Misplacing memories? An enactive approach to the virtual memory palace

Abstract

In this paper, we evaluate the pragmatic turn towards embodied, enactive thinking in cognitive science, in the context of recent empirical research on the memory palace technique. The memory palace is a powerful method for remembering yet it faces two problems. First, cognitive scientists are currently unable to clarify its efficacy. Second, the technique faces significant practical challenges to its users. Virtual reality devices are sometimes presented as a way to solve these practical challenges, but currently fall short of delivering on that promise. We address both issues in this paper. First, we argue that an embodied, enactive approach to memory can better help us understand the effectiveness of the memory palace. Second, we present design recommendations for a virtual memory palace. Our theoretical proposal and design recommendations contribute to solving both problems and provide reasons for preferring an embodied, enactive account over an information-processing treatment of the memory palace.T against the background of the so-called 'pragmatic turn' in cognitive science. The pragmatic turn signals a move towards conceiving of cognition as dynamic, embodied and enactive and away from cognition as information-processing (Engel, 2010;Engel, Maye, Kurthen, & König, 2013). Reframing how we think about the cognitive underpinnings of memory will help in the design of the virtual memory palace.What is the advantage of examining the memory palace from the perspective of embodied, enacted cognition? We provide two related incentives. The first stems from the observation that current cognitivist investigations into the workings of the technique, which are based on the information-processing paradigm, have not shed sufficient light on why it is so powerful, as we will elaborate in the next section. 1 This opens the door to the consideration of an alternative paradigm. The second and related reason is that the memory palace, because it leans heavily on memory scaffolding through environmental resources, calls for a cognitive framework which places the role of the body in the environment front and centre.Keeping in mind the pragmatic turn, our paper develops as follows. In Section 2, we will examine current cognitivist approaches to the memory palace technique and show how they are unable to explain its dynamics, concluding that there is, as we call it, an Explanation Problem. Following this, we will argue in Section 3 that current attempts to operationalize the memory palace in virtual reality fall short, because they depend on cognitivist understandings of the technique. Call this the Operationalization Problem. Because addressing the Operationalization Problem first requires addressing the Explanation Problem, we turn to the latter in Section 4, where we argue that an enactive account of the memory palace captures the technique better than its cognitivist rivals. This sets the stage for Section 5, in which we address the Operationalization Problem by presenting design recommendations for designers of virtual memor...

Thinking embodiment with genetics: epigenetics and postgenomic biology in embodied cognition and enactivism

“…His view of both cognition and genetics appears to want to hang on to some key parts of the work of Dennett, and perhaps even Dawkins, for whom the organism was famously no more or less than the non-random concentration of DNA. And while it is true that some of the more radical readings of epigenetics will no doubt be found to be overstatements, we think that the balance of research concerning memory and learning discussed by Peeters and Segundo-Ortin (2019), and the material substratum for this (epigenetics), suggests that the enactivist treatment of embodiment might be the better overarching view of mind and life.…”

“…One example is animal models in research on memory and neuroepigenetics that tend to discard the body in favour of a simplistic view of physical substrates of memory. This is obviously in tension with more phenomenological views of memory as the result of a 'network of interaction', as in Maturana and Varela, and amplified nicely in regard to memory by Peeters and Segundo-Ortin (2019). It is at this level that epigenetics needs philosophy.…”

“…To advance the case for a special role of embodiment, Peeters and Segundo-Ortin (2019) discuss research concerning the use of a memory palace in detail. Others draw on the role of the external environment in facilitating memory in Alzheimer's patients: if placed in 1950s style accommodation, the memories and cognitive capacities of some elderly Alzheimer's patients can be restored through this changed external environment (Heersmink 2017).…”

“…Neuro-epigenetic research suggests that cellular and molecular changes appear to allow the formation of memory traces in response to associative learning experiences and/or nonassociative and novel experiences, especially when traumatic. In other words, epigenetic mechanisms facilitate the acquisition of representational content to use more cognitivist language, or they enable us to enact or re-imagine previous experiences if we prefer enactivist construals of memory with Peeters and Segundo-Ortin (2019).…”

Ethical Challenges of Using Virtual Environments in the Assessment and Treatment of Psychopathological Disorders

“…There is a growing body of literature that considers virtual environments to be technologies of the extended mind [32,101,[113][114][115][116][117]. One example can be seen in developments of virtual reality-based memory palaces that were developed from the method of loci technique that uses an imagined palace for retaining information.…”