The Myth of the Brain as a Video Camera

Before we discuss what current research tells us about memory and recall, it may be helpful to address a common misconception that emerged from the work ofCanadian neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield in the 1930s and 1940s. Penfield reported that during surgery, an electrical stimulation of the temporal lobe produced episodes of recall, almost like seeing movie clips. Many concluded that the brain ―videotaped‖ life, and to remember things, our memories simply needed to be prompted. But these epi...

 Sign-Function Linking

It is clear that if the phonic substance lost its privilege, it was not to the advantage of the graphic substance, which lends itself to the same substitutions. To the extent that it liberates and is irrefutable, glossematics still operates with a popular concept of writing. However original and irreducible it might be, the “form of expression” linked by correlation to the graphic “substance of expression” remains very determined. It is very dependent and very derivative with regard t...