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We collected behavioral evidence to support the hypothesis that video game conditions have varying influences on hippocampus-dependent memory. Results indicate that participants who played in the video game conditions with clear reward mechanisms performed better on a declarative memory task than those who played in the video game conditions without reward mechanisms. Those who reported spending more time gaming weekly also performed the task better than those who reported spending less time gaming weekly, suggesting that gaming might have short-term and long-term effects on the hippocampus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A literary analysis of the play "Hamlet" by William Shakespeare is presented. It examines the theme of and depiction of memory in the play with particular attention given to the political connotations of the concept.

This article examines the Public Act of Acknowledgment of International Responsibility and Recovery of the Memory of María Claudia García de Gelman held in the Uruguayan parliament on 21 March 2012 through a theoretical framework of memory narratives. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights ordered Uruguay to hold the Public Act as part of its February 2011 ruling in the Gelman v. Uruguay case, which condemned its failure to investigate and prosecute individuals responsible for disappearing María Claudia García de Gelman and illegally adopting her baby daughter Macarena, while denying her knowledge of her true identity for over two decades. The Public Act was a memorialising event intended as an act of reparation, which also triggered irruptions of memory in Uruguay, resurfacing memory debates and discussions about the recent past of dictatorship and violence. The Public Act exposed once again the continued antagonisms between memory narratives of violence and justice that have existed in the Uruguayan political and social landscape since 1985. While the Act was an expression of the "state terrorism" narrative, its unfolding resulted in the resurfacing of narratives of "war" and "two demons" in the social and political arenas and of new interpretations of these narratives in light of events and politics in 2012. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commemorations and reparations are central elements of the transitional justice agenda. The inclusion of memory-related measures among the steps that states are expected to take along the transitional process has been progressively translated from the transitional justice domain to the language of international law. Judicial and quasi-judicial human rights instances have required states to make and undertake memorials, commemorations and public acts of remembrance, both as an instrument of reparation for the individual victim and as a mechanism to warn against the repetition of the same abuses in the future. As a result of this trend, memory-related measures have progressively become part of the state obligation to provide reparations to victims. The inclusion of memory-related measures in the scope of the international obligation to repair, however, raises some thorny issues. This review of the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in relation to memory-related orders and analysis of the case of the memorial El Ojo que Llora in Peru critically assesses the emerging trend of using memory-related initiatives as measures of reparation determined by judicial organs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prison literature (littérature carcérale or adab al-sujun) has shed light on censured dimensions of Moroccan postcolonial history. By sharing their personal memories, former political prisoners have triggered a debate on state violence under Hassan II (1961-1999). This exploration of the gendered and relational dimensions of violence and testimony draws on the published memoirs and interviews of Nour-Eddine Saoudi and Fatna El Bouih, two former Marxist-Leninist political prisoners. Specifically, it identifies the means by which Saoudi and El Bouih theorised their personal experience to denounce the system of repression in Morocco. Their testimonies illustrate the role of memory as a transformative site of agency and political imagination, exhibiting hope for a different future by encouraging Moroccans to engage with their dark past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from the assumption that the social management of historical time is a powerful tool in the political definition of reality, this paper analyzes how the history of the Romanian people has been periodized through the course of time. The central argument states that the partitioning system used to periodize the past harbors a hidden agenda, or a particular ideological "implicature", that can be brought to light by analyzing the temporal watersheds selected as defining moments in the history of that community. The paper analyzes the social logic of periodization operating within the Romania national history textbooks, revealing how socio-political conditions determine the temporal structuring of the past. Moreover, it shows how social change, and especially the change of the socio-political regime, leads to a revertebration of the past's symbolic backbone. Dramatic social and political change results in reconfiguring the formal structure of the collective consciousness concerning the past, within which specific events of Romanian history acquire their meaning. In conclusion, the study shows that, although resorting to a system of periodization is indeed a cognitive prerequisite for understanding the past, the reality of the past does not come with an already-there articular structure, so that "carving the (past's) reality at its joints", as Plato put it, is not a possibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article has as its theme the place military settlements hold in the memory of the Russian people since the early 1800s and the reason that this memory is so strong. Among the reasons the author gives are that the settlements directly involved up to one percent of the population, were a model project of future military systems, and involved an enormous portion of the military budget in the 19th century. The article further discusses central themes of the memories: force and violence, as well as outbreaks of resistance to authority. The research for the article was based on recollections as seen through songs, proverbs and anecdotes, some of which are presented in the article.

The article discusses the memory and impact of the 1948 war in Palestine, on the sixtieth anniversary of the event. Topics include memory and commemoration of the event, with a focus on political aspects and commemoration, ideological and cultural traditions, and the reinventing of memory on a political and cultural level, and selective forgetting of events.

A report is presented from a March 7-8, 2013 conference in Munich, Germany on social memory. Topics of presentations given included the role of the subconscious in collective memory, video analyses of gestures and other nonverbal communications, and transmission of collective memory through ballet performance.

The article presents the 2010 report of the section Sociology of the Body and Sports of the DGS, the German Society of Sociology. The author discusses the election of Robert Gugutzer to chairman of the section and reports on membership news as well as on the section's website. Events organized by the section, including meetings at the 35th congress of the DGS in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and a workshop on sociology and memory, are presented.

The article reports on the 2009 conference of the Sociology of Knowledge Section of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie (DGS), held at the University of Bayreuth, in Bayreuth, Germany. The theme of the conference was "The Communicative Construction of Reality." Among the topics addressed was the communicative emergence of memories among Holocaust witnesses.