Evidence of Memory Formation

[Open Mind]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

No one said anything about conscious recall. It's just about memory storage.

Would you call a car gearstick position, the driver's memory?

But the new molecules serve the same functions as the old, so structure, damage, and information are preserved. Interesting article:

FuturePundit: Average Age Of Cells In Body May Be Below 10 Years

~~ Paul

That just makes my question more important, how long did those so called 'long term memories' last in the sea slug?

[Open Mind]

Originally Posted by hoggworks

Why don't you read the article instead of asking us about it? It's not a terribly long article, and you'll sound like you're actually interested in having a discussion, rather than trying to offer cracks in the research.

Sufficient information isn't there.

Paul makes the very excellent and obvious point about cells; my brain is, in a direct, physical sense, not the one I was born with; every cell in my brain has been replaced. Since it's been replaced correctly, cell at a time, however, I'm still "me." Or even if I'm not still me, if I only think I am, I have access to "my" memories.

There is 'structural plasticity' during memory formation. Previous research suggests memories do not seem stably located within a single neuronal esensmble, memories seem fluid and from site to site within brain.....

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Open Mind

Would you call a car gearstick position, the driver's memory?

I don't understand the question. Surely we agree that memory and conscious recall of memory are two different things.

That just makes my question more important, how long did those so called 'long term memories' last in the sea slug?

I don't know, but the creation of new proteins fits the model of long-term memory formation. I suspect we'll see a lot more along these lines in the next few years.

~~ Paul

[Mike]

An article about the concept of memory traces that might be of interest to some here:

http://userpages.umbc.edu/~braude/pd...0a%20Trace.pdf

[hoggworks]

Originally Posted by Mike

An article about the concept of memory traces that might be of interest to some here:

http://userpages.umbc.edu/~braude/pd...0a%20Trace.pdf

That article's a mess. It seems to have been written by a first-year philosophy student who decided that because our memories are fallible, they are, therefore, impossible.

His critique of "trace theory" is rather silly; the author seems to believe that because we'd need to record specific memory information in our brains, that this renders them impossible. His reasoning seems to amount to an inability on his part to understand or imagine an answer.

Also, any paper that cites Sheldrake's morphic resonance theories loses SIGNIFICANT points.

Is the author of this paper unaware of computers? Computers recall data that is stored on a physical medium. Precise information about the data is recorded, and recalled. All you need to do this is a mechanism to store the data, and a mechanism to recover them. Why would the brain be different in that regard? Computers do what the author says the brain can't do physically. Interesting.

Now, you could easily reply with a difference between the two types of data, or at least the retrieval method: there is indeed a difference between remembering your friend's face and requesting a known file to open in Excel. But when you see a person's face, presumably a search is run to see if this matches anyone you know, just in the way that you might, say, run a search for a file you're looking for but which name you don't recall.

To take the comparison even further, consider facial recognition software; computers can recognize human faces, and record rafts of people to recognize for a future date. Information about faces is stored, and could be safely stored for as long as the storage medium is viable. When the detection software is running, it is continually searching its visual fields for faces (using a camera or video camera). Initially it searches for the roughest shapes it can identify as faces, and once it finds a face, narrows the search down based on criteria. This would be akin to tagging, where the software -- and the brain -- would see face, then white skin, then beard, then hair of a length, then something then something, and make a connection.

As to the author's contention that the human ability to detect a change in features over time somehow disproves the idea that the human brain stores memory, if we engage in tagging, more or less, why couldn't we simply identify a number of features, and make the guess that this is person X or Y?

I wonder, would the author of this paper think that computers don't actually store their data in their hard drives, but do so elsewhere, "out there?"

[Lekatt]

Originally Posted by hoggworks

There's an interesting article here on LiveScience about experimental evidence of memories being formed in the brain:

First Image of a Memory Being Made | LiveScience

I'm sure that if you really wanted to you could write it off being a correlative thing, and not causal, but the scientists have been able to track physical changes in the brain linked to formation of memory. It's fascinating stuff.


Also, it would seem a good answer to the question posed by many of you here, namely: "What evidence is there that memories are stored in the brain?"

The answer, of course, is science.

What was the memory? If science don't know what the memory was then how do they know it was a memory. Could have been anything. Just making assumptions not back by and evidence. Just anecdotal folks.

[Mike]

Originally Posted by hoggworks

Also, any paper that cites Sheldrake's morphic resonance theories loses SIGNIFICANT points.

The article is critical of Sheldrake's theories as explanations for memory. Hoggworks, do you feel that any article that mentions Sheldrake's theories, even to criticize them, loses points?

At any rate, I wonder what posters like David Bailey, Open Mind, and David Smith think of the article, since they usually have different perspectives from Hoggworks.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Lekatt

What was the memory? If science don't know what the memory was then how do they know it was a memory. Could have been anything. Just making assumptions not back by and evidence. Just anecdotal folks.

They feel confident it is a memory because the new evidence fits in with the current model of long-term memory. A prediction was made and then verified, kind of like how science is supposed to work. Give them a little time and they will probably be able to force a particular memory to be made, just like the recent work on forcing a particular memory to be recalled and also erased.

You have to pay attention to the big picture in order to see how the details fit in.

~~ Paul

[craven]

Hey everybody,

Not sure how this adds to or detracts from this conversation, or if it has any bearing at all other than to offer some pure entertainment value, but there's a great RADIOLAB episode on memory.

WNYC - Radiolab: Memory and Forgetting (June 08, 2007)

And, btw, if you've never heard of radiolab or ever listened to an episode please go, immediately, and download ever single one. IMO Radiolab stands alone as the undisputed king of pure excellence in podcasting (no offense Alex! )

[hoggworks]

Originally Posted by Mike

The article is critical of Sheldrake's theories as explanations for memory. Hoggworks, do you feel that any article that mentions Sheldrake's theories, even to criticize them, loses points?

I missed the part where they were critical of Sheldrake's theories. Hmm. Perhaps I tuned out during that part of the paper; shall have to look at it again.

To answer your question, no, not every mention of any kind loses points; I just meant that if they were saying the points made sense, then they lose points. Given the content of the article, it seemed like that was warranted.