge for establishment legitimacy in the academy. Two principal pillars for Black Studies curriculum theorizing and praxis have been: (a) knowledge making as (and for) consciousness transformation and (b) social change for (and as) Diaspora literacy knowledge making also refers to the ability to “read” various cultural signs as continuities in African-descended people’s experience. As a foundation for collective cultural agency, Heritage knowledge or group memory, refers to a repository or heritable legacy that makes a feeling of belonging, peoplehood, and communal solidarity as an outcome of education possible. Vèvè A. Clark, scholar of African and Caribbean literature, African American dance histories, and African diaspora theatre, coined the concept of Diaspora literacy in a 1984 paper analyzing allegory in Guadeloupean writer Maryse Condé’s novel, Hérémakhonon, which situated an Afro-Caribbean women’s identity quest in postcolonial West Africa. Clark later revised and expanded the concept to denote a narrator’s or reader’s ability to understand and/or interpret the multilayered meanings of stories, words, and other folk sayings within any given African diaspora community. Heritage knowledge takes the unjust system out of the center and puts the Africanity of group memory, the Black perspective, which is the cultural foundation that generates people’s collective cultural agency, at the center. While Heritage knowledge is a cultural birthright of every human being, the experience of Blackness as “ontological lack” obstructs and denies African people’s humanity and agency. These conceptual tools and revolutionary African-centered pedagogy provide opportunities for consciousness transforming education for Black liberation. Such theoretical concepts and praxis in Black Studies are neglected in curriculum theorizing discourse and praxis. This is so even though curriculum is viewed as racial text and reconceptualists focus on autobiography, subjectivity, identity, transformation, and more to define curriculum as a process (currere) not an object of study. Likewise, curriculum theorizing has yet to become an identifiable subfield within the transdiscipline of Black or Africana Studies, notwithstanding decades of institutionalizing curricula in higher education since the 1980s, including a National Council of Black Studies curriculum framework. Because African-descended people’s continent of origin and history, as well as Black children, their families, and teachers have been maligned in society, the radical introduction of African content in Afrocentric curriculum and pedagogy is needed to change the quality of education and to create new understanding of the racial politics of knowledge for all students and teachers. Revolutionary African-centered pedagogy aims to undo “twisted thinking” about Africa; challenge the oppressive educational system’s vision; defend students from self-hatred, and support agency for those who have been marginalized by hegemonic concepts, themes, and curricular ideas. The aim of examining relevant theoretical, epistemological, curriculum, and pedagogical developments in Black Studies and Black education scholarship is to clarify the meaning, significance, and implications of (a) African diaspora/s as a concept in education, political discourse, and method in Black Studies; (b) what deciphering Africanity in Diaspora literacy consciousness and Heritage knowledge reveals about the importance of the Black (Studies) perspective; and (c) revolutionary African-centered pedagogy as a philosophy and method of teaching for consciousness transformation.

The Body as a Source of Meaning in the Culture of Remembrance: The Reputational Entrepreneurship of the Characters of Yugoslav National Heroes

The aim of this paper is to explore the patterns and meanings to be found in the characters of Yugoslav national heroes who met a violent death in World War II. These are heroes who belong to the type of martyr heroes, and their sacrifice is highly rated in all patriotic mythologies. Created to denote the heroism of the chosen, they have sublimated the meaning and symbolism of one remembrance of the war. The death of these national heroes will be analyzed through their official biographies, which served to represent the characters of the National Heroes of Yugoslavia and keep the heroic symbol-names ever present in the collective group memory. Through their characters, a specific wartime experience and the martyr’s death of the national hero who died for the freedom of the Yugoslav peoples, as seen by the victors in this war drama, were transmitted to the citizens of Yugoslavia. Various patterns of wartime heroism (warrior, martyr, leader heroism) were represented as national patriotism, and the fighters and martyrs of the war of national liberation were named. The characteristics of the reputational entrepreneurship of these heroes’ characters are specifically explored, taking into account the characteristics of the discourse through which they were interpreted and presented. On the other hand, the limitations of this discourse provide an opportunity to deconstruct certain common traits of a certain hero type and discover the latent meanings conveyed by the characters of Yugoslav national heroes as actors of a historical-political myth.

Decontextualization of History: Fantasmic Rebuilding of the Soviet Past

This article is devoted to a specific case of identification with the Soviet past, when the latter is not given in mobile and individualized forms of a personal, family or social group memory, but in the canonized form of a socially recognized cultural representation. The article analyses different phenomena in contemporary mass culture (films and television series) and also considers the tendencies of official historical politics. Although contemporary post-Soviet nostalgia may be described as a secondary identification with the cinematic representation of one or another era the conceptual nostalgic framework through which post-Soviet society is often considered must be corrected. This article proposes the correction can be made via the following thesis: the modern Russian subject (en masse) is no longer nostalgic for the Soviet past, instead nostalgic identification is stylistically mediated by the characteristic modes of their representation in the cinema of the corresponding eras. We should talk about a kind of fantasmic identification, mediated by the specific modes of their cultural representation. Keywords: history, nostalgia, melancholia, soviet past, post-soviet subject

Philip Venables and Ted Huffman, Denis & Katya, London, Southbank Centre, Purcell Room, 13–14 March 2020

Oral history is experiencing something of a heyday in the public imagination. The past ten years have seen a proliferation of podcasts – Sarah Koenig's Serial, Brian Reed's S-Town, Jon Ronson's The Butterfly Effect – which revolve around the testimony of ordinary people. Many of their fictional counterparts, most overtly Archive 81, hinge around the very practice of documenting, archiving and interpreting oral histories. BBC radio's oral history The Century Speaks (1999) was broadcast to an audience of millions. In the same year, radio historian Susan Douglas presciently called for a return to orality: ‘a mode of communication reliant on storytelling, listening, and group memory’. Common to these cultural products is a desire to capture a zeitgeist in a peculiarly direct and interpersonal way: through the intimacy of hearing a witness's own voice, oral history media eludes writing and embraces the subjectivity of the spoken and unscripted. To listen to somebody's testimony is to foster a distinctive relationship with them and their past, to receive it in their words and in some sense relive it on their terms.