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In Suzanne Nalbatian's Memory in Literature: From Rousseau to Neuroscience, Nalbatian explores associative memory as portrayed in the narratives of Joyce, Woolf, and Faulkner. Nalbation suggests that "memory controls the workings of [the characters'] minds in a variety of ways that create a conscious interchange with the past" (78). Present engages Past in a dialogue, in which each character seems to be equally vocal, "real," and reliable. Nalbatian adds that "Woolf analyzed her own memory process, specifying that her recollection of scenes of the past was 'not altogether a literary device.' She vividly explained how the significant moments of the past survive 'undamaged' and enter her present consciousness" (78). If Woolf's understanding of her consciousness - as a quilt of present and past -  can be understood as more than just "poetic," does the stream-of-consciousness narrative model hold any resonance in neurobiological structure or activity? Or is Woolf's philosophy of memory a product of her effort to immortalize her mother - whose death consumed Woolf - and retain her in the present, as Nalbatian suggests? What I'm beginning to understand from Nalbatian is the idea that perhaps our experiences of memory are a product of some kind of personalization of neural patterns, and that our "personal memories" receive inputs generated by an abstraction, i.e. Woolf's mother's death (event) -> desire to immortalize and preserve her in present experience (reaction; self-generated output) -> experience of memory.