Mobile Temporalities: Place, Ruination and the Dialectics of Time

In this chapter I explore the ambiguous, contradictory and often transient ways the past enters into our lives. I shed light on the interplay of mobility and temporality in the lifeworlds of two Somalis who left Mogadishu with the outbreak of the war in the 1990s. Looking into the ways they actively make sense of this crucial ‘memory-place’ (Ricoeur 2004), a place that that has been turned into a landscape of ruins and rubble, alternative understandings of memory and temporality will emerge. Instead of producing a continuum between here and there, and now and then, the stories and photographs discussed in this chapter form dialectical images – images that refuse to be woven into a coherent picture of the past. By emphasising the dialectical ways these two individuals make sense of Mogadishu’s past and presence, I am following Walter Benjamin’s cue to rethink deeply modern analytical categories such as history, memory and temporality by highlighting the brief, fragmented moments of their appearance in everyday life.

O Partido Comunista (1922-1962): lugar de memória, espaço de disputa

This work studies the dispute by Party Communist s memory in Brazil during and after division which it resulted in the appearance of two parties entitled communists, in the brazilian political context, in the final of the fifties and beginning of the sixties: the Brazilian Communist Party (in Portuguese, Partido Comunista Brasileiro) and the Communist Party of Brazil (in portuguese, Partido Comunista do Brasil). Along of yours three chapters, the author tries to answer some questions as: what were the elements which constituted the Communist Party s memory, in the period from 1922 to 1956? At which moment did this memory pass to be fiercely contested? Who and which documents reveal this? How did it happen the dispute by this memory? The approach to topic consider which the production of memory by Communist Party and the dispute for your possession by communists of PCB and of PCdoB happened in scope of national reality and of party, spaces notions understand from concept of memory developed for authors as Halbwachs, Le Goff, Pollack and Pierre Nora. To explain the objectives of historical research it has used as methodology the exam and the interpretation of documentary and bibliographical sources, with priority for the party s documents then it was depicted a collective interpretation about the events considered more importants. The sites of Partido Comunista do Brasil (www.pcdob.org.br or vermelho.org.br) and of Partido Popular Socialista (www.pps.org.br) also went consulted

Casa de Portinari, lugar de memória

Pós-graduação em História - FCHS

A Country Big Enough to Disappear in

Essay on the work of documentary photographer Katrin Koenning and a meditation on the interplay of memory, place and self in everyday life.

El aniversario de la II República en Triunfo

Durante la dictadura de Franco, el régimen implementó una política de olvido que se ocupó de borrar del espacio público las conmemoraciones republicanas, asimismo impuso el 1 de abril y el 18 de julio como aniversarios que lo legitimaban. Sin embargo, el recuerdo de los aniversarios republicanos permaneció latente como memoria subterránea en gran parte de la sociedad. Frente a la política de olvido ejercida por el régimen, Triunfo intentó transformar el 14 de abril en un lugar de memoria conmemorándolo en sus páginas.

El aniversario de la II República en Triunfo

Durante la dictadura de Franco, el régimen implementó una política de olvido que se ocupó de borrar del espacio público las conmemoraciones republicanas, asimismo impuso el 1 de abril y el 18 de julio como aniversarios que lo legitimaban. Sin embargo, el recuerdo de los aniversarios republicanos permaneció latente como memoria subterránea en gran parte de la sociedad. Frente a la política de olvido ejercida por el régimen, Triunfo intentó transformar el 14 de abril en un lugar de memoria conmemorándolo en sus páginas.

El aniversario de la II República en Triunfo

Durante la dictadura de Franco, el régimen implementó una política de olvido que se ocupó de borrar del espacio público las conmemoraciones republicanas, asimismo impuso el 1 de abril y el 18 de julio como aniversarios que lo legitimaban. Sin embargo, el recuerdo de los aniversarios republicanos permaneció latente como memoria subterránea en gran parte de la sociedad. Frente a la política de olvido ejercida por el régimen, Triunfo intentó transformar el 14 de abril en un lugar de memoria conmemorándolo en sus páginas.

A biophysical model for valence-based navigational learning: the role of D-Serine

Recent experiments have revealed the fundamental importance of neuromodulatory action on activity-dependent synaptic plasticity underlying behavioral learning and spatial memory formation. Neuromodulators affect synaptic plasticity through the modification of the dynamics of receptors on the synaptic membrane. However, chemical substances other than neuromodulators, such as receptors co-agonists, can influence the receptors' dynamics and thus participate in determining plasticity. Here we focus on D-serine, which has been observed to affect the activity thresholds of synaptic plasticity by co-activating NMDA receptors. We use a computational model for spatial value learning with plasticity between two place cell layers. The D-serine release is CB1R mediated and the model reproduces the impairment of spatial memory due to the astrocytic CB1R knockout for a mouse navigating in the Morris water maze. The addition of path-constraining obstacles shows how performance impairment depends on the environment's topology. The model can explain the experimental evidence and produce useful testable predictions to increase our understanding of the complex mechanisms underlying learning.

Absence of snapshot memory of the target view interferes with place navigation learning by rats in the water maze

Contribution of visual and nonvisual mechanisms to spatial behavior of rats in the Morris water maze was studied with a computerized infrared tracking system, which switched off the room lights when the subject entered the inner circular area of the pool with an escape platform. Naive rats trained under light-dark conditions (L-D) found the escape platform more slowly than rats trained in permanent light (L). After group members were swapped, the L-pretrained rats found under L-D conditions the same target faster and eventually approached latencies attained during L navigation. Performance of L-D-trained rats deteriorated in permanent darkness (D) but improved with continued D training. Thus L-D navigation improves gradually by procedural learning (extrapolation of the start-target azimuth into the zero-visibility zone) but remains impaired by lack of immediate visual feedback rather than by absence of the snapshot memory of the target view.

Septal lesions impair the acquisition of a cued place navigation task: attentional or memory deficit?

These experiments were designed to analyze how medial septal lesions reducing the cholinergic innervation in the hippocampus might affect place learning. Rats with quisqualic lesions of the medial septal area (MS) were trained in a water maze and on a homing table where the escape position was located at a spatially fixed position and further indicated by a salient cue suspended above it. The lesioned rats were significantly impaired in reaching the cued escape platform during training. In addition rats, did not show any discrimination of the training sector during a probe trial in which no platform or cue was present. This impairment remained significant during further training in the absence of the cue. When the cued escape platform was located at an unpredictable spatial location, the MS-lesioned rats showed no deficit and spent more time under the cue than control rats during the probe trial. On the homing board, with a salient object in close proximity to the escape hole, the MS rats showed no deficit in escape latencies, although a significant reduction in spatial memory was observed. However, this was overcome by additional training in the absence of the cue. Under these conditions, rats with septal lesions were prone to develop a pure guidance strategy, whereas normal rats combined a guidance strategy with a memory of the escape position relative to more distant landmarks. The presence of a salient cue appeared to decrease attention to environmental landmarks, thus reducing spatial memory. These data confirm the general hypothesis that MS lesions reduce the capacity to rely on a representation of the relation between several landmarks with different salience.

Our place in history: young feminists at the margins

Feminisms in Portugal, as elsewhere, have been shaped historically. From the revolutions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which ended monarchy and established a republican system, women have taken a stand. In the late 1970s, after 48 years of dictatorship during which feminist issues were effectively silenced, feminist groups began to appear in Portugal. It was then, in 1976, that UMAR (Unia˜o de Mulheres Alternativa e Resposta [‘Union of Women for Alternatives and Answers’]) began its fight against discrimination and violence against women.

A homing procedure for studying spatial memory in immature and adult rodents

In this procedure, subjects learn the spatial position of one hole out of many, that allows them to escape from a large open-field into their home cage. The arena is circular and can be rotated between trials so that no proximal landmark is permanently associated with the target hole. This task is thus similar to the Morris water maze procedure, since subjects must remember the position of the escape hole relative to extra-arena cues only. In addition it allows studying the importance of olfactory cues such as scent marks in or around a hole. Since the motivation is to reach home and the motor requirement is low, this task provides a useful alternative to the Morris place navigation task for studying spatial orientation in weanling or senescent rats. Examples are given showing that various behavioural parameters provide a good estimation as how subjects learn this task.

Dissociation of allocentric and egocentric orientation: Effect on hippocampal place cells and place navigation

Navigation by means of cognitive maps appears to require the hippocampus; hippocampal place cells (PCs) appear to store spatial memories because their discharge is confined to cell-specific places called firing fields (FFs). Experiments with rats manipulated idiothetic and landmark-related information to understand the relationship between PC activity and spatial rotation. Rotating a circular arena in the caused a discrepancy between these cuse. This discrepancy caused most FFs to disappear in both the arena and room reference frames. However, FFs persisted in the rotating arena frame when the discrepancy was reduced by darkness or by a card in the arena. The discrepancy was increased by "field clamping" the rat in a room-defined FF location by rotations that countered its locomotion. Most FFs disspared and reappeared an hour or more after the clamp. Place-avoidance experiments showed that navigation uses independent idiothetic and exteroceptive memories. Rats learned to avoid the unmarked footshock region within a circular arena. When acquired on the stable arena in the light, the location of the punishment was learned by using both room and idiothetic cues; extinction in the dark transferred to the following session in the light. If, however, extinction occured during rotation, only the arena-frame avoidance was extinguished in darkness; the room-defined location was avoided when the light were turned back on. Idiothetic memory of room-defined avoidance was not formed during rotation in light; regardless of rotation with a randomly dispersed pellet. The resulting behaviour alternated between random pellet searching and target-directed navigation, making it possible to examine PC correlates of these two classes of spatial behaviour. The independence of idiothetic and exteroceptive spatial memories and the disruption of PC firing during rotation suggest that PCs may not be necessary for spatial cognition; this idea can be tested by recording during place-avoidance and preference tasks.