I thought a boingboing’s poster’s take on [...]]]> This Sciam article discusses a recent experiment with memory, that illustrates some of the complex detail that our memory can store. The experiment demonstrated that with a visual image to trigger memory recall, ordinary humans were able to quickly match and compare a really large number of details.

I thought a boingboing’s poster’s take on this was clever – managing long term memory may be a “search problem”.

Since I’m interested in memory, and the memory and association training systems from the underground esoteric culture like qabalah, art of memory, and mantrayama, I found this new study interesting, especially the visual cueing.

In the past several decades, cognitive psychologists have determined that there are two primary memory systems in the human mind: a short-term, or “working,” memory that temporarily holds information about just a few things that we are currently thinking about; and a long-lasting memory that can hold massive amounts of information gained through a lifetime of thoughts and experiences. These two memory systems are also thought to differ in the level of detail they provide: working memory provides sharp detail about the few things we are presently thinking about, whereas long-term memory provides a much fuzzier picture about lots of different things we have seen or experienced. That is, although we can hold lots of things in long-term memory, the details of the memory aren’t always crystal-clear

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=why-do-we-forget-things

A recently published study by Timothy F. Brady, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and colleagues suggests that these long-term memories may not be nearly as fuzzy as once thought, however. In their work, the researchers asked subjects to try to remember 3,000 pictures of common objects—including items such as backpacks, remote controls and toasters—that were presented one at a time for just a few seconds each. At the end of this viewing phase, the researchers tested subjects’ memory for each object by showing them two objects and asking which one they had seen before. Not surprisingly, subjects were exceptionally good (more than 90 percent correct) even though there were thousands of objects to remember. This high success rate attests to the massive storage ability of long-term memory. What was most surprising, however, was the amazing level of detail that the subjects had for all of these memories. The subjects were just as good at telling the difference between two pictures of the same object even when the objects differed in an extremely subtle manner, such as a pair of toasters with slightly different slices of bread.

If It’s Not Fuzzy, Why Do We Still Forget Things?
This new work provides compelling evidence that the enormous amount of information we hold in long-term memory is not so uncertain after all. It seems that we actually hold representations of things we’ve seen in a fairly detailed and precise form.

Of course, this finding raises the obvious question: if our memories aren’t all that fuzzy, then why do we often forget the details of things we want to remember? One explanation is that, although the brain contains detailed representations of lots of different events and objects, we can’t always find that information when we want it. As this study reveals, if we’re shown an object, we can often be very accurate and precise at being able to say whether we’ve seen it before. If we’re in a toy store and trying to remember what it was that our son wanted for his birthday, however, we need to be able to voluntarily search our memory for the right answer—without being prompted by a visual reminder. It seems that it is this voluntary searching mechanism that’s prone to interference and forgetfulness.

And it is this voluntary searching mechanism that is trained and developed with associative tools like qabalah.

You can get them as free .pdfs for printing neuro cards from Accidental Mind.

http://accidentalmind.org/notecards/

“How Smart Is Grandpa?: How much can you expect from a septuagenarian brain?” by Michelle Tsai. Posted Thursday, April 26, 2007.

“Cells That Read Minds?: What the myth of mirror neurons gets wrong about the human brain,” by Alison Gopnik. Posted [...]]]> New sarticles about developments in neuroscience (and “neuroculture”) from Slate magazine –

“How Smart Is Grandpa?: How much can you expect from a septuagenarian brain?” by Michelle Tsai. Posted Thursday, April 26, 2007.

“Cells That Read Minds?: What the myth of mirror neurons gets wrong about the human brain,” by Alison Gopnik. Posted Thursday, April 26, 2007.

“God Is in the Dendrites: Can ‘neurotheology’ bridge the gap between religion and science?” By George Johnson. Posted Thursday, April 26, 2007.

“Spirit Tech: How to wire your brain for religious ecstasy,” by John Horgan. Posted Thursday, April 26, 2007.

“Train Your Brain: The new mania for neuroplasticity,” by Meghan O’Rourke. Posted Wednesday, April 25, 2007.

“Ginkgo Biloba? Forget About It.: A history of the top-selling brain enhancer,” by Brendan I. Koerner. Posted Wednesday, April 25, 2007.

“Brain Lessons: Steven Pinker, Oliver Sacks, and others on how learning about their brains changed the way they live.” Posted Wednesday, April 25, 2007.

“Best of the Brain: The five biggest neuroscience developments of the year,” by William Saletan. Posted Wednesday, April 25, 2007.

“Brain-Gym Showdown: Can a Slate reporter hold his own at the local neurobics club?” by Max Linsky. Posted Wednesday, April 25, 2007.

brains!: A special issue on neuroscience and neuroculture.

Ecstasy really does unleash the love hormone

“Clubbers who take the “love drug” ecstasy really might be “loved up”. Studies in rats suggest the drug causes a brain surge of oxytocin – the hormone that helps bond couples, as well as mothers to [...]]]> From New Scientist – one of the better science email newsletters, incidentally:

Ecstasy really does unleash the love hormone

“Clubbers who take the “love drug” ecstasy really might be “loved up”. Studies in rats suggest the drug causes a brain surge of oxytocin – the hormone that helps bond couples, as well as mothers to their babies.

Earlier research found increased oxytocin in the blood of people who had taken ecstasy. However, many drugs increase blood oxytocin without raising it in the brain – something thought necessary for any “pro-social” effects.

Iain McGregor at the University of Sydney in Australia, and his colleagues studied the effects of ecstasy in rats, which, like people, become more sociable on the drug. “It’s very characteristic behaviour. They lie next to each other and chill out,” McGregor says.

The team gave the rats the equivalent of two to three ecstasy tablets in an adult human and found that the drug activated oxytocin-containing neurons in an area of their brains called the hypothalamus. When they gave the rats a drug that blocked brain receptors for oxytocin, the increased sociability almost disappeared.

Why it didn’t disappear entirely isn’t clear. It could be that the dose of the receptor blocker was too low, or that other brain chemicals, such as dopamine, are also involved in triggering the sociable behaviour, McGregor says.”

http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/04/04/neurotheology/index.html

“”When we think of religious and spiritual beliefs and practices, we see a tremendous similarity across practices and across traditions.”

The frontal lobe, the area right behind our foreheads, helps us focus our attention in prayer and meditation.

The [...]]]> This is a fairly shallow article, mostly interesting because it appears on the CNN website.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/04/04/neurotheology/index.html

“”When we think of religious and spiritual beliefs and practices, we see a tremendous similarity across practices and across traditions.”

The frontal lobe, the area right behind our foreheads, helps us focus our attention in prayer and meditation.

The parietal lobe, located near the backs of our skulls, is the seat of our sensory information. Newberg says it’s involved in that feeling of becoming part of something greater than oneself.

The limbic system, nestled deep in the center, regulates our emotions and is responsible for feelings of awe and joy.

Newberg calls religion the great equalizer and points out that similar areas of the brain are affected during prayer and meditation. Newberg suggests that these brain scans may provide proof that our brains are built to believe in God. He says there may be universal features of the human mind that actually make it easier for us to believe in a higher power.

Interestingly enough, devout believers and atheists alike point to the brain scans as proof of their own ideas.”

Jeff Hawkins, [...]]]> What’s “memory-prediction framework”? Well, to oversimplify it, it suggests that the brain takes in information from the senses, compares it to memories of past experiences, and then tries to simulate, or imagine, likely future experiences. Sounds pretty obvious I suppose, but like a lot of things about the brain, it’s not well understood.

Jeff Hawkins, the fellow who started the Palm Pilot company (and a few others), thinks it may be the key to developing artificial intellengence. Or at least a better understanding of intelligence.

The language in these articles is pretty dense and jargonized, so be warned.

the wiki on Jeff Hawkins’ book and theories on artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and the brain.

“Hawkins’ basic idea is that the brain is a mechanism to predict the future… Perhaps not always far in the future, but far enough to be of real use to an organism.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory-prediction_framework

an excerpt from the On Intelligence book

and the On Intelligence website