Books by Daphne Maurer
Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019
Table of contents and two sample chapters
Teaching Documents by Daphne Maurer
How memory works. Memories are not what most people believe them to be. They are not stored in ne... more How memory works. Memories are not what most people believe them to be. They are not stored in neuronal pigeonholes, waiting stably to be retrieved. They are neurochemical connections that are too unstable not to be changed by the neurochemical reactions forming recollections. For this reason, memories constantly change. On page 3 you will find an explanation of this for general readers, eight pages from one of my books. Accurate memories. Memories constantly change. A lot of experimental evidence shows this. Events accompanied by a modest amount of emotion do tend to be remembered more accurately, but a large set of studies show that traumatic events tend to be remembered less accurately. These studies tested soldiers traumatized under standardized conditions in a military survival school.
Papers by Daphne Maurer
Philosophical Transactions B of the Royal Society, 2024
All people (and some other animals) have aesthetic responses to sensory stimulation, responses of... more All people (and some other animals) have aesthetic responses to sensory stimulation, responses of emotional pleasure or displeasure. These emotions vary from one person and culture to another, yet they share a common mechanism. To survive, an adaptive animal (as opposed to a tropic animal) needs to become comfortable with normality and to have slight abnormalities draw attention to themselves. Walking through a jungle you need to notice a tiger from a single stripe: if you must wait to see the whole animal, you are unlikely to survive. In Homo sapiens, the brain's adaptive neurochemistry does this naturally, partly because the brain's neuronal networks are structured to react efficiently to fractal structures, structures that shape much of nature. Previous associations may turn a slight variation from normal into feelings of either pleasure or danger. The details of these responses-what is normal and what variations feel like-they will depend upon an individual's experience, but the mechanism is the same, no matter whether a person is tasting a wine, seeing a face or landscape, or hearing a song.
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Books by Daphne Maurer
Teaching Documents by Daphne Maurer
Papers by Daphne Maurer