[Ads-l] Incept v. Lives!

[Chris Waigl]

There appears to be another specialty / technical jargon sense in the field
of neuroscience, specifically the study of how memories are formed, change,
and disappear (see, apparently, the movie "Inception"). These processes are
nowadays studied in real time with tools such as fMRI. Here's a bunch of
uses from a paper:

===
Title: :Enhance, delete, incept: Manipulating hippocampus-dependent
memories"
...
Optogenetics and DREADDs can be used to incept memories.
...
In reality, is it possible to artificially store or “incept” new memories
in our brain?
...
While we are still far away from the ability to download kung fu into our
brains, we have crossed this first hurdle of incepting new associative
memories in our brains.
...
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0361923013002074
===

There seems to be another sense, whose precise meaning isn't 100% clear to
me. Maybe it just means "add subjects to a study":

===
Among a final total of over 250 patients incepted, we have reported in
interim sub-samples the characteristics of NSS at the first-episode (Browne
et al., 2000a,b) and at 6-month follow-up (Whitty et al., 2003). Described
here are findings among the complete inception population on predictors,
‘progression’ and relationship to diagnosis and functional outcome of NSS
from first presentation to 4 year follow-up.
...
We incepted patients with a first psychotic episode who presented to Cluain
Mhuire Family Centre (a catchment area service that provides psychiatric
care for an urban population of approximately 192,000) and St. John of God
Hospital, Dublin (a private psychiatric hospital that receives referrals
from the catchment area and across Ireland). Following approval from the
Research Ethics Committee of St. John of God Hospital, all patients gave
informed consent to their participation in the study. First episode
psychosis was defined as first presentation to any psychiatric service with
a psychotic episode. If medication had been prescribed prior to
presentation, patients were incepted provided they had not been on
medication for more than 30 days.
===

Sounds a little ominous. (I only looked at papers whose authors' names and
affiliations suggested they might be mostly native speakers.)

Chris


On Tue, Oct 10, 2017 at 10:06 AM, Baker, John <JBAKER at stradley.com> wrote:

> We all know "inception," but what about "incept"?  The OED takes this verb
> back to 1569, but the primary sense, "To undertake; to begin, commence,
> enter upon," is marked as Obs., with no examples since 1641 (1802 for
> adverbial "incepted").  There are surviving specialized senses involving
> entering into a career or, in biology, to take in, as an organism or cell.
> Merriam-Webster similarly deems the "being, commence, undertake" meaning to
> be archaic, although it notes surviving meanings of to ingest or to take in
> as a member.
>
> I was surprised recently to learn that the primary meaning is actually
> very much alive in insurance and law (though not, apparently, in the areas
> of law where I practice, since I hadn't heard it before).  A Westlaw search
> for "incepted" after 2000 finds 6,253 examples, including in 161 court
> opinions.  Here's the most recent as of today:  "The heart of the parties'
> dispute is whether the SEC's investigation into Patriarch is excluded from
> coverage because it was a pending or prior "claim" at the time the AXIS
> policy incepted in August 2011."  Patriarch Partners v. AXIS Insurance Co.,
> No. 16-CV-2277, 2017 WL 4233078 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 22, 2017).
>
> As this example may suggest, most uses refer to the inception of insurance
> policies.  There are, however, other references, as in this recent case:
> "Turning to the instant matter, SSEM claims that its State Court lawsuit
> should not have been stayed by this Court because its breach of contract
> claim for its share of attorneys' fees is not ancillary to the case which
> incepted in United States District Court for the Western District of
> Pennsylvania in 2003-namely, In re: Community Bank of Northern Virginia."
> In re Community Bank of Northern Virginia Mortgage Lending Practices
> Litigation, MDL No. 1674, 2017 WL 3621509 (W.D. Pa. Aug. 23, 2017).
>
> Here's another recent non-insurance example, this one from the Board of
> Veterans Appeals:  "The Veteran's hearing loss incepted during active duty
> service due to acoustic trauma experienced during combat."  Bd. Vet. App.
> 1736385, 2017 WL 4475408 (Aug. 31, 2017).
>
> So on the whole I think this is not an archaic or obsolete meaning,
> although it may be appropriate to mark its current use as primarily
> insurance and law.
>
>
> John Baker
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
Chris Waigl . chris.waigl at gmail.com . chris at lascribe.net
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net . http://chryss.eu

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org