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- Title
Candy as Memory Catalyst.
- Authors
VINCE, LAIMA
- Abstract
Jonah Lehrer's insights in his book Proust was a Neuroscientist, in particular his discovery of how lost worlds could be rediscovered through taste, inspired an experiment with groups of teachers in Lithuania who believed themselves to be participating in a writing workshop. The experiment tested whether a person can be induced to experience a flashbulb memory if the hippocampus is deliberately accessed via the sense of taste. Six writing workshops in six distinct regions of Lithuania, held in February 2013, formed the basis of the experiment, along with a two-day writing seminar and workshop for a writers' group in Klaipeda made up of professionals, artists, and teachers who wrote for their own enjoyment. My goal was to prepare a writing exercise that would have the effect of inducing the writer to produce a powerfully charged emotional piece of writing in a comparatively short period of time - during a fifteen minute freewriting period. I set up a series of test conditions in which participants tasted certain local sweets that were popular in the Soviet era and are less popular now, and then wrote about their thoughts and feelings. The results were a series of homogenous pieces that were a detailed remembrance of life during the years of the Soviet occupation, and which are presented in this article.
- Subjects
CANDY; MEMORY -- Social aspects; PROUST, Marcel, 1871-1922; CREATIVE writing education; CANDY in literature; LITERARY criticism; SOVIET social conditions; PSYCHOLOGY
- Publication
Lituanus, 2014, Vol 60, Issue 1, p52
- ISSN
0024-5089
- Publication type
Article