Social memory, the ability to recognize and remember individuals within a social group, is crucial for social interactions and relationships. Deficits in social memory have been linked to several ...neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders. The hippocampus, especially the circuit that links dorsal CA2 and ventral CA1 neurons, is considered a neural substrate for social memory formation. Recent studies have provided compelling evidence of extrahippocampal contributions to social memory. The septal nuclei, including the medial and lateral septum, make up a basal forebrain region that shares bidirectional neuronal connections with the hippocampus and has recently been identified as critical for social memory. The focus of our review is the neural circuit mechanisms that underlie social memory, with a special emphasis on the septum. We also discuss the social memory dysfunction associated with neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders.
Research on the “uses of the past” in organizations and organizing is flourishing. This introduction reviews this approach to integrating history into organization studies and explores its paths ...forward. We begin by examining the intellectual origins of the approach and by defining why and how it matters to the study of management and organizations. Specifically, we emphasize the performative role of history in making and unmaking organizational orders. Next, we elaborate on how the articles in the special issue demonstrate the uses of the past in shaping organizational identity, strategy, and power. We also highlight how this work contributes to our understanding of the socially embedded character of history in organizations by accounting for the role of materiality, intertextuality, competing narratives, practices, and audiences in how the past is used. We conclude by considering four research frontiers particularly worthy of further exploration—the influence of temporal form, the role of non-rational knowledge, the range of methods, and the integration of ethics—in studies of the uses of the past in organizations.
For many, the terms oxytocin and vasopressin immediately evoke images of animals interacting with one another, as both of these neuropeptides have been implicated as being part of the neurochemical ...“glue” that socially binds animals. However, social environments and social interactions are complex and include behaviors that bring animals together as well as behaviors that keep animals apart. It is at the intersection of social context, social experience, and an individual’s sex that oxytocin and vasopressin act to modulate social behavior and social cognition. In this review, this complexity will be explored across mammalian species, with a focus on social memory, cooperative behaviors, and competitive behaviors. Implications for humans as well as future directions will also be considered.
The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is well known as the executive center of the brain, combining internal states and goals to execute purposeful behavior, including social actions. With the advancement of ...tools for monitoring and manipulating neural activity in rodents, substantial progress has been made in understanding the specific cell types and neural circuits within the PFC that are essential for processing social cues and influencing social behaviors. Furthermore, combining these tools with translationally relevant behavioral paradigms has also provided novel insights into the PFC neural mechanisms that may contribute to social deficits in various psychiatric disorders. This review highlights findings from the past decade that have shed light on the PFC cell types and neural circuits that support social information processing and distinct aspects of social behavior, including social interactions, social memory, and social dominance. We also explore how the PFC contributes to social deficits in rodents induced by social isolation, social fear conditioning, and social status loss. These studies provide evidence that the PFC uses both overlapping and unique neural mechanisms to support distinct components of social cognition. Furthermore, specific PFC neural mechanisms drive social deficits induced by different contexts.
The hippocampus is essential for different forms of declarative memory, including social memory, the ability to recognize and remember a conspecific. Although recent studies identify the importance ...of the dorsal CA2 region of the hippocampus in social memory storage, little is known about its sources of social information. Because CA2, like other hippocampal regions, receives its major source of spatial and non-spatial information from the medial and lateral subdivisions of entorhinal cortex (MEC and LEC), respectively, we investigated the importance of these inputs for social memory. Whereas MEC inputs to CA2 are dispensable, the direct inputs to CA2 from LEC are both selectively activated during social exploration and required for social memory. This selective behavioral role of LEC is reflected in the stronger excitatory drive it provides to CA2 compared with MEC. Thus, a direct LEC → CA2 circuit is tuned to convey social information that is critical for social memory.
•Lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC) inputs to hippocampal CA2 underlie social memory•Medial entorhinal cortex (MEC) CA2 input is weak and not involved in social memory•Social memory requires the direct but not indirect LEC inputs to CA2•LEC CA2 inputs are selectively activated by social over non-social exploration
Although the CA2 hippocampal region is essential for social memory and detection of social novelty, the inputs that provide social information to CA2 are unknown. We found that social memory depends on the direct inputs CA2 receives from the lateral entorhinal cortex. As this input is activated similarly by novel and familiar individuals, CA2 itself may compute novelty.
Why are some serious cases of corporate irresponsibility collectively forgotten? Drawing on social memory studies, we examine how this collective forgetting process can occur. We propose that a major ...instance of corporate irresponsibility leads to the emergence of a stakeholder mnemonic community that shares a common recollection of the past incident. This community generates and then draws on mnemonic traces to sustain a collective memory of the past event over time. In addition to the natural entropic tendency to forget, collective memory is also undermined by instrumental "forgetting work," which we conceptualize in this article. Forgetting work involves manipulating short-term conditions of the event, silencing vocal "rememberers," and undermining collective mnemonic traces that sustain a version of the past. This process can result in a reconfigured collective memory and collective forgetting of corporate irresponsibility events. Collective forgetting can have positive and negative consequences for the firm, stakeholders, and society.
Recognizing and remembering another individual in a social context could be beneficial for individual fitness. Especially in agonistic encounters, remembering an opponent and the previous fight could ...allow for avoiding new conflicts. Considering this, we hypothesized that this type of social interaction forms a long-term recognition memory lasting several days. It has been shown that a second encounter 24 h later between the same pair of zebrafish males is resolved with lower levels of aggression. Here, we evaluated if this behavioral change could last for longer intervals and a putative mechanism associated with memory storage: the recruitment of NMDA receptors. We found that if a pair of zebrafish males fight and fight again 48 or 72 h later, they resolve the second encounter with lower levels of aggression. However, if opponents were exposed to MK-801 (NMDA receptor antagonist) immediately after the first encounter, they solved the second one with the same levels of aggression: that is, no reduction in aggressive behaviors was observed. These amnesic effect suggest the formation of a long-term social memory related to recognizing a particular opponent and/or the outcome and features of a previous fight.
Researchers have examined the socialization of auditors at various stages of their professional development, but they have done little or no work on the continued effects of this socialization after ...auditors leave the firms. Put simply, they have not explored the ways that ex-auditors remember their past. Drawing on the literature in social memory studies and on 37 semi-structured interviews with ex-auditors who used to be employed at large Canadian accounting firms, we perform memory work to examine how ex-auditors transform their audit experience into cultural memory. The narratives of past audit experience elicited during the interviews reveal that ex-auditors develop a complex contemporary representation of this experience. When they solicited their communicative (individual) memories, our participants remembered multiple conflicts between their self-identity and the normative work environment during their time at the firms. However, when they reflected on the impact of their audit experience on their new careers, an alternative and much more collective version of this past emerged. Cultural memories with an elitist and class work dynamic that maintained and justified claims of professional and social superiority began to predominate. We argue that communicative and cultural memory are connected because it is communicative memory that allows cultural memory to take on social forms and exercise cultural domination. Our study makes three important contributions. First, it broadens the socio-temporal perspective of auditing research by highlighting the continued effects of the professional identity of auditors after they change careers. Second, it shows that representations of the past provide ex-auditors with a powerful means to promote their professional interests and structure power relationships within organizations. Third, it introduces the use of reflexive memory work as a rigorous methodological approach in accounting and organizational research.
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