A Memory is Just a Memory?

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Quite frankly, I can still see the page in my third grade math book that includes a rectangle with the combinations of ten written in it. Trouble is, that I never understood what the combinations of ten really meant. Shocked

http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/aug97/866819368.Ns.r.html

Do you agree or disagree with this research on "photographic memory"?

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Letty

I was of the opinion that a certain percentage of humans probably had the ability to scan a page and then sometime later recall everything on that page----after a google search it seems that idea was a myth. The example of the chess pieces is a good example of the myth. Interesting.

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Perception, I was even led to believe at one time, that it wasn't just mental visualization, those with this type memory actually saw the page of a book or whatever, suspended in glimmering hologram before their eyes. Shocked

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My understanding of such phenomina is that some individuals can retain a mental 'image' of something they have concentrated upon, to which they can refer at will; not as an image, before their eyes, but as mental 'information'.
And i also understand that these individuals often pay an intellectual 'price', similar to an 'idiot savant', for this capacity.
I suspect this to be rare because while not all recipients of such a brain function mutation have proven less able to survive due to the accompanying loss of other functions, most have not been competitively successful.

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Right, Bo. I guess that is why so many artists are misunderstood. They keep cuttin of their ears to spite their genes. Smile

I don't think that science can explain the idiot savant. I still wonder what part creativity plays in the schematic approach, however. Somewhere, there's a missing transistor.

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I read an article in the past few weeks (maybe in Newsweek?) that suggests that autism, which can manifest idiot savant behavior, is actually an extreme form of male intelligence.

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Wow, Wy. Male intelligence? I was thinking about autism, however. I wonder how many things are mislabeled when all disorders or unusual phenomena can come under the same umbrella. I was trying to remember a book I read about a woman who brought her autistic child back to reality by mimicking his behavior. Perhaps hallucinations fall under the same category. It would explain certain conditions, such as the illness of John Forbes Nash.

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Autism is used to describe a number of conditions... Nash himself, however, describes his illness as "delusional thinking characteristic of persons who are psychiatrically diagnosed as "schizophrenic" or "paranoid schizophrenic".

I'm sure it was the Newsweek article I saw. There was a small chart I wish I could adequately describe... Female intelligence ran the same intellectual line as Male intelligence, but was higher in emotional content. Autism followed the same line, but further from any emotion...

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Wy, I realize that, but some time back, I read an article about the fact that many psychiatrists will propagate certain mental illnesses in order to publish. One such example is multiple personalities. Hmmmm.

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Aaah, gotcha. Sounds logical -- after all they only make a couple hundred grand a year, right?

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I have always held to the suggestion that all our experiences are recorded somewhere in our brains, and it is only how the individual accesses memories that differs. If you asked me right now what my wife's cell phone number is, I couldn't tell you, but months ago, when the dog was in a medical crisis, I pulled it out of my head in an instant to call her. Go figure...

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Exactly, Cav. I think RNA has to do with memory, but I have forgotten the technical explanation. Something to do with grinding up planaria and finding that the memory programmed by the experimental scientists was still in tact. As I recall, that experiment could not be replicated. I think they forgot what they did Very Happy

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Letty; i think that was blood worms; they were 'trained' to react to some sort of stimulus, then ground up and fed to other blood worms (canibals); after which the consumers reacted in the same way as the 'grindees'.
But i don't think asigning this affect to the ribo-nucleic acid was any more than one 'possible' theory.

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Eidetic memory is found in a small percent of people, more often in children:

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/000901.html

http://www.sciam.com/askexpert_question.cfm?articleID=0001148F-EAB0-1E3A-82FC809EC5880000

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The planarian experiments did not test memory but rather response to stimuli.

Quote:

The flat-worm or planarian is a very simple invertebrate, nevertheless, in 1955 Thompson and McConnell showed that planaria could be classically conditioned to avoid light by pairing a light CS with an electric shock US. ... McConnell's initial discovery about memory in flatworms was that once a flatworm had been conditioned to avoid light if you cut it in half and allow the halves to regenerate both of the resulting worms show evidence of knowing the light-shock association. McConnell interpreted this as evidence that memory in flatworms was not localised in the head but was, rather distributed throughout the animal. In 1962 McConnell performed an experiment which appeared to be even more dramatic demonstration of this. After training some planaria he ground them up and fed them to other planaria. These animals were quicker at learning the light-shock association than controls who were fed ground-up untrained worms. ...

Many experiments were carried out on transfer of memory and on attempts to isolate the chemicals carrying these 'memories', not only in planaria, but in fish, mice and rats. There was, however, a great deal of controversy about these experiments - many scientists found that they could not replicate others' studies and methods were often criticised. ...

Stein interpreted this as showing that 'transfer' was not memory specific, rather, apparent changes in behaviour or learning-rate could be attributed to stress hormones transferred between donor's and recipients.

Cellular basis of memory

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Good morning all.

Bo and Terry, I lost my notes from the good doctor's psych class, so I can't comment. I'm surprised that I remember that particular lecture at all. Razz

It did, however, have to do with behavior mod, since the entire dept. was sorta' Skinnerian at the time. I'm not much of a behavior modification fan, though. Applied science was more valuable to me since I was interested in the psychology of learning, of which memory was most certainly a part. Thanks, yawl.

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terry's posts re: flat worms seem to form a more acurate template to my memories, than my somewhat 'embellished' version with blood worms; i'm sure she is refering to the studies i had heard of.

Interesting, my memory is reinforced by the accurate information, whereas my original post seemed fairly 'correct' at the time.

I guess that shows that i like to hear myself 'thinking', but prefer the memories of others, more accuratley maintained, than my own. Rolling Eyes

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Bo, the entire thread had to do with the exploration of what constitutes memory. Cutting and pasting is not what we are about. Since I have learned to do that, I have become a lazy thinker. What lab rats do in their maze and what I do in mine only proves how rat-like we all are. Which makes me realize that the entire planet is simply choosing sides and hoping that we win the popularity contest. Pity, that. Think that I'll simply stick to my original thesis: I will NOT wound another's soul...

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A Memory is Just a Memory?

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