Project overview
This proposal is a case for support delivered under the EPSRC Networks scheme, to identify interdisciplinary research topics and create interdisciplinary research communities. The Memories for Life Network (M4L) brings together researchers from computer science, neuroscience, cognitive psychology and the philosophy and sociology of technology to examine the increasing convergence of human and digital memory. Increasing understanding of the operation of human memory is combining with dramatic improvements in the technology of computer memory and the science of information storage and retrieval, allowing the possibility of exciting and fruitful interaction between these areas - a possibility that was made very clear after the experience of working separately yet together on the Foresight Cognitive Systems Project. Promising applications include: the increasing externalisation of human memory, for example in medical contexts such as Alzheimer's; the development of efficient methods for digital information organisation and recall based on techniques imported from the life sciences; effective interactions at the interface between human and digital memory, based on an understanding of the important contrasts between the two. The network will support the organisation of workshops, summer schools and an International Conference to initiate meaningful research between the constituent communities represented by the network members.