Aging and memory for music: A review

People of all ages enjoy listening to music, yet most research in musical development has concentrated on infancy through childhood. Our recent research program examined various aspects of music cognition in younger (ages 18 through 30) and older adults (ages 60 through 80) with varying amounts of musical experience. The studies investigated the independent and combined influences of age and experience on a wide assortment of long and short-term memory tasks. Results showed that some musical tasks reflect the same age-related declines as seen in nonmusical tasks, and musical training does not reduce these age-related declines. In other tasks, experience differences were larger than age differences; in some cases, age differences were nonexistent. The analysis considers how aging and experience may affect different aspects of cognition, and the paper concludes by pointing out the many musical activities that even nonmusical seniors are well equipped to succeed at and enjoy.

The Failure of Silence and the Manipulation of Memory: How Spain's pact of oblivion has failed to rid the country of its troubled past

This thesis is an analysis of Spain’s development from dictatorship to democracy in light of the trauma that it endured during the Spanish Civil War of 1936 – 1939 and the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, which lasted until 1975. Drawing from the work of Maurice Halbwachs and Pierre Nora, this thesis seeks to use the concepts of collective memory and lieux de mémoire to analyze what role memory has played in Spanish society from 1939 to the present day. Theanalysis begins with an overview of the Spanish Civil War and Franco’s ensuing dictatorship in order to establish an understanding of the trauma endured by Spain and its people. Of importance will be the manner in which the presentation of history became manipulated anddistorted under Franco as the dictator sought to control the country’s collective memory. With this background in mind, the thesis then turns to analyze how the memory of Spain’s past has affected the country’s development in two eras: during its transition to democracy in the 1970s and in the present day. Of central importance is the pact of silence that was established during the transition to democracy, which was a tacit agreement among the Spanish people to notdiscuss the past. This pact of silence still clouds Spain’s memory today and affects modern discourse concerning the past. Yet it is clear that Spain has not been reconciled to its past, as the provocation of history inevitably results in tension and controversy. The central contention of this thesis is that the pact of silence that surrounds Spain’s past has not eliminated the trauma of the Civil War and dictatorship, as demonstrated by the controversy stirred up by people, groups and places in the present day. This contention has repercussions for the study of history as a whole, as it indicates that the past cannot be muted in order to achievereconciliation; rather, it suggests that we must engage the past in order to be reconciled to it.

3CAM - A NOVEL TERNARY CONTENT ADDRESSABLE MEMORY USING THREE-VALUED LOGIC

Content Addressable Memory (CAM) is a special type of Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS) storage element that allows for a parallel search operation on a memory stack in addition to the read and write operations yielded by a conventional SRAM storage array. In practice, it is often desirable to be able to store a “don’t care” state for faster searching operation. However, commercially available CAM chips are forced to accomplish this functionality by having to include two binary memory storage elements per CAM cell,which is a waste of precious area and power resources. This research presents a novel CAM circuit that achieves the “don’t care” functionality with a single ternary memory storage element. Using the recent development of multiple-voltage-threshold (MVT) CMOS transistors, the functionality of the proposed circuit is validated and characteristics for performance, power consumption, noise immunity, and silicon area are presented. This workpresents the following contributions to the field of CAM and ternary-valued logic:• We present a novel Simple Ternary Inverter (STI) transistor geometry scheme for achieving ternary-valued functionality in existing SOI-CMOS 0.18µm processes.• We present a novel Ternary Content Addressable Memory based on Three-Valued Logic (3CAM) as a single-storage-element CAM cell with “don’t care” functionality.• We explore the application of macro partitioning schemes to our proposed 3CAM array to observe the benefits and tradeoffs of architecture design in the context of power, delay, and area.

Maternal and Postweaning High-Fat Diets Disturb Hippocampal Gene Expression, Learning, and Memory Function

We tested the hypothesis that excess saturated fat consumption during pregnancy, lactation, and/or postweaning alters the expression of genes mediating hippocampal synaptic efficacy and impairs spatial learning and memory in adulthood. Dams were fed control chow or a diet high in saturated fat before mating, during pregnancy, and into lactation. Offspring were weaned to either standard chow or a diet high in saturated fat. The Morris Water Maze was used to evaluate spatial learning and memory. Open field testing was used to evaluate motor activity. Hippocampal gene expression in adult males was measured using RT-PCR and ELISA. Offspring from high fat-fed dams took longer, swam farther, and faster to try and find the hidden platform during the 5-day learning period. Control offspring consuming standard chow spent the most time in memory quadrant during the probe test. Offspring from high fat-fed dams consuming excess saturated fat spent the least. The levels of mRNA and protein for brain-derived neurotrophic factor and activity-regulated cytoskeletal-associated protein were significantly decreased by maternal diet effects. Nerve growth factor mRNA and protein levels were significantly reduced in response to both maternal and postweaning high-fat diets. Expression levels for the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDA) receptor subunit NR2B as well as synaptophysin were significantly decreased in response to both maternal and postweaning diets. Synaptotagmin was significantly increased in offspring from high fat-fed dams. These data support the hypothesis that exposure to excess saturated fat during hippocampal development is associated with complex patterns of gene expression and deficits in learning and memory.