The Museum of The Proust Effect

“Which of us is not familiar with those special moments when we are taken by surprise by a tiny sensory stimulus that evokes an intense and emotional memory of an episode from our childhood?”

— Cretien Van Campen, The Proust Effect

THE PROUST EFFECT Jade Innes

Contents Marcel Proust ......................................

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In Search of Lost Time Madeleine Recipe

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Smells in French Literature ..............

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Charles Baudelaire Arthur Rimband Gustave Laubert The Scent Memory Kit

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Synesthesia ..........................................

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Jack d'Albiac & Synesthesia interview

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Sense Memories ..................................

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Senses and Food .................................

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Heston Blumental & Charles Spence "Sound of the Sea" recipe

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Childhood Amnesia ............................

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Viginia Woolf "Sketch of the Past" The Seven Sins of Memory

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Sense Memories & Dementia .............

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Why Music Boosts Brain Activity The Music Memory Box

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The Brain ............................................

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The Amygdalae The Hippocampus

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Essays and Studies .............................

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David Rubin "Autobiographical Memory"

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John T. E. Richardson "Imagery"

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The Breakfast Table Questionnaire

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Dan Cosley et al. "Pensieve: Supporting Everyday Reminiscense"

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Trigger is unexpected >> Sensory in nature >> Evokes involuntary memories

"The brain is a marvelous piece of complex connections and processes, and it stores a huge amount of information, even memories you didn’t know you still had. I am not talking about the fictional 90% of 'unused' space that some people still seem to believe in, I am really talking about things you can test right here, right now.

We have millions of memories stored, you just don’t know you have them until something triggers them. Usually you are not bothered by the memory because there is no reason for your brain to bring it to your attention." — Mayarra, Art Memory Forum.

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Marcel Proust Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental novel À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time; earlier translated as Remembrance of Things Past), published in seven parts between 1913 and 1927.

He is considered by many to be one of the greatest authors of all time.

In In Search of Lost Time (also known as Remembrance of Things Past), author Marcel Proust uses madeleines to contrast involuntary memory with voluntary memory. The latter designates memories retrieved by “intelligence,” that is, memories produced by putting conscious effort into remembering events, people, and places. Proust’s narrator laments that such memories are inevitably partial, and do not bear the “essence” of the past. The most famous instance of involuntary memory by Proust is known as the “episode of the madeleine,” yet there are at least half a dozen other examples of this in In Search of Lost Time.

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No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. ... Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it? ... And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before mass), when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it. And all from my cup of tea.

— Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time

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125g sugar 125g flour 100g butter 2 eggs 1 pinch salt icing sugar

preperation time 25 mins cooking time 1 hour

Heat the oven to 180°C (160° fan) 350°F gas 4. Butter 24 madeleine tins.

Beat the butter and sugar in a mixing bowl until creamy. Beat in the eggs until they are blended.

Stir in the flour and. Cover the bowl and chill for 1 hour.

Spoon into the tins and bake for about 15 minutes, until golden. Cool in the tins for a few minutes, then place on a wire rack to cool completely.

Sift over a little bit of icing sugar just before serving.

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"They remind me of those cheap cakes that came in a clear plastic tub that you could get from Woolies. They were just golden syrup cakes, but my mum used the tubs for everything. I remember for my first food tech lesson, she put my ingredients in one of the tubs." — Sean Reece, 22, Heathfield, UK

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Smells in French Literature

Smell is an ancient sense. Odours are molecules, after all, and olfaction is just the vertebrate version of chemical sensing. Despite the ubiquity and deep roots, the importance of olfaction is easy to ignore.

According to psychologist Johan Lundstrom, PhD, there are two big reasons why. The first is a lack of words. We can create rich descriptions of objects by expressing their colours, shapes, sizes and textures.

Sounds come complete with volume, pitch and tone. Yet it’s almost impossible to describe a scent without comparing it to another.

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Charles Baudelaire Correspondences La Nature est un temple où de vivants piliers Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles; L’homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles Qui l’observent avec des regards familiers.

Comme de longs échos qui de loin se confondent Dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité, Vaste comme la nuit et comme la clarté, Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se répondent.

II est des parfums frais comme des chairs d’enfants, Doux comme les hautbois, verts comme les prairies, — Et d’autres, corrompus, riches et triomphants, Ayant l’expansion des choses infinies, Comme l’ambre, le musc, le benjoin et l’encens, Qui chantent les transports de l’esprit et des sens.

Nature is a temple in which living pillars Sometimes give voice to confused words; Man passes there through forests of symbols Which look at him with understanding eyes.

Like prolonged echoes mingling in the distance In a deep and tenebrous unity, Vast as the dark of night and as the light of day, Perfumes, sounds, and colors correspond.

There are perfumes as cool as the flesh of children, Sweet as oboes, green as meadows — And others are corrupt, and rich, triumphant, With power to expand into infinity, Like amber and incense, musk, benzoin, That sing the ecstasy of the soul and senses.

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Parfum Exotique Quand, les deux yeux fermés, en un soir chaud d’automne, Je respire l’odeur de ton sein chaleureux, Je vois se dérouler des rivages heureux Qu’éblouissent les feux d’un soleil monotone; Une île paresseuse où la nature donne Des arbres singuliers et des fruits savoureux; Des hommes dont le corps est mince et vigoureux, Et des femmes dont l’oeil par sa franchise étonne.

Guidé par ton odeur vers de charmants climats, Je vois un port rempli de voiles et de mâts Encor tout fatigués par la vague marine, Pendant que le parfum des verts tamariniers, Qui circule dans l’air et m’enfle la narine, Se mêle dans mon âme au chant des mariniers.

When, with both my eyes closed, on a hot autumn night, I inhale the fragrance of your warm breast I see happy shores spread out before me, On which shines a dazzling and monotonous sun; A lazy isle to which nature has given Singular trees, savory fruits, Men with bodies vigorous and slender, And women in whose eyes shines a startling candor.

Guided by your fragrance to these charming countries, I see a port filled with sails and rigging Still utterly wearied by the waves of the sea, While the perfume of the green tamarinds, That permeates the air, and elates my nostrils, Is mingled in my soul with the sailors’ chanteys.

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Arthur Rimbaud Roman I On n'est pas sérieux, quand on a dix-sept ans.

- Un beau soir, foin des bocks et de la limonade, Des cafés tapageurs aux lustres éclatants!

- On va sous les tilleuls verts de la promenade.

Les tilleuls sentent bon dans les bons soirs de juin!

L'air est parfois si doux, qu'on ferme la paupière; Le vent chargé de bruits — la ville n'est pas loin A des parfums de vigne et des parfums de bière....

When you are seventeen you aren't really serious.

- One fine evening, you've had enough of beer and lemonade, And the rowdy cafes with their dazzling lights!

- You go walking beneath the green lime trees of the promenade.

The lime trees smell good on fine evenings in June!

The air is so soft sometimes, you close your eyelids; The wind, full of sounds, — the town's not far away Carries odours of vines, and odours of beer...

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Le Buffet C'est un large buffet sculpté ; le chêne sombre, Très vieux, a pris cet air si bon des vieilles gens; Le buffet est ouvert, et verse dans son ombre Comme un flot de vin vieux, des parfums engageants; Tout plein, c'est un fouillis de vieilles vieilleries, De linges odorants et jaunes, de chiffons De femmes ou d'enfants, de dentelles flétries, De fichus de grand'mère où sont peints des griffons; - C'est là qu'on trouverait les médaillons, les mèches De cheveux blancs ou blonds, les portraits, les fleurs sèches Dont le parfum se mêle à des parfums de fruits.

- O buffet du vieux temps, tu sais bien des histoires, Et tu voudrais conter tes contes, et tu bruis Quand s'ouvrent lentement tes grandes portes noires.

It is a wide carved cupboard; the dark oak, Very old, has taken on the pleasant quality of old people; The cupboard is open, and gives off in its shadow Delightful odours like a draught of old wine; Crammed full, it is a jumble of strange old things, Of sweet-smelling yellow linen, bits of clothing Of women or children, of faded laces, Of grandmother kerchiefs embroidered with griffins; - There you would find medallions, locks Of white or blond hair, portraits, dried flowers Whose smell mingles with the smell of fruit.

- O cupboard of old times, you know many stories, And you would like to tell your stories, and you murmur When your big black doors slowly open.

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Odour was given special status by Baudelaire and others because of its “bewildering power to evoke the past� as Henry Corbin put it. And it will come to no surprise that when describing smells, poets and writers thought about all the fragrance of loved ones. In a time when few if any photographs were available, scented objects offered a means of evoking memories of a loved one. Corbin illustrated this nicely with a number of excerpts from the correspondence between Gustave Flabert and his lover Louise Colet. Not only did they exchange written letters, but as time passed also added mementos such as handkerchiefs, gloves and scented locks of hair. Flaubert describes this process in the following fragments taken from letters written in August and September 1846.

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Gustave Flaubert extracts

August 6

"I look at your slippers, your handkerchief, your hair, your portrait. I reread your letters and breathe their musky perfume."

August 9

"I’ll take another look at your slippers again... I think I love them as much as I do you... I breathe their perfume, they smell of verbena—and of you in a way that makes my heart swell."

August 11

"In a daydream I live in the folds of your dress, in the fine curls of your hair. I have some of those here: how good they smell! If you knew how I think of your sweet voice—of your shoulders and their fragrance that I love."

August 13

"Your mitten is here. It smells sweet, making me feel that I am still breathing the perfume of your shoulder and the sweet warmth of your bare arms."

August 15

"Tell me if you use verbena; do you nor put it on your handkerchiefs? Put some on your slip. But no—do not use perfume, the best perfume is yourself, your own fragrance."

August 27-28

"Thank you for the little orange blossom. Your whole letter smells pleasantly of it."

September 20

"A thousand kisses... on those long curl papers; I sometimes breathe a little of their odour in the small slipper with the blue slashes, because it is there that I have packed away the lock of hair; the mitten is in the other one, next to the medal and beside the letters."

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The Scent Memory Kit Inspired by the use of smells in literature, the Smell Memory Kit (smk) is an innovative tool to capture the most important moments of your life as smell evokes memory in a way that no other sense can.

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The Concept Our society and culture have traditionally been dominated by the visual in a world of total antiepsis.

However vision distances us clearly from the object. We frame “views� in pictures and camera lenses; the likelihood of an intellectual response is considerable. By contrast, smells surround us, penetrate the body and permeate the immediate environment so that our responses are much more likely to involve strong affect.

The creators think that it is time to start creating the tools for the most effective and most emotional snapshots ever. Capturing and preserving your dearest and most important memories in a much deeper way than ever before, using only your sense of smell.

The Smell Memory Kit has been invented and developed by the famous smell scientist Sissel Tolaas (sssl) in close cooperation with Supersense.

Based on an increasing selection of Ampules containing a variet of abstract smells, it uses very carefully selected components from the world famous sssl smell archive.

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How It Works Abstract smells are smells that have not yet been connected with any memories so far. The smk enables you to carry these smells with you, perfectly protected in the metal smell memory amulet, designed by our friend, the acclaimed designer Tino Valentinitsch. Whenever you want to eternally record and memorize a moment, you just break open the smell kit ampule, release the abstract smell molecules and take a deep breath.

From now on this smell will bring back the memory and the emotion of this very moment each and every time you open another of the same ampules. The ampules are part of the sssl Lab database and can be reordered endlessly from either Super Sense Lab Vienna or sssl Lab Berlin.

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Sense Memories

"The smallest sensory impressons seem to slip through the cracks of my memory to bing back events that seemed long forgotten, and which not appear, large and real, in my consciousness. Not only do images appear, but sooner or later also sounds, smells, tastes, and the movements I made, the feeling of being touched by other people, sometimes even the details of the colour of a collar that someone was waring or tha tiny, irreverent wisp of the eyebrown lying horizontal above someone's eyes. Not only do I remember being there, but I also feel being there, even with a sense of conracting muscle fibres. Just like in those days, emotions bubbe up through my stomach and seize my thoughts."

— Cretien Van Campen, The Proust Effect

The following pages are collected stories via different means for example poster responses, word of mouth and on online platforms such as Gumtree and Yahoo Answers. All submitters are aware of the use of the content, and those wishing to remain anonymous, being so. Although most of the time the act of sense triggering memories is involuntary memories, the stories themselves are a result of the voluntary.

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Anthea Burrell, East Hoathly, UK.

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When I was a child, I used to visit a dentist near a brewery. It was in the early days of the nhs and I’m sure my dentist was into making money because on virtually every visit I had to have a filling (which was probably completely unnecessary).

There would usually be the smell of brewing in the air. Consequently whenever I go shopping in Lewes and Harvey’s Brewery is "letting off steam", I am immediately transported back to uncomfortable times in my West Midland childhood.

I am immediately transported.

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Bianca Di Trana, Cross In Hand, UK.

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I have this picture of us in Florida, and we were going to move there, and we looked at schools while we were there, also seeing Disneyland, and we spent alot of time in sports shops and places like that.

My dad bought me an Florida Marlins baseball bat, ball, flag and glove and my brother got a Cincinnati set too. We played baseball most evenings. Now, everytime I go into a large open sports field in certain weather (evening or sunny or early morning) I remember it. I’ve also got a collection of baseballs since then and when you use them they have a certain scent to them...

if I smell it, I remember that field again.

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Jade Innes, Bristol, UK.

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Going to Madrid was the first time that I had been abroad outside of a school trip. My boyfriend had bought me the flights and hotel for Christmas and chose the hotel as it was right next door to the Reina Sofia, so we could go see Picasso’s Guernica, which is my favourite painting.

This photo is the view from the Metro exit down the road from our hotel; the first thing that we saw of the actual city.

I remember at this moment, the heat hit me really hard and it felt as if the sea should be located just behind those buildings. I had been to the South of France so I had experienced slightly warmer climates before, but the waves of the heat coming off the road, were the most dense that I had ever seen Every time from then on when I see waves of heat...

my mind takes me back to that moment.

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George, Lewes, UK.

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I get taken right back to when me and my parents moved to Spain for a short while to run a business.

I think about how me and my mum had to go out there before my father as he had to sort some things out before hand, so we went a few days before him.

When me and my mother arrived it was all go. We was met by a lovely Spanish lady that ran a property company, she went out of her way and took us to get some food shopping. The smells that I will always remember was while walking into the Spanish supermarket; sweet bread and a mixture of lovely meats and cheeses. It stands out because it's very different from British supermarkets, but the smell always puts a smile on my face.

So we got some bits then got dropped off at the place we were staying at, I remember saying "lets go out for lunch and a walk". My mother agreed and said that it was a good plan. I remember walking down this old street almost silent feeling the raging heat on the back of my neck. I looked up and all I could see was a bright blue sky and the sun beating down on the road. As I looked down, I could feel the sweat dripping off my face. As it hit the pavement it almost evapourated straight away.

So we found a lovely little place to have some lunch, we didn't pick anything lavish but to this day I can still see what we ordered and the smell. It still makes me hungry going back and thinking about the memory. We ordered Spanish potato soup and I remember that my mum was a bit worried that day.

I think it was because it had been a long day for her however, we both enjoyed the soup.

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Dini Hairuddin, Bristol, UK.

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My parents used to turn on music while on road trips. I remember the most by George Michael, Careless Whisper and they played the song on repeat.

This may almost impossible but I think I could still recall my age when the first time they play the music, I was 4! I think we were going to Indonesia from Penang by train and then across by ferry. It was lovely! My parents used to spend so much time with us. Not anymore though.

So everytime I overheard the song somewhere or in some place, it's almost like I was there again, on a train from Kuala Lumpur to Penang and remembered that my dad almost missed the train for getting us food. I could see it and I dont know, it felt heavy because then I'll be reminded that my family isn't like that anymore. Everyone's minding their own business.

I was there again.

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Claire Innes, East Hoathly, UK.

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Whenever I hear the song Time of My Life from the soundtrack of "Dirty Dancing", it brings back very happy memories of my holiday in Tenerife, even though it was about 26 years ago.

It was the last song I danced to in the hotel club house whilst waiting for the coach to take me and my now husband to the airport, and can still picture the bad and dancefloor now.

This picture i of me in a hired Jeep in the mountains, after attemping to drive a left hand drive for the first time. That was a rather dodgey experience!

It brings back very happy memories.

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Synesthesia

“The disadvantage if you’re a musician could be that it’s very overwhelming. If you’re in a group or a choir or whatever and everyone is singing together, I would imagine that you’re not just hearing one colour but there’s a whole rainbow of colours coming into your head and competing — it’s basically just a sensory overload.”

— Lorde

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Synesthesia is a condition in which one sense (for example, hearing) is simultaneously perceived as if by one or more additional senses such as sight.

Another form is synesthesia joins objects such as letters, shapes, numbers or people’s names with a sensory perception such as smell, colour or flavour.

The word synesthesia comes from two Greek words, syn (together) and aisthesis (perception). Therefore synesthesia literally means “joined perception.�

Synesthesia can involve any of the senses. Some more uncommon forms can include hearing sounds in response to smells, who smell in response to touch, or who feel something in response to sight. Just about any combination of the senses is possible. There are some people who possess synesthesia involving three or even more senses, but this is extremelly rare.

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Kanye West David Hockney Marylin Monroe Avey Tare Vincent Van Gogh Lorde Billy Joel Stevie Wonder Pharrell Williams Jimi Hendrix W.A. Mozart St. Vincent Mary Jane Blige 61

Jack d’Albiac & Synesthesia

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Jack d’Albiac is a musician from Brighton. He creates a range of unusual electronic music, as well as releasing an edm album called Analogy in 2015 as “Ghostie”. Now working under the name of simply “d’Albiac”, his strange electronic theme still shines through, though steering away from his original Ambient Techo sound. He particuarly works with lo-fi and analogue processes.

How would you describe Synesthesia? And is it conscious or involuntary?

Synaesthesia, to me, is when the stimulation of one sense produces a perceived secondary stimulation of another sense. For example, one with synaesthesia may hear a certain sound and then associate it with a colour, a visual idea, a sense of touch or even a certain taste. It is involuntary for me, but how deeply I notice or pay attention to these secondary stimulations is a choice.

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Describe your own Synesthesia.

I have always perceived numbers, letters and words to be (literally) “coloured” in a certain way. Names of people are a good example. Your forename “Jade” is very green to me and “Innes” is a silvery, pearly sort of colour. I consider my name, “Jack”, to be red, as would similar names such as “Jake” or “James”.

Groups of numbers are coloured in rigidly define groups; numbers 20-29 are green, 30-39 are red-orange, 40-49 are more burgundy, 50-59 is bright red, 60 through to 89 is varying shades of grey and 90-99 is almost completely black, maybe a touch of dark blue/purple.

Music as well evokes some abstract combinations of colours and sometimes even shapes. I won’t make a list of examples, but I will say that my housemate was playing drum n’ bass records in my living room last night and I perceived lots of long, thin rectangular shapes (like buildings, almost) coloured mostly with silver with splashes of green. Shapes are less common but for some reason drum n’ bass evokes those kind of shapes clearly.

Music with strong rhythmic content tends to do so.

All in all, my synaesthesia is mostly a relationship between what I hear or read and visual ideas brought about as a result.

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Does it feel like you physically experience the effects of your Synesthesia or is it almost in your ‘minds eye’, alike a memory?

The latter. Even though I could not pinpoint to you if and what memories have influenced the effects, they’re more of a mental projection rather than something I actually see in front of me.

Does it consume your thoughts?

Does it distract you in your daily life? If so, give an example of an experience, whether a nuisance or an advantage.

Fairly benign to be honest. In fact, I only found out a few years ago that 1) It was unusual for people to experience what I was experiencing and 2) There was a name for it. Up until then, I didn’t even think about it enough to make assumptions as to wherever or not other people experienced the same sensations as me.

How was your Synesthesia diagnosed? Were you aware that not everyone experienced it?

Through reading about it online and then doing a few online ‘tests’. I can’t say I was diagnosed by an individual who is knowledgeable in the field, but through my own research and through explaining what I experience to people, I am certain I have it.

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 Very much so.

Does Synesthesia influence your music at all?

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What is your understanding the Proust Effect?

When stimulation of certain senses evoke certain memories. For example, a certain smell may trigger a memory from another time or place when you experienced that same smell.

Is the Proust Effect somewhat linked with Synesthesia? Can it be triggered by memories?Â

I think they’re quite different from one another.

Synaesthesia is more abstract than that.

When was the last time you intensely experienced the Proust Effect? What triggered it, what was the memory and explain how you felt?

Just the other day, I was walking home from work and I smelled somebody smoking a very strong spliff and that smell always reminds me greatly of my neighbour’s house when I used to go round there when I was younger!

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And finally, Kanye claims that he has Synesthesia, do you think he does or is he just saying that for attention?

Quite possibly. Who knows? Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t or maybe he believes he does but doesn’t match the ‘criteria’ if you will. Synaesthesia exemplifies the ‘explanatory gap’, i.e. ‘is your red the same as my red?’.

I’m curious as to what Kanye West said and in what interview. I might look into it myself.

The only musician I know to have synaesthesia is Richard D. James, also known as ‘Aphex Twin’. He made an album called ‘Selected Ambient Works Vol.2’ which he has said in interviews was influenced by his own synaesthesia and also lucid dreams. There’s no formal tracklisting anywhere on the album packaging. Instead, there are six pie-charts representing the six sides of the vinyl version of the album with different ‘slices’ representing the different tracks and their lengths. With each ‘slice’ of each pie is a corresponding picture and I imagine the subjects of the pictures were influential for the music on that album. The first two tracks are informally known as ‘Cliffs’ and ‘Radiator’ and you can imagine how his synaesthesia effected the music.

Actually, Kanye West once sampled an Aphex Twin song (without his permission) in one of his songs. It is entirely possible Kanye liked Aphex Twin enough to read up about him or have somebody tell him about the album just described, thus maybe diagnosed himself with synaesthesia.

Besides, I’ve heard more outrageous lies. Like Kim Jong Un, leader of North Korea, supposedly never urinates or defecates and that when he first played golf, he scored 11 hole-in-ones in a row.

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Senses & Food

"Cooking is probably the most multi-sensual art. I try to stimulate all the senses."

— Lorde Ferran Adrià, El Bulli restaurant, Spain

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Heston Blumenthal & Charles Spence

Professor Charles Spence is the head of the Crossmodal Research Laboratory. He is interested in how people perceive the world around them. In particular, how our brains manage to process the information from each of our different senses (such as smell, taste, sight, hearing, and touch) to form the extraordinarily rich multi-sensory experiences that fill our daily lives. His research focuses on how a better understanding of the human mind will lead to the better design of multisensory foods, products, interfaces, and environments in the future. His research calls for a radical new way of examining and understanding the senses that has major implications for the way in which we design everything from household products to mobile phones, and from the food we eat to the places in which we work and live.

Charles and his group are currently working on problems associated with the design of foods that maximally stimulate the senses (together with Heston Blumenthal, chef of The Fat Duck restaurant in Bray).

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Many fast-moving consumer goods companies have already started to play with the mapping between food colour and flavour. Think only of green tomato ketchup, or the recently introduced Fruity Smarties or Confused Skittles, where the colours and flavours of the individual candies have been deliberately mixed up. Similarly, some of the chefs that I work with, such as Heston Blumenthal, have also started to play with their diners’ expectations through dishes such as the ‘beetroot and orange jelly’ dish. When the waiter brings this dish to the table they will recommend that the diner should start with the beetroot. People naturally go straight for the purple-coloured jelly. However, beetroots turn orange on cooking, while Heston uses blood oranges that naturally have that dark purple colour.

Heston Blumenthal — Orange and Beetroot Jelly

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In one study, Heston Blumenthal and Charles Spence demonstrated that people rate bacon-andegg ice-cream as tasting significantly more bacony when listening to the sound of sizzling bacon than to a farmyard of clucking chickens. In a second experiment, people rated oysters eaten while listening to the "sound of the sea" (i.e. the sound of seagulls squawking and waves crashing gently on the beach) as tasting significantly more pleasant than oysters eaten while listening to the farmyard noises. Taken together, these results (Spence & Shankar, 2010) highlight just how dramatically environmental sounds can influence (or bias) people’s perception of food.

These findings led directly to the introduction of the "Sound of the Sea" dish at The Fat Duck.

Diners are presented with a plate of food that is reminiscent of a beach (with foam, seaweed, and sand all visible on the plate). The dish also comes with a mini iPod hidden inside a sea-shell, with the earphones poking out. Diners are encouraged to insert the headphones (whereupon they hear the "Sounds of the Sea" soundtrack) before starting to eat. The dish is currently the signature dish on the tasting menu. Wearing headphones also has the advantage that is focuses the diners’ attention on the food itself.

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Heston Blumenthal — 'Sound of the Sea'

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"Sound of the Sea" recipe

Ponzu: 65 grams sake 2 fresh yuzu 1 fresh sudachi 700 grams mirin 525 grams rice wine vinegar 550 grams tamari 110 grams ‘thin mouth’ soy sauce (usu kuchi shoyu) 10 grams katsuo bushi (dried bonito flakes) 15 grams kombu (dried kelp), browned on both sides over an open flame

Miso Oil: 250 grams red miso paste 100 grams white miso paste 5 grams cod liver oil 250 grams grapeseed oil

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Pickled Dulse Seaweed: 15 grams white wine vinegar 40 grams rice wine vinegar 40 grams water 30 grams sugar 2 grams salt 50 grams dried dulse seaweed, washed in cold water, picked over, and cut into 4 cm strips

“Sand:” 10 grams grapeseed or groundnut oil 20 grams shirasu (baby eels or anchovies) 10 grams kombu 80 grams N-Zorbit M tapioca maltodextrin* 25 grams ice-cream sugar cone (biscuity type), ground 30 grams panko breadcrumbs, fried in grapeseed oil until golden brown, then lightly ground 2 grams blue shimmer powder 3½ grams brown carbonized vegetable powder Sea salt * This is essential to achieve the sand-like texture.

National Starch developed it specifically to increase the volume of dry mixes and to absorb fats and oils to form a light, dry powder. Other types of tapioca maltodextrin don’t absorb fat in the same way.

Hijiki Seaweed: 150 grams dried hijiki seaweed 25 grams usu kuchi shoyu (‘thin mouth’ soy sauce) 5 grams mirin

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“Seashells:” 1 Japanese lily bulb

“Sea:” 125 grams carrot, finely sliced 125 grams onion, finely sliced 75 grams fennel, finely sliced 50 grams leek, white and pale green parts only, finely sliced 50 grams shallots, sliced 5 grams garlic, finely sliced 25 grams vermouth 100 grams Chardonnay 250 grams razor clams, purged in several changes of fresh water 300 grams mussels, purged in several changes of fresh water and beards removed 225 grams cockles, purged in several changes of fresh water 1.75 kilograms water 35 grams dried wakame seaweed 20 grams kombu 15 grams flatleaf parsley

Razor Clams: 15 grams rishiri kombu 900 grams low-calcium mineral water 40 grams shiro shoyu (white soy sauce) 500 grams live razor clams, purged in several changes of fresh water

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Oysters: 8 native oysters

For the Final Sauce: 30 grams shiro shoyu (white soy sauce) Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Sea Urchins: 8 live sea urchins* *These need to be prepared as near as possible to serving in order to maximize their fragrant floral character.

To Assemble and Serve (per portion): 10 grams “Sand” (from above) 1 level teaspoon fried shirasu (from above) 1 “Seashell” (from above) Ponzu (from above)

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Childhood Amnesia

Virginia Woolf A Sketch of the Past

Born into a privileged English household in 1882, writer Virginia Woolf was raised by free-thinking parents. She began writing as a young girl and published her first novel, The Voyage Out, in 1915. Her nonlinear, free form prose style inspired her peers and earned her much praise. She was also known for her mood swings and bouts of deep depression. She committed suicide in 1941, at the age of 59.

Part of the Bloomsbury Group, Virginia Wolf wrote a autobiographical essay, A Sketch of the Past, talks about her first memories, and how she pieced together the manipulation of early memories through time, through the senses that she experienced within those memories.

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Two days ago — Sunday 16th April 1939 to be precise- Nessa said that if I did not start writing my memoirs I should see be too old.

I should be eighty-five and should have forgotten — witness the unhappy case of Lady Strachey. * As it happens that I am sick of writing Roger’s life, perhaps I will spend two or three mornings making a sketch. There are several difficulties. In the first place, the enormous number of things I can remember; in the second, the number of different ways in which memoirs can be written.

As a great memoir reader, I know many different ways. But if I begin to go through them and to analyse them and their merits and faults, the mornings — I cannot take more than two or three at the most — will be gone. So without stopping to choose my way, in the sure and certain knowledge that it will find itself — or if not it will not matter — I begin: the first memory.

This was of red and purple flowers on a black ground — my mother’s dress; and she was sitting either in a train or in an omnibus, and I was on her lap. I therefore saw the flowers she was wearing very close; and can still see purple and red and blue, I think, against the black; they must have been anemones, I suppose. Perhaps we were going to St Ives; more probably, for from the light it must have been evening, we were coming back from London But it is more convenient artistically to suppose that we were going to St Ives, for that will lead to my other memory, which also seems to be my first memory, and in fact it is the most important of all my memories. If life has a base that it stands upon, if it is a bowl that one fills and fills and fills — then my bowl without a doubt stands upon this memory. It is of lying had asleep, half awake, in bed in the nursery at St Ives.

It is of hearing the waves breaking, one, two, one, two, and sending a place of water over the beach; and then breaking, one, two, one, two, behind a yellow blind. It is of hearing the blind draw its little acorn across the floor as the wind blew the blind out. It is of lying and hearing this splash and seeing their light, * Lady Strachey, mother of Lytton, died at the age of eighty-nine, in 1928. In old age she wrote Some Recollections of a Long Life which were very short. This may indicate that by the early 1920’s she had forgotten more than she remembered.

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and feeling, it is almost impossible that I should be there of feeling the purest ecstasy I can conceive.

I could spend hours trying to write that as it should be written, in order to give the feeling which is even at the moment very strong to me. But I should fail (unless I had some wonderful luck); I dare say I should only succeed in having the luck if I had begun by describing Virginia herself. (pages 64- 65)

The next memory — all these colour-and-sound memories hang together at St. Ives — was much more robust; it was highly sensual. It as later. It still makes me feel warm; as if everything were ripe; humming; sunny; smelling so many smells at once; and all making a whole that even now makes me stop — as I stopped then going down to the beach; I stopped at the top to look down at the gardens. They were sunk beneath the road. The apples were on a level with one’s head. These gardens gave off a murmur of bees; the apples were red and gold; there were also pink flowers; and great and silver leaves. The buzz, the croon, the smell, all seemed to press voluptuously against some membrane; not to burst it; but to hum round one such a complete rapture of pleasure that I stopped; smelt; looked. But again I cannot describe that rapture. It was rapture rather than ecstasy.

The strength of these pictures — but sign was always then so much mixed with sound that picture is not the right word — the strength anyhow of these impressions makes me again digress.

Those moments — in the nursery, one the road to the beach — can still be more real than the present moment. This I have just tested. For I got up and crossed the garden. Percy was digging the asparagus bed; Louie was shaking a mat in from of the bedroom door. * But I was seeing them through the sign I saw here — the nursery and the road to the beach. At times I can go back to * The gardener and daily help, respectively, at Monks House, the country home of the Woolfs in Rodmell, Sussex in 1919.

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St Ives more completely than I can this morning. I can reach a state where I seem to be watching things happen as if I were there. That is, I suppose, that my memory supplies what I had forgotten, so that it seems as if it were happening independently, though I am really making it happen. In certain favourable moods, memories — what one has forgotten — come to the top.

Now if this is so, is it not possible — I often wonder — that things we have felt with great intensity have an existence independent of our minds; are in fact still in existence? And if so, will not be possible, in time, that some device will be invented by which we can tap them? I see it — the past — as an avenue lying behind; a long ribbon of scenes, emotions. There are the end of the avenue still, are the garden and the nursery. Instead of remembering here a scene and there a sound, I shall fit a plug into the wall; and listen in to the past. I shall turn up August 1890. I feel that strong emotion must leave its trace; and it is only a question of discovering how we can get ourself again attached to it, so that we shall be able to live our lives through from the start.

But the peculiarity of those two strong memories is that each was very simple. I am hardly aware of myself, but only of the sensation. I am only the container of the feeling of ecstasy, or the feeling of rapture. Perhaps this is characteristic of all childhood memories; perhaps it accounts for their strength. Later we add to feelings must that makes them more complex; and therefore less strong; or if not less strong, less isolated, less complete. But instead of analysing this, here is an instance of what I mean — my feeling about the looking glass in the hall. (pages 66 – 67)

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Lust

Tansience Gluttony

Absent-mindedness Greed

Blocking Sloth

Misattribution Wrath

Suggestibility Envy

Bias Pride

Persistence

Daniel Schacter, Seven Sins of Memory

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Sense Memories & Dementia

Music has been known to affect those with dementia and Alzheimer’s, but why it has an effect on these patients has not always been clear – until now.

A recent study shows that dementia and Alzheimer’s patients can recall memories and emotions, and have enhanced mental performance after singing classic hits and show tunes from movies and musicals – a breakthrough in understanding how music affects those with dementia and Alzheimer’s.

Researchers determined the effect music has on dementia patients, by leading half of the participants through selected songs while the other half listened to the music being played. After the musical treatment, all participants took cognitive ability and life satisfaction tests. which showed how participants scored significantly better when being lead through songs, rather than only listening.

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5 Reasons Why Music Boosts Brain Activity

1. Music evokes emotions that bring memories.

Music can evoke emotion in even the most advanced of Alzheimer’s patients. Neurologist Oliver Sacks says that, “Music evokes emotion, and emotion can bring with it memory… it brings back the feeling of life when nothing else can.” By pairing music with every day activities, patients can develop a rhythm that helps them to the recall the memory of that activity, improving cognitive ability over time.

2. Musical aptitude and appreciation are two of the last remaining abilities in dementia patients.

Linda Maguire, lead author on the study wrote, “Musical aptitude and music appreciation are two of the last remaining abilities in patients with Alzheimer’s.” Because these two abilities remain long after other abilities have passed, music is an excellent way to reach beyond the disease and reach the person.

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3. Music can bring emotional and physical closeness.

In the later stages of dementia, patients often lose the ability to share emotions with caregivers. Through music, as long as they are ambulatory, they can often dance. Dancing can lead to hugs, kisses and touching which brings security and memories.

4. Singing is engaging.

The singing sessions in the study engaged more than just the brain and the area related to singing.

As singing activated the left side of the brain, listening to music sparked activity in the right and watching the class activated visual areas of the brain. With so much of the brain being stimulated, the patients were exercising more mind power than usual.

5. Music can shift mood, manage stress and stimulate positive interactions.

The Alzheimer’s Foundation of America has an entire web page dedicated to music therapy in Alzheimer’s patients. They say that, “When used appropriately, music can shift mood, manage stressinduced agitation, stimulate positive interactions, facilitate cognitive function and coordinate motor movements.” This is because music requires little to no mental processing, so singing music does not require the cognitive function that is not present in most dementia patients.

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The Music Memory Box We often speak about our memories as if we were talking about a computer memory. We ‘save information’ and ‘open files’ from our past. These mental acts are very useful in daily life when people ask us for information. They are even essential for knowing where and who are. Think of people with dementia who love their grip on their lives because they cannot remember who they are and what they just did. Apart from a ‘computer memory’ in the brain, however, people also have a body that receives impressions, such as touch or a kiss, that we later remember with pleasure. Later we not only ‘know’ that we were touched, but we also ‘feel’ how we were touched and even what emotions is aroused.

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When visiting her grandmother Winnie in the years she suffered with dementia, Chloe Meineck was amazed to find that despite the jumbled and unreliable nature of her memories, Winnie’s musical recall was impeccable. She would sit at the piano and play dozens of hymns by heart, with the music evoking emotions and memories that were previously inaccessible or incoherent.

This experience inspired Chloe to begin work on her craft and technology residency project: the Music Memory Box a wooden box containing objects chosen by the owner to represent friends, family and key memories. As each object is picked up and held, the box plays a specific piece of music, encouraging the owner to recall memories from their life.

For this craft and technology residency Chloe worked with groups in day centres to discuss how participants might use the boxes, and what they would want from the object. This informed the development of a kit version of the box, which can be assembled at home with the use of the new Raspberry Pi technology. This film documents some of the moments Chloe spent with the participants, and the development of the box itself, which is inspired by classic wireless radios.

Chloe was chosen to be one of three makers working on this round of craft and technology residencies. Whilst usually based around London and Brighton, Chloe relocated to Falmouth for the duration of the project to work in residence at autonomatic, a research cluster based in Falmouth University’s Academy for Innovation and Research.

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The Brain

Proust wrote that his alter ego Marcel was often in an absent-minded state at the moment that the intense, emotional childhood memories broke into his consciousness. Neurological research has shown that this phenomenon can be attributed to the actions of ‘implicit memory’. According to the American memory researched Joseph LeDoux, emotional events leave traces in two different memory systems: on the one hand, the conscious system which records the facts of events (who, what, where, when), and on the other in the memory system which records the emotions and impressions of the event in the subconscious.

Le Doux described these two systems as the explicit and implicit memory respectively. In the experiences described by Proust, the implicit memory awakened a vague feeling or emotion ("a wonderful feeling of joy") in his conscious mind. This vague feeling was only later recognised by the explicit memory which added place, time, and situation to the feeling and therefore make it concrete. Several brain areas play a key role in this process.

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The Amygdalae The amygdala is an almond shaped mass of nuclei (mass of cells) located deep within the temporal lobes of the brain. There are two amygdalae, one situated in each brain hemisphere. The amygdala is a limbic system structure that is involved in many of our emotions and motivations, particularly those that are related to survival. It is involved in the processing of emotions such as fear, anger, and pleasure. The amygdala is also responsible for determining what memories are stored and where the memories are stored in the brain. It is thought that this determination is based on how huge an emotional response an event evokes.

The amygdala receives sensory information from the thalamus and from the cerebral cortex. The thalamus is also a limbic system structure and it connects areas of the cerebral cortex that are involved in sensory perception and movement with other parts of the brain and spinal cord that also have a role in sensation and movement. The cerebral cortex processes sensory information obtained from vision, hearing, and other senses and is involved in decision-making, problem solving, and planning.

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The Hippocampus The hippocampus is the part of the brain that is involved in memory forming, organizing, and storing. It is a limbic system structure that is particularly important in forming new memories and connecting emotions and senses, such as smell and sound, to memories. The hippocampus is a horseshoe shaped paired structure, with one hippocampus located in the left brain hemisphere and the other in the right hemisphere. The hippocampus acts as a memory indexer by sending memories out to the appropriate part of the cerebral hemisphere for long-term storage and retrieving them when necessary.

Directionally, the hippocampus is located within the temporal lobes, adjacent to the amygdala.

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The activity of the amygdalae, the parts of the brain which add emotional colour to experiences and memories by releasing hormones, are responsible for the sudden awaking of the undefined feeling of joy and happiness at the start of Marcel’s memory. Later, the hippocampus adds substance to the memory by activating memory pathways to the parts of the brain that process the senses. Memories are widely distributed in the brain, and the hippocampus helps in recovering these memories. The hippocampus is essential for our spatial orientation, both when navigating our way through the physical world, when recalling past events, and when imagining future events.

After the implicit memory has broken into Marcel’s consciousness at an unexpected moment with an undefined feeling, his brain goes in search of the origin of the feeling. The physical impressions (tripping on a paving stone, the clattering of a spoon against a plate, the taste of a cake) activate other sensory perceptions via the hippocampus such as images and sounds. From the activated memory pathways the frontal lobe of his brain, which acts as a sort of ‘office manager’ int he brain issuing search instructions, gathers information and makes a judgement as to what goes with that, creating a composition of the past which appears to be the most coherent and consistent. This creates the presentation of the past of which Marcel ultimately becomes aware.

The addition by the hippocampus of the specific sensory context to the undefined feeling retrieved by the amygdalae was demonstrated physiologically by a group of British neuroscientists at University College London, led by Jay Gottfried. Using brain scans, they found, they found significant physiological indications for the Proust Effect in the hippocampus. Memories of an event are distributed across the sensory centres in the brain and are brought together by the hippocampus. The researchers found that when a sense memory occurred, activity could be detected in the hippocampus, the stimulated sensory domain, but also in other sensory domains.

The hippocampus record memory pathways of events. Memory pathways run through different areas of the brain responsible for

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processing sensory information, emotions and actions. A simple sensory stimulus can be enough for the hippocampus to activate the entire pathway. This fact makes it clearer why the simple taste of the madeleine cake triggered a world of sensory and emotional impressions in Marcel.

We can now also answer the question of way smells evoke more emotional childhood memories than other sensory stimuli. The brain scans of the participants in the experiments by Herz et al. described earlier showed that smell stimulus stimulate the amygdalae and the hippocampus more powerfully than images.

The answer to the question therefore that the amygdalae are situated closed to the areas of the brain responsible for smell and taste than to the areas responsible for vision, hearing, and touch.

The amygdalae are in turn situated close to the hippocampus.

Put simply, the neural pathways are shorter and therefore faster.

Smells and tastes therefore recall the past in the dynamic way more quickly thanks to the short distance to the hippocampus.

Touch Taste

Vision

Smell

Hearing

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Essays & Studies

The link between senses and memories has been investigated by many in both the creative and acedemic fields. This chapter contains extracts from essays, books and studies by acedemics.

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David Rubin Autobiographical Memory

Autobiographical memory is a major form of human memory. it is the basis of most psycotherapies, an important repository of legal, historical, and literary information, and, in some views, the source of the concept of self. When it fails, it is the focus of serious complaints in many neurological disorders. This timely book brings together and integrates the best contemporary work on the cognitive psychology of autobiographical memory. Introductory chapters place the study of autobiographical memory in its historical, methodological, and theoretical contexts; chapters reporting original research probe the recollections people have for substantial portions of their lives. Topics include the schematic and temporal organization of autobiographical memory, the temporal distribution of autobiographical memories, and the failures of autobiographical memory in various forms of amnesia.

Autobiographical Memory constitutes the first tutorial in this exciting new area of research. Cognitive psychologists, clinicians, researchers in artificial intelligence, and their students — indeed, anyone interested in the processes that preserve and distort autobiography — will find it a useful resource.

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The Role of Language One way to study the role of language in autobiographical memory is to test sequential bilinguals who learn their two languages at different periods of their lives. By asking sequential bilinguals to recall autobiographical memories from across their lifespan in both of their languages, the extent to which autobiographical memory is stored in a languages as opposed to other forms of representation can be studied. Clinicians have observed that childhood and traumatic memories are more easily accessed in bilinguals’ first language (Aragno & Schalet, 1996; Javier, 1995; Schrauf, 2000), and thus childhood amnesia may be greater for bilinguals tested in their second language. For memories in general (Bugelski, 1997) and for autobiographical memories in particular (Marion & Neisser, 1997), sequential bilinguals tend to recall older memories in the first language.

Schrauf and Rubin (1998, 2000) tested older sequential bilinguals who were highly proficient and literate in both Spanish and English. These bilinguals failed to produce older memories when they were cued and asked to respond in their first language.

However, when they were asked about the “internal language” of the memory, that is, the language in which the memory came to them as opposed to the external language of the testing session, their first language produced older memories. Similar findings occurred with Polish-Danish sequential bilinguals who learned Danish in their early 30s and who had become less proficient in Danish had earlier memories when cued in Polish in addition to showing the “internal language” effect. Taken together, these studies show that autobiographical memories are to some extent coded in language or at least have language as a sensory or phenomenological quality (Larsen, Schrauf, Fromholt & Rubin, 2002).

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John T. E. Richardson Imagery

Galton’s “breakfast-table questionnaire” The earliest research of this sort was carried out by Galton (1880; see also 1883, pp. 83p-114), who devised a questionnaire in which respondents were asked to describe the quality of the mental imagery that was elicited when they tried to visualise familiar objects or scenes. The complete questionnaire is show below. Although this instrument is often referred to as Galton’s “breakfast-table questionnaire”, the breakfast table was suggested merely as an example, and the respondents were essentially being invited to think of any specific object or scene. Mostt of the questions were explicitly concerned with visual images, although Question 12 asks the respondents to describe their imagery in other sense modalities, and Question 12 refers to imagery for music. Finally, unlike most modern questionnaires, Galton’s instrument left the respondents free to describe their mental experience in their own words.

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Galton began by approaching his friends in the scientific community, in the belief that they were the sort of people who would be most likely to give accurate responses: “To my astonishment, I found that the great majority of the men of science to whom I first applied, protested that mental imagery was unknown to them, and they looked on me as fanciful and fantastic in supposing that the words 'mental imagery' really expressed what I believed everybody supposed them to mean (p.302)” Galton inferred from this that “scientific men as a class have feeble powers of visual representation”, and this he explained by proposing that “an over-readiness to perceive clear mental pictures is antagonistic to the acquirement of habits of highly generalised and abstract thought” (p.304). However, when Galton approached a wider cross-section of people whom he met “in general society”, he obtained quite different accounts: “Many men and a yet larger number of women, and many boys and girls, declared that they habitually saw mental imagery, and that is was perfectly distinct to them and full of colour. The more I pressed and cross-questioned them, protesting myself incredulous, the more obvious was the truth of their first assertions. (pp. 302-303) Galton concluded that there was considerable diversity in the experience of mental imagery among the general population.

He then set about obtaining responses from a larger sample of 100 of his male acquaintances, of whom the majority were “distinguished in science or in other fields of intellectual work” (p.304).

He found that he could order their responses to the first two questions (concerning illumination and definition) in terms of the vividness of their reported imagery. Galton described a similar distribution of responses which he had obtained from a total of 172 boys taking science classes at the Charterhouse School in London. He also concluded from his investigations that “the power of visualising is higher in the female sex than in male” (Galton, 1883, p.99), but the results that he actually published were based solely upon the responses of men and boys to his questionnaire.

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The Questionnaire

The object of these Questions is to elicit the degree in which different persons possess the power of seeing images in their mind’s eye, and of reviving past sensations.

From inquiries I have made, it appears that there are remarkable variations existing in both in the strength and in the quality of these faculties, and it is highly probable that a statistical inquiry into them will throw light upon more than one psychological problem.

Before addressing yourself to any of the Questions below, think of a definite object — suppose it is your breakfast-table as you sat down to it this morning — and consider carefully the picture that rises before your mind’s eye.

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1

Illumination.

Is the image dim or fairly clear? Is its brightness comparable to that of the actual scene?

2

Definition.

Are all the object pretty well definite at the same time, or is the place of sharpest definition at any moment more contracted than it is in a real scene?

3

Colouring.

Are the colours of the china, of the toast, breadcrust, mustard, meat, parsley, or whatever may have been on the table, quite distinct or natural?

4

Extent of the field of view.

Call up the image of some panoramic view (the walls of your room might suffice), can you fore yourself to see mentally a wider range of it than could be taken in by any single glance of the eyes?

Can you mentally see more than three faces of a die, or more than one hemisphere of a globe at the same instant of time?

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5

Distance of images.

Where do mental images appear to be situated?

Within the head, within the eye-ball, just in front of the eyes, or at a distance corresponding to reality?

Can you project an image upon a piece of paper?

6

Command over images.

Can you retain a mental picture steadily before the eyes? When you do so, does it grow brighter or dimmer? When the act of retaining it becomes wearisome, in what part of the head or eye-ball is the fatigue felt?

7

Persons.

Can you recall with distinctness the features of all near relations and many other persons? Can you, at will cause your mental image of any or most of them to sit, stand, or turn slowly around? Can you deliberately seat the image of a well-known person in a chair and see it with enough distinctness to enable you to sketch it leisurely (supposing yourself able to draw)?

8

Scenery.

Do you preserve the recollection of scenery with much precision of detail, and do you find pleasure in dwelling on it? Can you easily form mental pictures from the descriptions of scenery that are so frequently met with in novels and books of travel?

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9

Comparison with reality.

What difference do you perceive between a very vivid mental picture called up in the dark, and a real scene? Have you ever mistaken a mental image of a reality when in health and wide awake?

10

Numerals and dates.

Are these invariably associated in your mind with any peculiar mental imagery, whether of written or printed figures, diagrams, or colours? If so, explain fully, and say if you can account for the association?

11

Specialities.

If you happen to have special aptitudes for mechanics, mathematics (either geometry of three dimensions or pure analysis), mental arithmetic, or chess-playing bindfold, please explain fully how far your processes depend on the use of visual images and how far otherwise?

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12

a

Call up before your imagination the objects specified in the six following paragraphs, numbered A to F, and consider carefully whether your mental representation of them generally is in each ground very faint, faint, fair, good or vivid and comparable to the actual sensation:

Light and colour.

An evenly clouded sky (ommitting all lanscape), first bright, then gloomy. A thick surrounding haze, first white, then successively blue, yellow, green and red.

b

Sound.

The beat of rain against the window panes, the crack of a whipe, a church bell, the him of bees, the whistle of a railway, the clinking of tea-spoons and saucers, the slam of a door.

c

Smells.

Tar, roses, and oil-lamp blown out, hay, violets, a fur coat, gas, tobacco.

d

Tastes.

Salt, sugar, lemon juice, raisins, chocolate, currant jelly.

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e

Touch.

Velvet, silk, soap, gum, dough, a crisp dead leaf, the prick of a pin.

f

Other sensations.

Heat, hunger, cold, thirst, fatigue, fever, drowsiness, a bad cold.

13

Music.

Have you any aptitude for mentally recalling music or imaging it?

14

At different ages.

Do you recollect what your powers of visualising, etc., were in childhood? Have they varied much within your recollection?

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Dan Cosley et al.

Pensieve: Supporting Everyday Reminiscence

Introduction Do you remember your father’s favorite pastime? The smell of a bonfire? A song you love to dance to? There’s a good chance that these questions prompted to you think, at least for a moment, about your past—in short, to reminisce. Reminiscence is a valuable activity that serves a number of purposes: maintaining relationships with people near, far, and gone; working through past events and using them to help make sense of the present; and helping people tell consistent stories about their own lives and identities [19,33]. And, although reminiscing is often associated with the elderly, reminiscing is a lifelong activity [4] that people of all ages wish they did more often [9].

Much of the study of reminiscence treats it as a foreground activity. This is natural, given the focus in psychology on reminiscence as a potential “treatment” aimed at the elderly, to help

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people come to accept the past [6,20], to hopefully mitigate the effects of dementia [35], and frankly, just to give care home staff a structured activity to share with residents [27]. Technical support for reminiscence also often places it as a foreground activity using purpose-built tools to help people capture, manage, and annotate media such as photographs [28] or physical mementos [30] again, a natural consequence of the ways people generally interact with computers (and of the value the research community places on developing new technologies).

Although these perspectives are valid and useful in some ways for thinking about reminiscence, we prefer the lens of everyday computing [1]. That is, rather than being a task to be completed or managed, we see reminiscence as an activity: informal, unstructured, and woven into everyday life. People report that reminiscence is usually spontaneous, externally triggered, and often not consciously attended to [9]. We tell stories of our past experiences to make friends, while a newspaper photo depicting one’s hometown sometimes brings back childhood memories.

Thus, we hope to support reminiscence using technologies that leverage and support people’s current practices and fit gently into their lives. In this paper, we describe the design and deployment of Pensieve [9], a system that helps people remember to reminisce by sending them occasional emails containing “memory triggers”.

These include both generic prompts, such as those that started this paper, and the content that people already create in social media sites such as Flickr and Last.fm—content that often has personal significance. Pensieve’s design supports spontaneity while providing some control; leverages personal content without requiring perfect capture or precise access to memory; and allows people to easily create a “diary” that helps them write about the past at exactly the right time—when they are already reminiscing.

We start by describing the literature around reminiscence, both in psychology and in hci, and how this work shaped Pensieve’s design. We then present data collected from 91 people over five months, during which Pensieve sent over 11,000 memory triggers and people made over 700 diary entries. We analyze these entries, 20 people’s responses to a questionnaire, and experiences with

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a Facebook application for reminiscing that, unlike Pensieve, requires people to consciously choose to reminisce. We find that people like using Pensieve and that it improves their mood; that reminding people to reminisce is important; and that both social media and generic prompts are useful triggers, although they lead people to write in different ways. The work shows the value of supporting reminiscing as an everyday activity and points to a number of fruitful directions for further study, particularly around exploring how technology might help people reminisce together.

Related Work Reminiscence is a type of remembering where we recall, interpret, and often share memories that are personally significant [3], using autobiographical memory [8] developed—and sometimes lost—throughout a person’s life [12,14,23]. Autobiographical memories can range from specific, vivid detail of events to general impressions of life periods or themes that make up one’s whole life story [3]. Further, they are to some extent constructed “on the fly”; how a given memory is experienced depends on people’s current situation and mood.

That is, rather than a storehouse of information, autobiographical memory is a resource that is used for a variety of psychosocial purposes [33,34]. Reminiscence strengthens self-esteem [19,22] and provides pleasure and enjoyment [15,31]. Not all reminiscence is positive—people also reminisce to maintain grudges and to escape the present [33]—but on balance it is a positive activity [6,13]. It is often associated with the elderly [6,7], particularly as a systematic and organized kind of therapy [5,18,20]. Studies have shown, however, that reminiscing is a valuable activity for people of all ages [4].

People use a number of media and methods to support reminiscing, most notably photos, which are used both to record memory and to share remembered experiences [12]. Mementoes are also important in reminiscing [26], and almost anything can serve as a

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memento if the person attaches personal significance to the item [25]. Other triggers are less intentional, ranging from smells to sounds to pictures of nostalgic cultural items [9]. Some people collect and organize these reminders though scrapbooking, a kind of self-narration or storytelling where memory objects are created by arranging objects on top of the normally linear life narrative.

The value of capturing and recalling information and the intentional facets of reminiscing have led to the creation of a number of systems to support it. SharePic [2] is a gesture based, multitouch, multi-user collaborative tabletop device for photo sharing aimed at the elderly. CaraClock [32] supports sharing collective family memories through metadata-enhanced photo collections, allowing interesting views such as “everyone in the family at age 20� and supporting intelligent selection of photos to show based on the relationships in the group. The Personal Digital Historian Project [29] aims to help users to share and reflect on individual or collective experiences with others, while the Living Memory Box [30] helps families preserve their memories in a variety of media forms.

Pensieve Pensieve leverages a number of ideas. By reminding people to reminisce, we hope that Pensieve helps support the psychosocial goals of reminiscing. It uses a variety of media, including photos, text, and music, to trigger memories. It draws triggers from people’s activity in social media sites in an attempt to provide reminders with personal significance, while generic triggers encourage reminiscing across the entire lifespan. And, like the other systems mentioned, it explicitly supports both remembering and capturing this personally significant information, although with a more lightweight, everyday computing approach than most of these systems.

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System Overview In addition to the work above, Pensieve’s design is based on a series of prototypes and interviews described in [9] that highlighted a number of themes and design goals based on the ways people reminisce, including the value of spontaneity, the importance of people in reminiscing, and the need to manage privacy, control, and intimacy. Pensieve has two main functions: to remind people to reminisce, and to help people write in the course of reminiscing. People choose how often to be reminded to reminisce and can also link Pensieve to accounts on selected social media sites, including Flickr, twitter, Picasa, Blogger, and Last.fm. The Pensieve server uses these preferences to create memory triggers, emails that contain specific pieces of content either taken from a linked social media site or a set of nonpersonalized text prompts somewhat like those used in group reminiscence therapy.

To help people write about their reminiscing, Pensieve provides a diary, which exploits the metaphor of a real diary. People can see every trigger Pensieve has sent and write about reactions or stories the trigger elicited. People can also make diary entries by replying to an emailed memory trigger. People learned about the diary and the ability to reply to emails through tips included as a tagline with each email sent. These taglines also told people about other things they could do with Pensieve, including suggesting new non-personalized prompts and providing feedback about their experiences.

Studying peopleʟs responses to triggers We focus on people’s responses to memory triggers. This is partly pragmatic, as they are the main activity we can see, but responses also indicate that the trigger elicited a strong enough reaction to lead people to write, giving us access to reminiscence in the moment. We supplement our analyses of responses with data from a questionnaire we administered to people who were not

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directly associated with the researchers. It asked a number of questions about the ways Pensieve affected their reminiscing, whether they liked it, and how to improve it. Two people independently reviewed the responses, looking for common themes and interesting anomalies, then discussed their analysis and came to consensus on the portions reported below.

How do people reminisce using Pensieve?

We start with a high-level characterization of the tone and topics people reminisce about, based on linguistic analysis of the text of people’s responses. We used Pennebaker et al.’s Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count Tool (liwc), which counts the percentage of words in a corpus of text that fall into linguistic categories of interest, such as pronouns, positive expressions, or selfreferences [24].

People’s overall tone in diary entries was positive: 2.8% of responses contained words classified as positive and 1.1% negative, compared to 2.7% positive and 2.6% negative in the liwc personal writing corpus [24]. This suggests that, on balance, people reminisce more about pleasant than unpleasant memories.

Questionnaire data also supported this finding; nearly all respondents said their mood was improved by reminiscence, either because the memory was pleasant or because it gave them a sense of closure.

People also frequently used pronouns: 13.17% of words were pronouns, versus 11.4% of the liwc personal corpus. This supports the idea that people are a dominant topic of reminiscence [9]: “Well I’d say it was usually about people. And it’s also partially about places but the places are important probably because of the people.”

People mention the past and present equally (6.5% and 6.4% respectively, according to liwc), but rarely the future (0.4%). This may suggest that people used Pensieve to make terms with their pasts and apply it to present day problems. Some questionnaire respondents mentioned explicitly:

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“I try to connect it to issues I am dealing with currently. I think, like therapy, this helps understand myself.”

People were unwilling to respond to some prompts. Some triggers were simply disliked: “This is a terrible trigger. I refuse to respond.” Other people had privacy concerns, while almost every questionnaire respondent reported receiving a prompt that elicited a negative reaction. Some prompts also led to memories that people said were too sad to want to dwell on or too strong to want to write about. On the other hand, some prompts elicited strong responses. The prompt “Your favorite book as a child. Did you have your parents read to you or did you read on your own?” led one person to write about his grandmother’s storytelling: “My grandmother used to read me a story about a dog named Hector who was too big for the pet shop. He kept knocking things over with his tail, but it wasn’t his fault—he was just a Great Dane or something.

The moral was that he just needed to get out into the country with a big house and a big yard. My grandmother is in the hospital right now—that was a really emotional trigger.”

Are there temporal patterns in how people use Pensieve?

Our findings suggest that, like reminiscence itself, people’s writing about reminiscence is spontaneous and immediate, and that it is important to capture it in the moment. For each response, the time elapsed between Pensieve sending the trigger and the response. There is a large spike within an hour after the trigger is sent; that is, if someone is going to respond to a trigger, it is relatively likely they are going to respond shortly after they receive it. These results align with a number of questionnaire respondents who said they would respond to the prompt as soon as they saw it, or else not respond.

We also analyzed how much time elapses between responses by the same person. Few people go more than seven days between responding to triggers, suggesting that people either write regularly or not at all. Thus, systems that want to support writing must provide regular opportunities and reminders, as well as interfaces that make it easy to integrate writing into daily

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routines. We suspect, but cannot show, that a similar pattern happens in people’s attention to the triggers as well—that once people fall out of the habit of paying attention to triggers, it is hard to start back up.

What kinds of triggers are most evocative?

Understanding what kinds of triggers are most likely to be evocative can help systems be more effective at supporting reminiscence. Below, we explore aspects of triggers that led to more frequent and longer responses. A trigger’s response rate is defined as the number of times people respond to a trigger divided by the number of times the trigger was sent. A trigger’s response length is defined as the average number of words in all responses to that trigger.

We first analyze the non-personalized text prompts, both because they allow us to compare reactions across users (unlike the social media, which are personalized), and because this analysis may inform the topics used in group reminiscence therapy [35] and in systems like Pensieve.

Length matters. We define prompt length in two ways: by the number of words in a prompt and the number of “parts” in a prompt. For example, the prompt “[Your first job]. [How did you get it], and [who were your coworkers]?” has three parts. Prompts with more parts tend to include specific questions related to the overall theme of the prompt.

Emotional tone may matter. We also investigated whether a prompt’s emotional tone affected people’s responses. We classified prompts as positive, negative, both, or neither based on whether they contain words from liwc’s positive and negative categories. Positive prompts have on average 10.2% positive and 0.2% negative words, while negative prompts average 0.5% positive and 3.9% negative words.

“Why would you want to elicit bad memories?? My triggers have been very negative lately, and it makes me hate getting those emails.”

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People were able to suggest non-personalized text prompts for everyone; their submissions support our above findings. Five users submitted 16 prompts. Of these, ten had 10 or fewer words, while nine had one part, six had two parts, and one had three.

This supports our finding that users prefer shorter prompts. Nine of these prompts were positive and seven were neither positive nor negative, also suggesting a preference for positivity.

Not all topics are created equal. We were also interested in whether the topic a prompt referred to would affect people’s response patterns. We developed a codebook for prompt topics over five iterations in which people ranging in age from 16 to 52, some associated with the project and some not, coded a random sampling of the prompts. Two members of the Pensieve team coded the full set of prompts using the final codebook.

Disagreements were settled by the two coders coming to a consensus on whether or not the disputed category should be applied to the prompt. The categories are hierarchical, with parent categories of things, people, places, and experiences, and up to two levels of subcategories; prompts can belong to multiple categories.

“Meeting someone famous.” Among the 10 prompts that received the most responses, 6 were coded as things and 4 were coded as experiences. There was little difference in how people responded based on category. At the level of parent categories, prompts had roughly equal response rates, and there were few differences at the level of subcategories.

We looked at the topics people choose to write about. Two coders used the category codebook to code a random sample of 93; again, prompts could have multiple categories. Intercoder agreement on high-level categories ranged from 79% to 91% and Krippendorff’s Alpha from 0.52 to 0.81. People were more likely to reminisce about people or things (46% and 36%, respectively) than places (24%) or experiences (20%), no matter the topic of the prompt. For instance, one asks about sunglasses, while the response is about the person’s father. This suggests that the prompts themselves may not be as important as the way people interpret them.

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Media, personalization, and response rate Finally, we looked at the effects of media type and personalization on users’ responses. Table 1 shows the number of triggers sent and responded to from the different social media; here, we focus on activity in Picasa (65 responses to 714 triggers) and the non-personalized text prompts (615 responses to 8,642 triggers). We do not consider Blogger, twitter, or Last.fm in our analysis because these services had relatively few triggers sent.

We also exclude Flickr because it was plagued with a bug that generated malformed triggers that contained no pictures. People responded more often to Picasa triggers than to nonpersonalized text prompts (9.1%, 65/714 versus 7.1%. However, the tone of the responses was different. The average length for a Picasa response was about 37 words, versus about 46 for text prompts; an informal analysis of response content suggests that Picasa responses often contained metadata such as the people, event, and place in the photo, while responses to non-personalized text prompts were more story-like. Contrast the story about the grandmother or the diary entry about sunglasses to this response to a Picasa trigger: “I guess this is from the Ithaca Festival. The guy on the left is Hilby the Skinny German Juggler Boy. Not too exciting.”

People noticed the tendency to record metadata as well; one person suggested that showing data already collected by the sites hosting the pictures might encourage responses with less metadata and more emotional content. In this analysis, personalization and medium are confounded since Picasa sends personalized pictures while the prompts are non-personalized text. We will return to this in our discussion of a second system for supporting reminiscence, developed in Facebook.

Overall we consider Pensieve to be a successful prototype for supporting everyday reminiscence. People continue to sign up and, once registered, they continue to receive the memory triggers. They like the emails and being able to respond: “I really like coming to the website and having this personal space to write whatever I want about longforgotten things.”

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“Although I don’t necessarily respond to the triggers that often, it would feel weird not having prompts being sent anymore.”

This shows that even when users do not respond to triggers, they still value the spontaneous reminder to reminisce, and report that it generally improves their mood and supports other positive effects of reminiscing such as reviving pleasant memories, working through one’s past, and using the past to address current issues: “When I really think about the message and the memories related to it I typically feel better even if the memory itself is bittersweet. I guess it is a sort of perspective taking process.”

“I try to connect…to issues I am dealing with currently. I think, like therapy, this helps understand myself.”

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