Memory - how does it work?

[RyanJ]

Hi everyone!

 

How does memory actually work, on thinking about this I cna make no sence at all

 

The brain is, by definition anyway, a large conenction of interlinking neurons who fire in a certain pattern to make a certain thought or process a bit of information - thats fine I get that.

 

Memory is where everyhting goes nuts for me - memory is the connection between two or more neurons, how does that actually work? How can your brain know that set of conections there means x and that there means y. Its really very interesting and facinating all at the same time. Also how does your brain know where these memories are located and where are they located, are they located in one part of your brain or are they linked everywhere throught it?

 

I never understood how your brain can store sound, video, pictures, words, anything you like, as a set of connections.

 

Any answers you cna provide would me much appreciated

 

Oh, and one more: would anyone like to speculate as to the storage capacity of the brain in terms of memories? I was watching a show about a personwho remembers EVERYTHING he reads, hundreds of books. How much can yor brain actually store?

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Jones

[Mayflower]

I can't help much besides this one link I found: http://www.merkle.com/humanMemory.html

[RyanJ]

I can't help much besides this one link I found: http://www.merkle.com/humanMemory.html

 

 

Thanks for the link, reading it now

 

Edit: I'm not convinced by reading that that the human brain cna only store a few hundred megabytes of data. I eman that guy reads hundreds of books a year and he remembers every word out of every one of those books. In plain compressed text format on a computet those take more than a few hundred megabytes, that not to mention all the stuff he already knows how to do and has learned before.

 

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Jones

[Mayflower]

He can remember the entire book? So basically he could read an entire book aloud to someone without actually having it with him? I find that a bit suprising.

[RyanJ]

He can remember the entire book? So basically he could read an entire book aloud to someone without actually having it with him? I find that a bit suprising.

 

 

Yup, he could.

 

He can remember a huge ammount of information, hes what they call a savant. Its nuts, he went on to a general knowledge show and had every single question correct. Its hard to believe but you can give him the name of a book he has read, a page and he can read it... I wish I had that type of memory for my exams

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Jones

[zyncod]

We don't even need to look at savants that are capable of things like that to understand that the brain can hold well more than a few hundred megabytes. If you can hit a baseball or even just walk in a straight line, you're in possession of some pretty sophisticated physics knowledge. And then you have people like Beckham, where his "bending" the ball thing required physicists a few weeks to figure out how that might work via equations; Beckham did it in a fraction of a second.

 

It just seems like a flawed experiment to begin with; you're not just memorizing the things on the sheet of paper, you're memorizing how the paper feels, what the font looks like, how the room is lit, how it smells, etc, etc. There is no real distinction between conscious and unconscious memory (notice how a particular smell can bring back a memory that's been buried for a decade or more); on this basis, I don't think that we are limited to just a few hundred megabytes.

[RyanJ]

It just seems like a flawed experiment to begin with; you're not just memorizing the things on the sheet of paper' date=' you're memorizing how the paper feels, what the font looks like, how the room is lit, how it smells, etc, etc. There is no real distinction between conscious and unconscious memory (notice how a particular smell can bring back a memory that's been buried for a decade or more); on this basis, I don't think that we are limited to just a few hundred megabytes.[/quote']

 

Exactly! And thats why I think those estimates are way out.

Its not only the things you cna learn, its the stuff thats already in there too.

 

I mean you think about the site of a pixture file in a computer, they can be huge, not only that linked to it you can have sounds, smells, feelings - all in one.

 

You think about what you are capable of learning in a lifetime, by my estimates you learn about 40 books worth in high school over 5 years and over all the subjects. You go into higher education and you learn even more. You learn throughout all of life and taking into account the minor losses of the odd neuron(s) as you age you end up with a huge number of connections, totaling a vast ammount of storage.

 

I can;'t even start to think about the numbers that would arise from such a calculation but I know onw thing, they would be pretty big so I agree with you there 100%.

 

 

You also brought up another interesting point, the speed of the brain, hoe does it know where a memory is stored? Does it simply scan the whole brain untill it finds the correct part.

 

Interesting topic so far

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Jones

[bascule]

We don't even need to look at savants that are capable of things like that to understand that the brain can hold well more than a few hundred megabytes.

 

Yeah, the linked article claims we can learn "two bits per second" which I'd say is pretty obviously false, considering how well we manage to associate visual/audio information which obviously takes up more than "two bits per second"

[dttom]

What I know is just the memory process involve the CREB(cyclic adenosine monophosphate respond-element binding protein) and PKA(protein kinase A). When a message is transfered to a memory neuron, the message will reduce the restrictors on both CREB and PKA, then the traveler of the PKA will go into the nucleus and phosphorylate CREB, then the CREB will recall some memory genes for working. But what happen after that, I don't know.

[Bio-Hazard]

What I'm wondering about people who can memorize tons of things is if they can comprehend them? I mean.. what's stopping people who can remembers tons of things from developing the most sophisticated technology the world has seen combining all aspects of science?

 

These savants make me question their being from time to time.

I'm sure if any of you could read 100 books that cover a vast field of science and remember it all you'd crank out some kick*** stuff. I know I would.

[cpwmatthews]

I never understood how your brain can store sound' date=' video, pictures, words, anything you like, as a set of connections.

[/quote']

 

Maybe the brain stores these sees things rather like the way a tv displays it's picture by scaning accross it's image many times? If the neurons you speak of have different positive and minus characteristics then it may store things in a kind of Binary code for retreival later?

[RyanJ]

Maybe the brain stores these sees things rather like the way a tv displays it's picture by scaning accross it's image many times? If the neurons you speak of have different positive and minus characteristics then it may store things in a kind of Binary code for retreival later?

 

Good idea! Stull, that would take up more than a bit of space don't you think? And somehow your brain can actually link sounds into those images in the correct place!

 

Maybe it stores the images s a set of stil images and then merges them together at the correct rate?

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Jones

[cpwmatthews]

Thankyou for the "good idea" comment I feel pulled apart by someone else's.

I hope you get loads more replies on the subject at hand it really intreges me.

Ps I was born in Wrexham, are you near?

[RyanJ]

Thankyou for the "good idea" comment I feel pulled apart by someone else's.

I hope you get loads more replies on the subject at hand it really intreges me.

Ps I was born in Wrexham' date=' are you near?[/quote']

 

Hopefully we'll get some more replies on this also - its an interesting topic to me anyway

 

I'm not even shure if scientists actually know how memory really works yet though :S

 

I actually live in Rhondda Cynon Taff but I'm no good with place names

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Jones

[Glider]

It's way too long to explain fully, but essentially, memory is a function of long-term potentiation. This is a property by which a series of neurons that are triggered have their firing threshold reduced and so are more likely to fire in the same configuration when exposed to a trigger stimulus (a trace), evoking a similar 'experience' to the original. Memory is reconstructive and experiencial. We don't store things in the same way as video or computer hard drives.

[Conceptual]

Memory makes more sense if one looks at the brain as a whole. Different parts of the brain are used for different things. Even the sensory organs are wired to distinct parts of the brain, which are further wired everywhere else. This is useful in that any memory can have many connections, sensory associations, brain associations within all parts of the brain. Cases have been documented where a person has a severe trama to the brain and loses use of an aspect of the brain but will still have full recall of their personal memory, due to it being stored in many place for various levels of comparision.

 

Although the cerebral is somewhat broken into distinct aspects which are somewhat specialized, these distinctions are all wired into the thalamus region in the core of the brain. This is the main crossroads of the brain where everything comes together, including feedback to and from the body. Near the thalamus region there is the limbic system and the ventricles. The core can alter, via the limbic system, the cerebral spinal fluid within the ventricles, which bathes the cerebral aspects of the brain. This can alter the firing potential of neurons allowing certain memory organization to preferentially fire throughout the entire brain.

 

The ego appears to stay in the cerebral matter. What is called the inner self exists within the core region. The inner self can be understood as the center of the subconscious mind. An animal has no ego but does have an instinctive center of consciousness or inner self. If the ego was theoretically moved back to the thalamus, it would be able to use 90-100% of the brain due to the wiring there. But it would lose the cerebral connection that helps build up memory diversity. It would become more natural instinctive and less diferentiated. The ego would need to be shift back and forth from the thalamus to the cerebral for such a neural change to be progressive. Whether this is possible who knows.

[Glider]

CSF bathes the cerebral aspects of the brain? Can alter the firing potential of neurons? What are you talking about? The last paragraph is utter rubbish.

[bascule]

If I may venture a guess here, I'd say that human memory (and thought as well, although the underlying implementation is no doubt rather different) utilizes underlying data structures which information theorists would refer to as ontologies.

[Cognition]

If I may venture a guess here, I'd say that human memory (and thought as well, although the underlying implementation is no doubt rather different) utilizes underlying data structures which information theorists would refer to as ontologies[/url'].

 

Hi bascule, why do you think thought and memory have a very different implementation in the brain? I don't think they have: thought is fueled by the connection-strengts in the brain (in part), and so is memory.

Furthermore, I agree with your view on ontologies: memory-structures can be seen as ontologies, but there may be a slight difference also. As I understand the ontologies in computer science they are more formal, while memory-structures in the brain are more loosely created from pure associations.

[bunburryist]

What blows my mind is when you think about how we recognize things like music, movies, locations, etc. In order for you to recognize something you need to have it memorized in some way. Think of all the songs you "have in your head." Think of how much "memory" a conductor would need for one stinking symphony! He knows all the parts, the nuances associated with each, etc. When you listen to a song and can anticipate all the various parts - rhytmic, melodic, lyric, etc. - it's amazing. Now add to that all the Seinfeld episodes you recognize, locations you recognize with only a glimpse, etc. and it goes way, way off the chart. (Notice that those dealing with memory on a neurological basis never bring up these massive memory experiences, but are content to think in terms of "bits" of memory "datum.")

 

We have no ideas what a memory really is, or even how to define it, or how one (much less gazzilions) can be "stored" in "the brain." I think it's healthy to remind ourselves that no one ever "discovered" that we "think with our brains," or that memories are "stored" in "the brain." We simply believe it because, as a result of our present materialist worldview, we can think of no alternative.

 

Those who believe that memories are "stored in the brain" typically do so because it fits their worldview, not because it has a scientific basis. Is there a relationship between the brains that are aspects of our experiences and those experiences as a whole? Sure - but that's no proof of a materialist worldview. The more commited one is to materialist explanations, the more likely one is to have a background that leans one toward that view. I have found that most A.I. enthusiats are computer people who stumbled into neurology - not the other way around. This isn't unlike creationists. They are Christians who became confronted with problem of the origin of life - it wasn't their primary interest. Many people researching the brain are in a similar position -and I don't mean this as an insult. Simply that they come to the brain with previous worldview baggage.

 

As for the "large collection of interlinking neurons" . . .

 

(From my response to the "Number of connections in the brain" post 10-29-2005, 12:49 PM )

 

The number of connections in the brain are very, very few and mostly limited to the Cerebellum. These legitimate connections are called "gap junctions." I get so tired of people - knowledgable people - going on and on about "connections" in the brain. Although the word "synapse" comes from the Greek word meaning connect, synapses are not connections. The synaptic cleft is a space between neurons. Neurochemicals floating around between neurons does not "connect them."

 

Except in the case of gap juntions, impulses do not propagate from one neuron to another. An impulse propagates to an axonal synapse(s), then chemicals float their merry way across the synaptic cleft. The fact that his happens rather quickly does not do away with the fact that they are not connected. At any given time, the vast, vast majority of your neurons (the exceptions being gap juntions) are DISconnected.

 

Why does this definitional point matter? Because the biggest problem- the "dirty laundry" - in neurology is how to reconcile billions of SEPARATE neurons with a self-evidently holisitic experience. You will notice that neurology types don't spend much time discussing this problem - they don't even think about it because they believe, implicitly, that you have billions of connections in your brain. Look how far down you had to read in these responses before the problem was brought up. Rob

[psynapse]

This just boggles the mind really. I remember studying the brain breifly as part of a bio class. I remember all the neuro-transmitters and most of the central nervous sytem, but what has me is that you are constanly making memories as well as processing things at the same time even while you sleep the process never stops. I was wondering about physical changes in neurons, I was wondering how exactly a memory is stored and I thought it must be more complex than the flow of ions and certain chemicals. What about drugs and flashbacks. When a person experiences a flashback, because at the time the memory was produced while the brain was dosed with a large amount of an external factor in the case of war or injury, I heard it was adrenaline that caused these memories to be constructed in such a way that it is incredibly vivid. So when you remember the memory, because of how well the memory is constructed the memory becomes more real than the reality you are in and voila, a flashback. The strange thing is how they are triggered. Randomly form some external stimuli, be it smell or sound.

 

Weird stuff interesting topic so far. I find it a bit strange the brain trying to understand itself and see how it does what it does.

[bunburryist]

Psynapse - Rather than thinking strictly materialist terms of what "it" does (or that it "does" anything in the conventional materialist sense), try thinking rather in terms of looking for a relationship between our experience as a whole, the aspects of our experience we call brains, and the reality underlying it all. I can't help but think there is something fundamentally wrong with the way we think of our experience that leads to the problems in physics and neurology. Perhaps the way out will be for physicists and neurologists to break out of their habitual ways of thinking about our experience. This doesn't require us to get all metaphysical or to resort to spiritualism, etc. It's a simple matter of thinking, "Gee, maybe reality isn't the way we have learned to think it is." How many times in the past have scientists had to accept that reality simply wasn't how their teachers and parents "knew" it was. Rob

[Ndi]

I thought the brain stored information in a lossy, fading, round robin style.

 

* lossy: you never remember everything on a page, you retain certain things you are interested. For example, you remember who was the main character, but not every line nor the page number. Retaining the storyline and some quotes is NOT storing the book. In order to estimate the book in bytes you have to be able to reproduce it by heart, every letter, every sign, every page number.

 

* fading: while it keeps a vivid image for the first few seconds, it fades retaining important parts then fades away to a point where you remember seeing the page but the page itself is generated to look like it. It's why "you remember it differently" after a while

 

* Round Robin: Newer info is stored in full while similar info is summed up once new data arrives. When you come back from a vacation, you have a by hour memory. As time passes, the vacation is compressed, with details being forgotten and only centerpoints are left, then only important stuff and at the end - eventually the whole thing is just a spike on a graph. That's how you can have an year's access graphs in 200K. Once the week has passed, only per-day is stored because you can only view things from the present backwards.

 

Also, estimating a book as kb stored is bad. You read the book, then burn it. You take a text document and type everything you remember about it. It will be down to two-three pages. What you remember, not what you can deduce back. You'll be surprised. Also, a page is basically <1Kb, a book, even a large one, is 200-400K in uncompressed format. No books are hundred of Mb in size.

 

Also, computer compression removes the human component, there is absolutely no point in comparing them - LZ stores repeated letters in words: e.g. google = g1 o2 g1 l1 e1 > then dictionary base store G as a, o as b, etc. Compressed, google would be a 2b a c d. It makes no sense to a human since it's binary data and math.

 

All being considered, the thought that we store a few megs is likely wrong. We learn a lot during a lifetime and even though many are automated and take other routes.

 

On the other hand, just because video takes up huge amounts of data on a computer does nothing to show how much it takes in memory because we store vectorized objects (a human jumping > a few bytes for human, a few bytes for jumping, then clothes color, face and a few other details since we sum up stuff in a lossy format). So it's not impossible to have everything in a few hundred Mb.

 

If we stored everything then re-watching the tape would yield no other data. Even memory freaks can't tell the number of hairs on a person's head in a video. The info is there, it gets processed but not stored. There is no parralel between the 4 Gb of data on a DVD and the space it takes up in the brain. E.g.: film a flower growing. The DVD is full, yet all we have is "a flower grows for 2 hours. It's a red rose. It has a green side and it grows. 5 thorns". That's just about it.

[nettron]

Ndi as pretty much summed up my thoughts on this topic but to add something to think about, as anyone ever contemplated that biological memory may not necessarily store images,sounds,smells,etc as an all-to-all bit or weight representation ? Rather it could be stored in a compressed form as an "algorithm" that is both adaptive and integrative.

[casperl]

Memory is where everyhting goes nuts for me - memory is the connection between two or more neurons, how does that actually work? How can your brain know that set of conections there means x and that there means y. Its really very interesting and facinating all at the same time. Also how does your brain know where these memories are located and where are they located, are they located in one part of your brain or are they linked everywhere throught it?

 

I think Artificial Neural Networks are very simple models of how memory works in brain. Hopfield model is such a one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopfield_net