Long story short: "In many of the patients, one neuron responded every time they saw a particular video," wrote Emma Byrne in yesterday's Financial Times about a new study published online today in the journal Science.

To get you warmed up for the heavy stuff to come, here's Benedict Carey's September 4, 2008 New York Times front page story on the findings.

For the Brain, Remembering Is Like Reliving

Scientists have for the first time recorded individual brain cells in the act of summoning a spontaneous memory, revealing not only where a remembered experience is registered but also, in part, how the brain is able to recreate it.

The recordings, taken from the brains of epilepsy patients being prepared for surgery, demonstrate that these spontaneous memories reside in some of the same neurons that fired most furiously when the recalled event had been experienced. Researchers had long theorized as much but until now had only indirect evidence.

Experts said the study had all but closed the case: For the brain, remembering is a lot like doing (at least in the short term, as the research says nothing about more distant memories).

The experiment, being reported Friday in the journal Science, is likely to open a new avenue in the investigation of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, some experts said, as well as help explain how some memories seemingly come out of nowhere. The researchers were even able to identify specific memories in subjects a second or two before the people themselves reported having them.

“This is what I would call a foundational finding,” said Michael J. Kahana, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, who was not involved in the research. “I cannot think of any recent study that’s comparable.

“It’s a really central piece of the memory puzzle and an important step in helping us fill in the detail of what exactly is happening when the brain performs this mental time travel” of summoning past experiences.

The new study moved beyond most previous memory research in that it focused not on recognition or recollection of specific symbols but on free recall — whatever popped into people’s heads when, in this case, they were asked to remember short film clips they had just seen.

This ability to richly reconstitute past experience often quickly deteriorates in people with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, and it is fundamental to so-called episodic memory — the catalog of vignettes that together form our remembered past.

In the study, a team of American and Israeli researchers threaded tiny electrodes into the brains of 13 people with severe epilepsy. The electrode implants are standard procedure in such cases, allowing doctors to pinpoint the location of the mini-storms of brain activity that cause epileptic seizures.

The patients watched a series of 5- to 10-second film clips, some from popular television shows like “Seinfeld” and others depicting animals or landmarks like the Eiffel Tower. The researchers recorded the firing activity of about 100 neurons per person; the recorded neurons were concentrated in and around the hippocampus, a sliver of tissue deep in the brain known to be critical to forming memories.

In each person, the researchers identified single cells that became highly active during some videos and quiet during others. More than half the recorded cells hummed with activity in response to at least one film clip; many of them also responded weakly to others.

After briefly distracting the patients, the researchers then asked them to think about the clips for a minute and to report “what comes to mind.” The patients remembered almost all of the clips. And when they recalled a specific one — say, a clip of Homer Simpson — the same cells that had been active during the Homer clip reignited. In fact, the cells became active a second or two before people were conscious of the memory, which signaled to researchers the memory to come.

“It’s astounding to see this in a single trial; the phenomenon is strong, and we were listening in the right place,” said the senior author, Dr. Itzhak Fried, a professor of neurosurgery at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Tel Aviv.

His co-authors were Hagar Gelbard-Sagiv, Michal Harel and Rafael Malach of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, and Roy Mukamel, of U.C.L.A.

Dr. Fried said in a phone interview that the single neurons recorded firing most furiously during the film clips were not acting on their own; they were, like all such cells, part of a circuit responding to the videos, including thousands, perhaps millions, of other cells.

In studies of rodents, including a paper that will also appear Friday in the journal Science, neuroscientists have shown that special cells in the hippocampus are sensitive to location, activating when the animal passes a certain spot in a maze. The firing pattern of these cells forms the animals’ spatial memory and can predict which way the animal will turn, even if it makes a wrong move.

Some scientists argue that as humans evolved, these same cells adapted to register a longer list of elements — including possibly sounds, smells, time of day and chronology — when an experience occurred in relation to others.

Single-cell recordings cannot capture the entire array of circuitry involved in memory, which may be widely distributed beyond the hippocampus area, experts said. And as time passes, memories are consolidated, submerged, perhaps retooled and often entirely reshaped when retrieved later.

Though it did not address this longer-term process, the new study suggests that at least some of the neurons that fire when a distant memory comes to mind are those that were most active back when it happened, however long ago that was.

“The exciting thing about this,” said Dr. Kahana, the University of Pennsylvania professor, “is that it gives us direct biological evidence of what before was almost entirely theoretical.”

Here's the abstract of the original report by Fried et al, as published September 5, 2008 in the journal Science.

Internally Generated Reactivation of Single Neurons in Human Hippocampus During Free Recall

The emergence of memory, a trace of things past, into human consciousness is one of the greatest mysteries of the human mind. Whereas the neuronal basis of recognition memory can be probed experimentally in human and nonhuman primates, the study of free recall requires that the mind declare the occurrence of a recalled memory (an event intrinsic to the organism and invisible to an observer). Here, we report the activity of single neurons in the human hippocampus and surrounding areas when subjects first view television episodes consisting of audiovisual sequences and again later when they freely recall these episodes. A subset of these neurons exhibited selective firing, which often persisted throughout and following specific episodes for as long as 12 seconds. Verbal reports of memories of these specific episodes at the time of free recall were preceded by selective reactivation of the same hippocampal and entorhinal cortex neurons. We suggest that this reactivation is an internally generated neuronal correlate of the subjective experience of spontaneous emergence of human recollection.

The abstract of the Science paper (cited above) reporting findings in rodent brains follows.

Internally Generated Cell Assembly Sequences in the Rat Hippocampus

A long-standing conjecture in neuroscience is that aspects of cognition depend on the brain's ability to self-generate sequential neuronal activity. We found that reliably and continually changing cell assemblies in the rat hippocampus appeared not only during spatial navigation but also in the absence of changing environmental or body-derived inputs. During the delay period of a memory task, each moment in time was characterized by the activity of a particular assembly of neurons. Identical initial conditions triggered a similar assembly sequence, whereas different conditions gave rise to different sequences, thereby predicting behavioral choices, including errors. Such sequences were not formed in control (nonmemory) tasks. We hypothesize that neuronal representations, evolved for encoding distance in spatial navigation, also support episodic recall and the planning of action sequences.

Andy Griffiths, Samsung UK's director of consumer electronics, says that "I think it [Blu-ray] has 5 years left, I certainly wouldn't give it 10." Sad, really, since he believes 2008 is finally Blu-ray's year (we agree, by year's end, it'll have finally found its stride).

He doesn't elaborate on what he thinks will take it down, but since Samsung is moving into internet-connected TVs, it's possible he's referring to the oft-cited digital downloads specter that's been haunting the format war since the first shots were fired. Whatever happens, it'll look pretty on our OLED sets in 2010, which is when he thinks the tech will finally go mainstream. [Pocket Lint]

The Japanese government cited overheating iPod nanos as the cause behind three fires. The trade ministry believes the overheating is due to a battery defect in the nanos. Apple has not provided an official statement regarding the incidents, but the Japanese government said Apple reported two cases where people suffered minor burns, according to a Reuters story.

"We are not in the position to speculate on the outcome of the investigation. But after several incidents like these, it would be appropriate for Apple to take some measures to raise the public's awareness," a trade ministry official told Reuters.

Incidents of potentially hazardous iPod nanos aren't isolated to Japan, either. Just recently an iPod nano owner recounted his experience to Consumerist about his media player exploding. A Gizmodo reader reported having the same experience in March

Roger Kay, an analyst and president of Endpoint Technologies Associates, pointed out that Apple has had battery-defect issues in the past with notebooks. In 2006, Apple issued a recall for iBook G4 and PowerBook G4 notebooks, because their batteries contained cells manufactured by Sony, which were causing batteries to explode.

The Sony battery fiasco heavily damaged Sony, but Apple's reputation escaped unscathed, Kay said.

"I do think the reality distortion zone is a real phenomenon," Kay said. "The same things that damage companies don't damage Apple as much: There's a combination of downplaying, obfuscation and 'No comment' along with the occasional gallant move in which they say we'll take them all back or give a coupon. Typically they try not to respond."

Kay added that it makes sense to see potentially hazardous defects in the iPod nano in particular, given its size.

"If there's anything that's out of control in there there's very little room for error, and I'm not surprised it's happening to the nano," he said. "You're asking it do a lot in a very, very small package and that's pushing the envelope."

Apple did not return phone calls for comments.

(Photo credit: Stephan Dinges/Flickr)

Them's fightin' words, what?

Pollard, a Times of London columnist and blogger for The Spectator, was quoted thus in today's New York Times Arts section front page story by Daniel J. Wakin about British conductor Roger Norrington's insistence on playing classical music in the style of its day, which in Elgar's case means sans vibrato.

Above, Elgar conducts his most well-known composition, "Pomp and Circumstance," at the opening of EMI's Abbey Road studios in London on November 12, 1931.

Here's the New York Times piece.

Elgar Without Vibrato? Fiddlesticks

The Great Vibrato Controversy is sending tremors through, well, a small corner of British cultural life.

The conductor Roger Norrington, a champion of playing classical music in the style of its day, says he may play Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance” March No. 1 on the last night of Britain’s premier music festival, the Proms, at the Royal Albert Hall in London, without vibrato. Oh, the horror!

True, it is not the stuff to tear down an empire. But traditionalists in England are in a huff, sending rockets of outrage into the blogosphere and newspaper columns.

“Elgar without vibrato is the musical equivalent of dead roses,” Stephen Pollard, a columnist, harrumphed in The Times of London last week.

As a rule, Elgar’s music has been played with the lusher, fuller sound produced by that slight oscillation of pitch called vibrato, which is typical of modern playing. But Mr. Norrington argues that orchestras in Elgar’s day played with much less vibrato, and that an unadulterated sound better suits the music.

The dispute sits atop the intersection of deeper issues, like British national pride and how to bring art of the past back to life. At the heart of the kerfuffle lies the reputation of Edward Elgar, the quintessentially British composer in a country that can be sensitive about its relative dearth of great masters. Elgar, who wrote works including the “Enigma” Variations and a popular cello concerto, is best known for the “Pomp and Circumstance” March, which is a staple at high school graduation ceremonies even in America.

The piece is called “Land of Hope and Glory” in the version traditionally sung at the vaunted Last Night of the Proms, when the buttoned-down British public goes a little nutty, wearing costumes, waving Union Jacks and singing along. That night (Sept. 13 this year) draws the most attention, but two months’ worth of concerts precede it. One of those last month featured Mr. Norrington and his Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra playing Elgar’s Symphony No. 1. That prompted a letter to The Times of London, which seems to have set off the debate.

“Sir, as a professional violinist, I was appalled by the quality of sound,” Raymond Cohen wrote in the letter, published on July 29. “To anyone with a musical ear, it sounded bizarre.” Columnists and other musicians soon weighed in, some aquiver with rage. Mr. Norrington’s performances were “screeching” and “unmusical,” Mr. Pollard wrote, and someone identified as R. G. James of Brasschaat, Belgium, commented on The Times’s Web site (timesonline.co.uk), “I am fed up with these politically correct liberals in the establishment doing all they can to denigrate and undermine British and English cultural icons.”

Mr. Norrington has “gone too far,” the composer Anthony Payne was quoted as saying in an article in The Guardian. That article also quoted Mark Elder, the music director of the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester and the conductor of the Last Night of the Proms in 2007, as calling Mr. Norrington a wonderful but obsessed musician.

The debate blossomed into a discussion of a burning issue in the classical music world: How much should performers try to reproduce the musical conditions that existed when a piece was written? It is no small matter. We experience old paintings with an unmediated eye, but works of classical music require interpreters to bring black marks on a page to life.

The early-music movement of the second half of the 20th century sought to return to music’s performing roots, and Mr. Norrington played a major part in that movement in the 1980s and ’90s. He and other period-performance evangelists moved from the Baroque through Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven to the Romantics, and some now lap at the early 20th century, when Elgar was composing.

The movement calls for the use of instruments of the day, but also different techniques: cleaner articulation, sometimes swifter tempos, clarity of texture and, of course, less vibrato. And it has permeated contemporary orchestral playing. Even the most traditional conductors give a bow toward some aspects of the style. Some commentators have suggested that the movement is, in fact, a reflection of our modernist age.

“We value clarity, transparency, precision, sharpness, rather than what some people consider the excessive lyricism and indulgence and big sound of previous eras,” said Nicholas Kenyon, the former Proms director who engaged Mr. Norrington.

As for vibrato, it has been used throughout music history to varying degrees, often applied in small dollops to intensify expression, before becoming part of the basic string sound in the first decades of the last century. String players create it by moving fingers slightly back and forth on the fingerboard, wind players most often by oscillating the air flow.

Mr. Norrington has taken vibratoless playing farther than most, issuing recordings of works by Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Mahler and Wagner with his Stuttgart orchestra using what he prefers to call “pure tone” rather than vibrato-free. He wrote an article on the subject for The New York Times in 2003.

Byron Adams, a musicologist at the University of California, Riverside, and a leading Elgar scholar, said Mr. Norrington was somewhat extreme in stripping away vibrato from Elgar’s music. But he lauded the effort to tone down a “hyperintense expressionistic quality” that came to be the norm in the 1960s.

In an interview last Wednesday, Mr. Norrington was coy about how the BBC Symphony Orchestra will sound when he conducts it at the Proms’ final night. He said he would ask the players in rehearsal what they preferred in matters of vibrato.

But he was unwavering about his own preference. He cited a Schoenberg reference to vibrato as “goat bleating,” called the heavily vibrating French woodwind sections of the 1920s “earthquake zones” and referred to the practice as “acoustic central heating.”

Pure tone, he said, is a beautiful thing that restores a sense of innocence and dignity to Romantic music and makes phrasing more important.

Mr. Norrington acknowledged that hearing Romantic music played with minimal vibrato could be a “bit of a shock” for the first-time listener. He conceded that his opponents have a legitimate point of view: “It’s not a professor saying, ‘Just shut up or we’ll lose India.’ ”

He also acknowledged that early recordings of orchestras playing Elgar’s music under the composer’s own baton revealed a fair bit of vibrato. But he contended that the practice was creeping into orchestras whether composers liked it or not, and that Elgar grew up as a musician listening to music without vibrato.

“In the end it’s an aesthetic question,” he said. “It’s a matter of taste. I love the sound.”

It might not even matter what style the BBC orchestra adopts on the Last Night of the Proms, Mr. Norrington said. “You’re lucky if you can hear how they’re playing at all, with all the singing.” He added, mischievously, that if he does an encore, “I’ll ask the whole of the auditorium to sing with more of a vibrato.”

More?

Okay.

The New York Times story has a sidebar allowing you to listen to excerpts from Elgar's Symphony No. 1, Adagio played with minimal vibrato and with vibrato more typical of orchestras today.

Finally, to keep Flautist mollified I'll conclude this post with Nimrod

from Elgar's "Enigma Variations," with Daniel Barenboim conducting conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to open the 1997 season at Carnegie Hall.

Earlier in the week, Nullriver received a response from Apple saying the removal of NetShare was a mistake that required "technical review." It turns out that was a blanket term, because in a phone interview today Nullriver's CEO Adam Dan said Apple was reviewing user contracts with providers, including AT&T.

Though Apple is continuing to make Nullriver sit and wait, we've already received confirmation from AT&T spokesperson Brad Mays that tethering with iPhone is not allowed. He cited a clause in AT&T's Terms and Conditions:

"Furthermore, plans(unless specifically designated for tethering usage) cannot be used for any applications that tether the device (through use of, including without limitation, connection kits, other phone/PDA-to computer accessories, Bluetooth® or any other wireless technology) to Personal Computers (including without limitation, laptops), or other equipment for any purpose." 

Nullriver is one of a few other iPhone apps recently removed from the App Store. Around the same time, BoxOffice inexplicably disappeared from App Store, leaving its developer confused. Later in the week, Apple removed a $1,000 iPhone application called I Am Rich.

Apple's demonstrated fickle nature has led Nullriver's CEO to question the iPhone App Store's approval process.

"From what I can tell their approval process is not very strict at all," Dan said. "It's more technical than content related is what it seems like to us. I think they run it, start it up and if it doesn't crash they approve it. They brainlessly click through, and if there's problems they remove it is what it seems like."

Dan added that his experience with Apple has tempered his views of the company.

"They're shooting themselves in the foot these days; they're probably just understaffed," Dan said. "We'll see how it goes. Hopefully they don't get too much of the bad press and it doesn't ruin the iPhone, because i want to develop for it."

Apple did not return phone calls before press time.

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