Progress

*UPDATE AUGUST 2020*
I have spent a little bit of time tidying up some formatting issues in various posts. My suspicion was that, having finished that process, I would decide that the blog was truly finished, and would write a nice grateful farewell saying what an interesting journey it had been. However, a phrase in this post, about an important career highlight, jumped out at me: ‘I gave a paper that would never have happened without this blog’. This, I think, is true, and therefore I don’t feel like declaring ‘What Literature Knows About Your Brain’ closed for ever. It would be great to feel properly back up to date with trends in cognitive sciences, and with Trends in Cognitive Sciences, but I have had too much on, and that might not change for ages. But perhaps it will. I will leave this door ajar. To find your way around all the stuff, you could start with the previous post, entitled ‘Closedown‘ (ha ha), which will send you on the way. This post, entitled ‘Progress’ (ha ha), reflects a nice moment of optimism a few months ago; while the plans described here have suffered an undeserved setback, hope springs eternal.
*UPDATE AUGUST 2020 ENDS*

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been helping develop a project on the subjective experience of remembering. I wrote some posts about this theme not very long ago…

‘We Have Laugh’d’ [SER 1]
‘I Might See’ [SER 2]
‘Methought I Was’ [SER 3]

And I may not have mentioned quite enough that this project promises to put literary criticism and experimental cognitive neuroscience into a kind of close conversation that I’ve been seeking all along. I’m hoping we can go even further than I’ve managed before. I wrote a bit about this in some other posts…

Some Things I Learned From My Experiments (1)
Some Things I Learned From My Experiments (2)

Anyway, I am thinking about this today because we’re about to put in an application to build a team and find the time to make this project work. It has blossomed into something very exciting, I think — sharp focus, big implications, a grand squad of people. It would be brilliant if it came together.

Regular, nay, frequent posting will resume one day. I know it will. It won’t resume because of COVID-19: that’s not making me feel very creative. But it will definitely be a small but enjoyable (for me!) aspect of the memory project, as it grows in the future.

Best wishes from me!

E-mail me at rtrl100[at]cam.ac.uk

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