Slashdot Mirror
Brain's Cache Memory Found
Shipud writes "Electrical activity in a single section of the brain has been linked to very short-term
working memory, as is
reported at Nature. Very short-term working memory capacity is thought to be related to intelligence. In the same way that a larger cache speeds processing time, people with a greater capacity for holding images in their heads are expected to have better reasoning and problem-solving skills. The localization of this ability is a surprising finding, as until now it was believed that STWM was diffused throughout the cortex, rather than localized."
Is this going to lead to benchmarking people?
Employer: I'm sorry sir you don't have a big enough cache for our needs. We are going to have to let you go.
Employee: Man this blows i would be really upset but i forgot what you just said.
A Fatal OE Exception has occurred, Sig will now reboot.
Does the article mention anything about expansion modules? I'd read it myself, but I can't remember what we're talking about here...
What was I saying again?
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
What are we linking to?
I always thought prefrontemporal was short-term. Is this anything new?
As my father lik@(munch munch)...
To be honest, in these days where you can easily note down your recent thoughts on you pda or even old-fashioned paper, I feel more than relieved to actually forget about all the problems at work shortly after I return home. Not true for general problem-solving ability though
0 001 11 1
good news for pr0n hounds.
too bad it's addicting
just short-term memory?
Then the cache gets written to the hard drive for permanent storage so after you turn yourself off (in bed), the data is there the next day.
That CSS file that blocks ads
But is it L1,L2,L3?
How many KB?
What clockspeed?
Who makes the chips?
Jeez.
does anyone have any suggestions on how to improve your short-term working memory? Does anyone feel that they've improved their's?
P
It's interesting how we use rudimentary digital computing analogies to explain the workings of our brain. Like in most theories, I suppose one can extend this analogy only to a certain extent. Which, in this case, shouldn't be suprising considering how comlex the brain is...
Oh yeah...Well my mental cache is bigger than yours!
No Monkeys for RAM No Monkeys for RAM This DDRRAM has not been tested on animals
Let's hope it's not pipeline burst.
NO Monkeys for RAM
NO Monkeys for RAM
This DDR RAM has not been tested on animals
Perhaps this explains why my head gets extremely hot when I do my Calculus exams.
Interestingly, both groups of researchers were working strictly with visual memory. I wonder whether the working memory used by programmers, mathematicians, etc. will be in the same place, or a different area altogether?
And what about the famous "magic number", 7 +/- 2? These people seem to be offering 4 +1/-2.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Think I need my vitamins G & T
Hmm.. Makes you wonder if it's possible to overclock your own brain. Some kind of implant with electric stimuli.. Or maybe some kind of chemical. Only, I can't quite figure out how to make a decent cooling solution, and I absolutely refuse to walk around with a heatsink attached to my forehead! ..Or if you find out how to stimulate that part, maybe some good oldfashioned brain exercise to increase your cache and speed. On second thought.. Nah.. Not really geeky enough ;)
There has been plenty of studies showing that people tend to remember things incorrectly. Could this very short term memory be part of the final proof needed to invalidate witness statements in legal cases? Or perhaps they can use the line and dots test on witnesses and see how likely they are to remember something that happens in a glance. If they check high on the test, they might be more likely to be able to remember an incident correct.
Apple built a platform for their ideas, Google built one for everyone's.
I wonder what would happen if they just injected some stem cells around there?
(\_/)
(O.o) This is Bunny. (> <)
in terms of latency, hit/miss rate, bandwith, associativity? (n-ways)?
Thomas S. Iversen
... should you demand a Xeon-style salary?
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
It boggles the mind.
This post leaves very little to discuss.
Which is why:
Imagine, if you will, a Beowul....
neat
As my father lik@(munch munch)...
Maybe there's a cache hierarchy in the brain? This would be 1st level, then there's a larger, slower 2nd level and ultimately the very large, main permament memory.
:-)
Do you ever get that "sinking" feeling when you delve deep into memory for stuff that happened decades ago? That's just your brain fetching from disk
(Wetware of Mass Disorientation)
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Most people can hold three or four things in their minds at once when given a quick glimpse of an image such as a collection of coloured dots, ...
Did it not also depend on what kind of (was it) chunks you store (if this is at all what is stored in should it perhaps be ultra-) STM ?
Where it "started":
The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information
by George A. Miller
originally published in The Psychological Review, 1956, vol. 63, pp. 81-97
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
When I first read the article headline, I read it as: .. I think I will go to sleep to avoid seeing the letters on my terminal dancing around (again).
Science: Brain's Cash Money Found
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.
If Brain has a cache somewhere, his less mentally endowed partner in crime should still get a cut.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
"16MB of memory ought to be enough for anyone".
The best planning can be done after the project completes.
so we have found the cache.. but where is the cpu??
Only morons moderate based on a sig.
Mathematics is most often associated with visual and logical reasoning, the so-called "left-brain" functions. More artistic skills and social intelligence are associated with so-called right-brain functioning.
Want art by a mathemtician? Escher and Penrose.
Want maths by an artiste? There's the long lost creator of the progression of fifths - an intuitive aural representation of a Fibinocci Sequence.
Ask a programmer whether programming is an art or a science and you'll receive either one answer or the other. Programming is a science because an algorithm is provable. Programming is an art, because no two implementations will be the same. Some skills work both sides of the brain.
And if you need even more cooling, you can add a propellor beanie!
(BTW, the inventor of the propellor beanie, R. Faraday Nelson, was my sunday school teacher.)
I initially read this as "Brian's Cache Memory Found" and thought "hmmm, that's nice...good for him."
What has *science* done?!? -- Dr. Weird (ATHF)
Wow - politicians must be running fully in L1 cache !
I'm reading Kandel & Squire's Memory.
Wonderful book.
Anyway, this is just the "visuospatial sketchpad" as the authors call it. There's also the phonological loop dealing with meaningful sounds, among other types of working memory. So this isn't the be-all and end-all of even immediate memory.
Increasing your cache memory is clearly beneficial: it can only decrease access time to memory. Increasing STM, however, isn't necessarily good: if you remember more things simultaneously, your brain likely has to make associations between more things at a time. Whether it can or cannot depends on other parts of the brain.
In fact, it seems likely that cause and effect are reversed: it seems likely that "higher intelligence" probably causes a larger STM rather than the other way around--the size of the STM would adapt to the needs of the rest of the brain rather than the other way around.
An Altair MIPS 8800 at 200Khz was cutting edge back when I was manufactured.
Matter of fact I don't have any cache and I can't get upgraded due to my proprietary power supply and motherboard, not to mention my hard to find RA
It's not too surprising that the brain's short-term visual cache would be closer to the visual cortex. What I would like to know is how closely the visual cache is related to intelligence. Does it need actual visual input, instead of just imagined, and if so... <facetious>do you become marginally dumber when you close your eyes?</facetious>
From reading Synaptic Self, the "general" cache and CPU area would seem to be the prefrontal cortex. It can activate memories to work on (the closer the current emotional state it was recorded in, the better), and hold a few things to work on. Perhaps there are many more specializations yet to be uncovered, but I'm struck at the sheer relative size of brain required to actively think and plan a next move. Considering that even a worm brain can get its owner around, you'd think our capacity for juggling thoughts would be encyclopaedic.
I'd be curious as to what connections this area has to the prefrontal cortex - I've heard of the spots tests before - I don't recall it being related to general intelligence.
Addressing the question of how cache gets spat out to hard drive, as it were, to keep thoughts in slightly longer-term storage, it looks like thoughts have to be put through the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex, where they will slowly get rewired (indexed?) over the course of about two weeks - about the length of memories you can lose under strong electroshock therapy.
So many small functional pieces of the brain; I'm struck by how independent the sections of the brain are, by and large. Large-scale coordination has to go through a secondary 'chemical drip' system, from neuromodulators released by non-connecting nerves throughout the brain. It's that level of coordination required to put your brain to sleep or wake it up, amongst other things.
I'm looking forward to more decoding of the brain's structures - narrowing down specific activities to a small area of the brain like they did is fantastic.
Binary geeks can count to 1,023 on their fingers
Does scientific Confirmation-Bias exist in the Hippocampus too?
The peer review of this "OLD" psychological ability to "chunk" information for 7 +-2 episodic memories is not a problem solving based semantic thought process.
What about parallel distributed processing models of the brain, perhaps this irresponsible researcher had a case study that defied all statistics and the 35 years of PET scans, MRI data, and REAL SCIENTIFIC STUDY. Note too that the "chunking" ability is not a static number, and has been proven to be a learned skill (go from 5 to 80 chunks with some practice). Note also, that proactive and retroactive memories interfere with long-term memories, suggesting a gold fish's 5-second buffer may outwit this scientist with Adult Attention Deficit Disorder that obviously missed most of the confounding variables including the episodic memory of the university lectures and statistical research.
BTW: Do flash-bulb memories of traumatic events make people smarter? No, this has been proven to actually cause memory deficits. Psychology is for scientists, not a lamer with a bad case of priori and a tainted research bias.
GO BACK TO A GOOD UNIVERSITY AND GET A REAL DEGREE!
YOUR INTERNET DEGREE HOLDS NO WEIGHT HERE!
Everyone knows that the L2 cache is near the processor.. dooh?!?!?
What would be interesting to know is if the brain is able to shift this function to other parts of the brain in case of some kind of brain damage, and what are the consequences of the damage if it is unable to do that.
This must be the area where Homer had the crayon
stuck in his brain. DOH.
Some fresh air will do you and your processor good. Install a fan in your case, and take a walk outside. I hear there's this giant fan called "wind" powered by something called the "sun" out there. I've never been, but a friend of mine...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Setting aside the fact that drawing analogies between digital hardware and human wetware is somewhat dodgy... I'd have thought the equivalent of short term memory would run nearer 8GB than 8MB.
I don't know about you, but I'm a 'visual' thinker, and its all pretty much 3D images that come to mind. For example, reference to recent discussion invokes images of the actual conversation, not just the content. OK, human memory is pretty good at eliding details and interpolating from previous experience (analagous to heavy JPEG compression maybe?), but even 10minutes of pottering about the house must equate to a huge 'dataset'.
May be... But still I'm afraid that the size of your STWM is not going to impress your girlfriend.
- Back off man. I am a scientist
Well, For my money this doesn't work. My short term memory is shot, but my intelligence is over 130 placing me in the top 2%.
Important distinctions must be made for memory in my case and in other cases I believe. There are 3 types of memory. I'm not sure of thier "official" names but they are as follows.
Events - This covers day to day information such as what you had for breakfast, what you were just doing etc. This is the memory type I am missing.
Knowledge - Long term memory this covers pulling facts and figures from your brain. Batting averages for players, calculations, algorithms.
Fortunately for me I retain this information on first viewing as long as I have something to relate it to.
Skills - The ability to preform routine actions. Use a saw, ride a bike, drive a car. Takes me a bit more time than knowledge but still adequate.
When you speak of a master of all trades, that would be me since I have no short term memory, when I go to the kitchen to get a drink I usually end up having to go back 2-3 times as I cannot remember what I was doing. Instead everything important has to be encoded directly to long term memory.
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
...you're assuming that the brain processes information like a P4. this isn't the case!
obligatory post: cheap mental cache enlargement pills. Add 4 inches to your mental cache...
Because I often go upstairs and can't remember what I went there for.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Even though it's published in Science, you need to take this kind of thing with a grain of salt.
fMRI, for instance, only shows activity over a certain threshold. It looks at each cubic millimeter of the brain, and answers the question "Are more than X% of the cells here busy during this task?" (I'd guess X=10, but I don't know off hand.)
So, it encourages experimenters to imagine that the brain has small, dedicated regions because it cannot
see diffuse activity.
In this particular experiment, it's easy to imagine that the memory is actually spread out over large areas of the brain, with low levels of activity over large volumes, but there is this one little switching center (or synchronization node, or bus driver, or gateway, or whatever you want to call it) that gets busy.
So, that region of the brain is presumably associated with "cache memory", but that doesn't mean it *is* the memory. All we really know is that it is a busy and compact part of the memory system.
If this was a dup, would you know?
Insightful, informative, underrated!
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Neuroimaging is only as good as the theory on which it bases the explanation of why a certain area of the brain lights up during a certain task. These data are framed in terms of Alan Baddeley's model of short term memory, and its subcomponent of a visiospatial sketchpad. Don't forget about the work in the 70s by Simon at CMU on chunking in a digit span task. They had a student who could recall 82 digits! He did this by breaking the number string components that were easier to recall, i.e. a string of numbers that meant something to him. If you really want to know "What memory is for" see Glenberg (1997).
people who get electroshock therapy are so fucked in the head? does it screw up the cache or the main memory?
im a programmer and when working on larger projects i cant keep all the details in my head. the solution for me is to write everything down and keep them in lists (workhour-lists, todo-lists, next version features-lists, problem-lists, idea-lists, ...). this alone would not help a lot but i devoloped a system to arrange this lists and usually i find things when im looking for them not through memory but through logical organisation.
... thats what i think is intelligence.
my point is that "the capability your brain-cache" (nonscientifically spoken) is just a factor. how you use it and what you do if it isnt sufficient
I have to admit that I have a severe case of CRS. I am notorious in my circle of friends for my short term memory. Hell, I even notice it. But, all things considered, I am very intelegent. I may not remember specific information, but can easily duplicate and refine how I reached said information. I liken it to having a small cashe, but a large instruction set, if we use this analogy.
Someone hates these cans.
So I guess this means that stupid people are just like a Celeron. Same brain as the rest of us, but with a smaller cache.
Maybe when we understand the brain almost completely we can start developing electronic/bionic upgrades, improving speed, creativity and memory capacity. By the way, isn't it interesting that the brain is so complicated that we can do all the things we do, math, art, science... yet it's too complicated to be understood by itself. So far, at least.
It would be nice to be able to read the Nature article, but either Nature is /.ed, or they've taken it down for an empty page, I get a "done" response from that link in about 100 milliseconds.
If they've taken it down, that sucks the big one. Obviously I'm not subscribed to the dead tree version, and at nearly $2 a gallon for gas, I'm sure as hell not gonna drive 65 miles round trip to get to a magazine rack that has it.
Has anybody got a cache of it?
No Cheers this time, Gene
I was thinking the same thing. I mean, the people clearly chose the most wise, experienced and benevolent person to be their leader. What level are the voters on, then...?
God made my brain cache out of Rambus memory. Everyone else's is on DDR, the world has passed me by...
Where's the damn the expansion slot? I don't care if Best Buy screws me on the rebate, I want an upgrade!
Software Wars
seems this news pulled nature.com's memory. at last I don't get anything but a blank page. slashdotted?
this sig is useless
Out the situation in Iraq. Those Iraqi's need to remember we are fighting for them........ID 10 Ts.......
If you had a WMD brain, it'd get EXTREMELY hot doing calculus. So count your blessings.
I got about half way through the summary, lost the train of thought, had to start over... is that a bad sign or proof that caffeine improves the brain ?
Next project - determine is Slurpy "Brain Freeze" can overclock the wetware
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
I would like to know more about the brain mechanism that causes Taco to post so many dupes.
Any chance a slashdot reader can arrange a Taco brain scan right as he is posting a dupe?
Memory bottleneck limits intelligence
Single spot in brain determines size of visual scratch pad.
15 April 2004
TANGUY CHOUARD
The number of things you can hold in your mind at once has been traced to one penny-sized part of the brain.
The finding surprises researchers who assumed this aspect of our intelligence would be distributed over many parts of the brain. Instead, the area appears to form a bottleneck that might limit our cognitive abilities, researchers say.
"This is a striking discovery," says John Duncan, an intelligence researcher at the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, UK.
Most people can hold three or four things in their minds at once when given a quick glimpse of an image such as a collection of coloured dots, or lines in different orientations. If shown a similar image a second later, they will be able to recognise whether three or four of these spots and lines are identical to the first set or not.
But some people can only catch one or two things in a glance, while others can capture up to five.
This very short-term memory capacity is thought to be related to intelligence. In the same way that a computer with a larger working memory can crank through problems more quickly, people with a greater capacity for holding images in their heads are expected to have better reasoning and problem-solving skills.
A person's working memory capacity can be determined using simple psychological tests. But now two teams of researchers report in Nature that they can see it in brain scans too.
Keep it in mind
One of the teams, led by Edward Vogel of the University of Oregon in Eugene, found that the electrical activity in a single section of the brain, as detected through electrodes attached to the scalp, is directly related to short-term working memory1.
The team first tested subjects with an image of two coloured dots, waiting a second between flashes and asking the subjects if the image had changed. They then ramped up the test to four dots.
A large increase in the subject's brain activity on the four-dot test indicated that his or her memory capacity had not been pushed to its limit. No increase in electrical activity indicated that his or her working memory had topped out on the two-dot test. By graphing these responses, the team worked out the exact size of each subject's working memory.
A second team, led by René Marois of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, used functional magnetic resonance imaging during similar tasks to accurately locate the part of the brain being used for short-term visual memory2.
Both teams concluded that everything depended on the same tiny spot in the posterior parietal cortex.
"It is amazing that both groups should converge on the same area in the end," says Duncan. Since the task involves remembering many different aspects of each object, including spatial position, orientation and colour, most people thought that several parts of the brain would be involved, he says.
There are still many other aspects to human intelligence that are governed by other parts of the brain, the authors of both studies warn. But the capacity of one's working memory may form a bottleneck for certain kinds of intelligence, they say.
Tanguy Chouard is a senior biological sciences editor at Nature
References
Vogel, E. K. & Machizawa, M. G. . Nature, 428, 748 - 751, doi:10.1038/nature02447 (2004).
Todd, J. J. & Marois, R. . Nature, 428, 751 - 754, doi:10.1038/nature02466 (2004).
With great power comes great electricity bills.
..of brains with wide-bandwidth communications protocols do exist: they're called a sewing circles.
Now, if just increase the voltage between these two points by half a volt...
...and drive with my head out the window...
GO GO GO, fire in the hole!
doesn't that invalidate some patents on CPU caches, like recently mentioned Intergraph's (from their Clipper CPU) patent, which caused significant grief to Intel and AMD ?
Apparently we form all sorts of new brainmatter all the time. So now I kinda wonder... The more Go problems I do (any brainteasers apply); the better I get at problem solving in general. This is definitely something that's been improving sharply since I started playing Go. I was theorizing that the game is just getting me in the habit of thinking ahead, but now I wonder if it isn't helping me grow a better braincache. Fascinating.
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
For that matter, had you have been using any of MacOS X, Solaris, *BSD, it might have hit you; it's not Linux specific.
And if you were running 'nix, and threw any old perl script* at your prompt wondering what it does I'd think you're a bloody idiot. You should be glad, if anything, it didn't try something specific to your environment.
* by an AC, no less.
disclaimer: I haven't tried to run nor untangle the perl script. It might not be malicious after all.
From the article I found very weak the conclusion that this brain section act like a cache. This can be a multiplexer that connect a processing section the the memory section. Or more simply registers that hold intermediate informations.
All the 3 systems have in common that there are build with memory cells, but there are different in terms of the way the memory are used and the associativity. Registers and caches hold encoded informations; multiplexer don't care of the encoding. registers don't have any associativity between a tag and tne information stored, only cache have that.
All tree systems generate heat and consum power that the brain camera see. Really, I see nothing that assert this is a cache.
Sound like the author want to use high-tech buzz word, without any prof.
Scams in the forms of SAT/ACT tests and IQ tests.
All of these are used to sort people, suposedly people with higher scores on these are somehow smarter, despite obvious instances of people who do not perform according to their 'score'.
Indeed. One very early "model" of long-term memory saw the brain as an aviary, with each memory as a bird which had to be caught in order to remember something.
Not to mention the incredibly popular view of the brain as a set of homunculi performing different tasks - an analogy despised by "modern" scientists as breaking the problem down without ever explaining how anything works.
One major problem with using performance at short-term/working memory to benchmark reliability of longer term memories is the uncertainty surrounding so-called "implicit memory". Some research suggests that it is possible to remember things of which you weren't conciously aware at the time. There is some debate about the extent of this ability (there's always debate in psychology!) and how it would relate to working memory is at best unclear - but it certainly raises the possibility that long-term memories could be accurate without requiring a piece of working memory.
That's nothing...
I can visualise the entire bits sequence of the resulting object whilst coding... I 'see' how the processor pointers will behave, even when programming in a high-level language like obfuscated Perl.
I can draw perfect circles by mentally calculating pi with a precision of 150 digits.
I can mentally render complex fractals, from the basic Mandelbrot set to a more complex Newton's Method in the Complex Plane.
And, yes, I can do crypto backwards. Triple-DES is very easy to do mentally. Doing it backwards is just a tiny bit harder.
-
Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
Sgt. Friday: "Are you sure this is the woman you saw in the post office?"
Burns: "Absolutely! Who could forget such a monstrous visage? She has the sloping brow and cranial bumpage of the career criminal."
Smithers: "Uh, Sir? Phrenology was dismissed as quackery 160 years ago."
Burns: (measuring Smither's head) "Of course you'd say that... you have the brainpan of a stagecoach tilter!"
"No fair, you changed the outcome by measuring it!" - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
Well then; might be interesting if a technology to erase (or extract) this type of memory ever comes a float (hell, maybe they have it already). Like in that movie Paycheck, work for a guy for a few years, he erases your memory, and bam, you lost a shit load of money. Damn life would suck.
I'm f#$king magic!
Both the Nature article and the posting here on /. are exceedingly misleading (I don't blame the poster... he/she just reported what the Nature article said)
All that the two articles *may* have found is the location of a part of VISUAL working memory. This would be the area that tracks objects through space and binds features that are processed seperately by the visual system (say color and form) into the same object. This is NOT the seat of all intelligence.
There are many different aspects to working memory: people have hypothesized that there is a phonological working memory, one involved in the spelling process, one involved in computing things like syntactic relations, etc. And yes, there is probably such a thing as a general-purpose working memory. All they may have found is the location of the visual-spatial component of working memory. This is a far cry from finding anything that limits one's intelligence, unless you define intelligence as "visual-spatial ability".
In fact, it is quite wrong to even suggest that the visual-spatial working memory is somehow related to intelligence. There are many instances of people with working memory deficits who are able to function quite normally in other domains.
For the sake of brevity I won't go into the finer about the studies themselves (one of the studies used the ERP recording technique, which is *awful* at localization) because the main point is that in and of themselves the studies are fine. It's this conclusion that they've somehow found "the RAM" or the thing that would limit intelligence that's exceedingly problematic.
Just put a Barium tracer in a bottle of tequila and drink a large quantity of it. The tequila goes straight to the short term cache and immediately erases it.
I haven't seen anyone bring this up, on this story or otherwise...but I read in New Scientist last year about functional MRI being the phrenology of our time. I can't find reference to it on the website, but a google returns this among others.
Could anyone here shed any light on this?
Damn, that's really easy for me. I can imagine the smell, feel, color, light refraction of a water drop on a petal, and weight of the rose all at once. In fact, mere seconds of this is almost lucid for me.
:(
Just one problem though. My mathmatics skills still suck ass. My mind does NOT like to crunch numbers internally. Oh well, some much for the cache.
Life is not for the lazy.
the more we poke it the more it work like a self-rewriteing cpu...
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Often I find myself going to type in the URL of a website, manage to get distracted by four things on the way to focusing on the location dialogue, and by the time I'm read to type, I've completely forgotten where I was going to go.
However, if at that point I just 'let my fingers go', they can usually type out the first 5 letters of whatever it was I was going to go to, even if they weren't in typing position.
This is extremely handy. Any idea what it's called?
It's too bad that most brains will never use their high-speed short term memory anywhere near capacity.
Now if we could get a distributed client to take advantage of all the idle cycles...
-- $G
But how do i upgrade it, and will it allow for overclocking? if it does will i need to screw some heastsinks and fans to my head?
Saying Apple is better than MS is like saying Botulism is better than rabies.
I'm having a functional brain scan later today in preparation for brain surgery next week. That's where they find out which areas of my brain do what so they don't mess up anything too important. I'll see if I can have them spot this area.
You can be my John G.
like /.ing one of the most venerable and respected science journals in the world!
+++ATHZ
He wants his cache memory back.
Having a too-good memory is what you don't want.
Well, though I haven't read the book myself, I'd rather doubt that good retention and poor pattern matching are necessarily related; I don't do too badly in either area. On the other hand, I can't say I particularly enjoy recalling the number of times I haven't been able to get a date, so maybe you have a point . . .
Or you'd also say: He's got the cerebrum of a celeron.
In my opinion Cowboy Neal might use very weak analogy here. "In the same way that a larger cache speeds processing time, people with a greater capacity for holding images in their heads are expected to have better reasoning and problem-solving skills." So it means "faster" or "more intelligent"? A short term memory in the human brain causes completely different effects than processor cache, and it supposedly do it somehow "in the same way." It's a question-begging analogy at the very least. I would personally find a somewhat better analogon in the RAM as aw hole. Nevertheless, the article in Nature is very interesting, even if not exactly "news" for anyone who is up to date with all recent neurological studies. Great read. If you are interested in brain and CPU similarities, read also about reset nerves. It's not news, but it's very interesting nonetheless, as well as very on topic.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Not to mention fuzzy Chinese-Room type argumentation.
now does that run at core speed or bus speed?
> Like, dude. That's what the propeller beanie is for.
Make sure you get the correct model of the propeller beanie. The kind with a motor inside. There are plenty of cheap imitations whose propeller only spins by convection. Such deplorable designs actually increase heat retention by obstructing upward heat flow. Of course, nothing beats water cooling for reducing heat in the head. A bucket of cold water is a low-tech, but effective method of obtaining positive results.
Maybe 7 +/- 2 is all we really needed back in the day. I can imagine 7 +/- 2 cavemen hunting alongside 6 +/- 1 cavemen right up until they realize that there are 8 antelope and a sabertooth...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
caffeine overclocking is cheating!
If it were done when 'tis done, then t'were well it were done quickly... MacBeth
It seems that some of the brain's activity is devoted to INHIBITING functions. Sometimes people with limited brain functions display extraordinary capabilities, i.e. called idiot-savants- because regular inhibition is missing. A second example is that people with intentional or accidental lobotemies (e.g. press secretary James Brady) have trouble controling their emotions. Photographic memory may not be due to improved memory, but defective *forgetting*. So my hypothesis is that this memory cache could be improved by removing the appropriate inhibitory cells.
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Plenty of cache is good, and probably does increase
intelligence. The other factors are the LOGIC and
the delusion factor. Remember the 'Magic' pentium? Fast! but rather stupid in terms of the math error.
Note that 6% of the population believes in UFOs.
Of the 6%, probably some are of above-average-intelligence.
Note that many people have logic breakdowns when
something challenges their beliefs. This is a 'negative' intelligence factor.
Also, please note that intelligence isn't just speed.
Below-averege intelligence means that some things are totally beyond comprehension, however long the
attempt is.
( dog and cat intelligence can be rated, but will they ever understand FORTRAN? )
There is also the transfer capability to long-term memory to consider. This is a necessary function for learning and 'building' an expert internal representation of the concept framework....
this sig not remembered in 10 minutes, 9-minute cache refresh...
> Visit our website http://www.brainpills.com
I wrote in the URL as a joke, but I figured I might as well see if it exists. Believe it or not, it does. And from the front page (the FRONT PAGE) you can really find brain pills!!! So, should I laugh, scream, or cry?
Who are you replying to exactly?
I don't think the article mentions anything about chunking, just about very short term memory. I think that is just one of many factors in measuring intelligence or maybe more accurately potential for intelligence. There are so many intelligent people I know who sure don't act very intelligent.
In your case, intelligence and maturity don't seem to have a 1 to 1 correlation.
That they help people to remember how to spell mnemonic:
> a=1, b=4, c=6, d=3, e=7
> what is ((a*b)+(c-a))-((d/f)+(c-a))
You don't need to refer back to the values at all. Just think of them as a vector f in function space G: (1,4,6,3,7). Then imagine an isomorphic mapping between integers 1 through 5 and the first five letters of the alphabet. The evaluation of any simple polynomial, such as the one presented above, is now trivial and is left as an exercise for the reader.
GO BACK TO A GOOD UNIVERSITY AND GET A REAL DEGREE! YOUR INTERNET DEGREE HOLDS NO WEIGHT HERE!
Go back to grammar school and learn about punctuation and run-on sentences. And get your prozac dosage lowered, your sense of well-being is way out of range.
I find the methodology of their research much more interesting than their results. I've done quite a bit of work in this area, including my dissertation, and from the very high level description of the tasks involved their results need to be interpreted in a much more limited sense than they are being presented.
The task that you are given for a specified stimulus is going to very much influence your performance on later tasks. If you are presented a slide and asked to count the number of dots, then later asked whether or not the number of dots on a particular slide was even / odd, then you are likely to do fairly well. But what if you are presented a slide and asked if there was a blue dot on the slide or not, how is your performance going to be on the even / odd task later on? What kind of curve are you going to get for each task when you vary the number of dots and can you really then imply a limit to the theory of memory?
Obviously, you need more details than is presented in the shorter article. The last paragraph below is particularly interesting, since such generalizations don't seem to follow very well from the methods described.
I also would wish people would stop making analogies between the mind and the computer. It is a useful analogy for teaching undergrads and for articles in pop psych magazines, but is very restricting in terms of actual research directions.
Included below is additional text related to the story:
"Visual short-term memory is a key component of many perceptual and cognitive functions and is supported by a broad neural network, but it has a very limited storage capacity," Marois said. "Though we have the impression we are taking in a great deal of information from a visual scene, we are actually very poor at describing its contents in detail once it is gone from our sight."
Previous findings have determined that an extensive network of brain regions supports visual short-term memory. In their study, Todd and Marois showed that the severely limited storage capacity of visual short-term memory is primarily associated with just one of these regions, the posterior parietal cortex.
Todd and Marois used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a technique that reveals the brain regions active in a given mental task by registering changes in blood flow and oxygenation in these regions, to identify where the capacity limit of visual short-term memory occurs.
The brains of research participants were scanned with fMRI while they were shown scenes containing one to eight colored objects. After a delay of just over a second, the subjects were queried about the scene they had just viewed.
While the subjects were good at remembering all of the objects in scenes containing four or fewer objects, they frequently made mistakes describing displays containing a larger number of objects, indicating that the storage capacity of visual short-term memory is about four.
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Your girlfriend will say, "Are you hot? Or is that a gun in your brain?"
Lot's of the really smart people I know are complete "scatter-brains", myself included. We tend to think about too many things at once, over-flowing our buffers!
...and here I thought that correlation was *NOT* causation. You, sir, have opened my eyes, and I am forever in your debt.
ENLARGE YOUR SHORT TERM MEMORY
If you're reading this, you know that men with small short term memory don't get ahead....
someone mod parent up? that's a fascinating question
But, can't we just use a swap file?
Right; visual intelligence can't possibly be the whole story...
An extreme case is Temple Grandin: high function autistic who claims that *all* her thinking is done in visual imagery; she describes her memory as a huge library of video clips. She claims not to have general concepts as others do; words are unnatural to her and seem to be like labels to bring up any number of perfectly specific images from her experience.
Of course she can speak and write, if strangely, so...
She's obviously quite limited in certain ways (her book, Thinking in Pictures, is fascinating; but it has a peculiar quality, a lack of overall design... hard to put yor finger on what's missing), but also has visual/spatial abilities that normal people don't.
For you meat eaters in the US, you've almost certainly eaten beef that came through one of the slaughter facilities she's designed (her profession).
Human body doesn't really dissipate heat through your forehead. Head is responsible for roughly 30% of heat dissipation of the body(assuming you're not wearing a hat) so blood circulation would take some of the excess heat away from the brain, and use it to heat the rest of the body, and depending on T_ambient, most likely you end up with sweaty armpits.
If the heat is dissipated through your head, most likely way to do it isn't your forehead, but your native implanted "heatsinks", your ears. So when ever you get that burning sensation in your ears, and they feel warmer than usual to the touch, you might be thinking excessively or just generally producing too much heat in your head.
Who's Brian?
I should also point out that adding more cells may or may not help. We don't understand how thoughts translate to neuronal activity beyond extremely crude 1-1 mapping of sense-space to nuclei. Adding cells may increase visual STM capacity, or it may not -- just as brain size seems to correlate roughly with intelligence*, but is far from the only deciding factor.
There are a lot of studies out there implying that the brain is hardwired to have seven or so short term memory registers, as defined in various ways. This study seems to measure what I'd call the semantic richness that these registers are capable of; not their number. Increasing their quantity would likely take something more involved than even stem cell therapy -- just like how stem cells may someday enable you to regrow an arm, versus adding a third one.
* this was considered a myth for a while, but more recent studies that measure actual brain weight instead of using skull circumference seem to bear out the generalization
Different people are better at remembering different things. Some are good with dates, others with physical descriptions, etc.
And besides... wouldn't a legal case require more long-term memory (what is short?). It doesn't take much to remember the basic description of a car for awhile in many people - it was a red corvette with spoiler and etc etc license plate ending in 923 - but remembering these to the point where you report it to somebody else might be a bit harder.
These are the people who have the most trouble with these tests, yet they are often some of the brightest (but by no means exclusively).
Standardized tests are nothing but a scam designed to make money for an industry. If the tests somehow gauge your intelligence or reasoning ability, why can some people spend thousands to obtain the top scores? Shouldn't someone who normally wouldn't get a high score who spends thousands on test prep be unable to get any higher score? That in itself invalidates any credibility lent to these tests.
Just as you can't judge a book by its covers, you certianly cannot judge a person based on how well they performed on a manufactured test.
The article, and the researchers in the article are making an assumption about intelligence: they're assuming raw information processing power IS intelligence. I would argue that a more substantial defining factor is recall of previously processed information and the clarity of that recall. In school, the Cram -->Take Test --> Brain Dump method works but doesn't foster leaning in the way that creates "intelligence" by my definition. If everyone were to re-take their final exams from their senior year of high school/college TODAY I would argue that those doing the best overall were the most intelligent, particularly if their school-age years were long ago.
than the others I've seen here is that, since it is localized instead of distributed, getting to the point of injecting signals into this cache and thus effecting one's view of immediate reality may be much easier than thought before. Say, 30-40 years away instead of over 100.
Actually though, I'm not sure why they would have thought this was spread about. Neural pathways are very slow in general. It seems like localization of highly related data such as the components of an image would be necessary due to that fact alone.
Well, how about we start expanding the test so that we catch all those smart people that you'd like to see pass. Then we'll expand it some more to catch some people that I'd like to see pass. Next thing you know, pretty much everyone passes.
The fact is, IQ tests do nothing but show who does well on a certain test. The test serves no purpose other than let people that do well on the test, when they subsequently do well at something else, claim that it was all because of or helped by the IQ score.
This world is full of great people that did poorly on an IQ test.
(For the record, I've never had an IQ test.)
while short term memory capacity certainly influences intelligence, many other brain centers are at least as important. All the cache appears to influence is the speed of pulling things in from the visual scene in order to analyze them. But any high level processing liekly is done in another part of the brain. for instance, language is taken care of mostly in two regions in the temporal lobe.
so yeah, having a large "visual input cache" is important, but if your cpu, system bus and memory, as well as devices that process language and stuff suck it doesnt mean much
And how long has he been looking for it?
The term for this is having an "eidetic imagination" -- it's rare, but it's a trait you share with William Blake, Nicola Tesla, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Gore Vidal, and many other such types.
Supposedly it's an ability many children have but lose by the time they reach adulthood. I suppose I was one of the unlucky ones; I don't seem to have the capacity for it that I used to, though I was never able to get more than vague shapes without closing my eyes anyway. I do often dream that vividly, however. The occasional lucid dream is fun.
DNA just wants to be free...
I'd settle for what the good Lord gave me, but for all the bad sectors! I can't wait for Norton for Neurons to correct this!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Surely the V5 area of the visual cortex is the actual cached short-term memory store?
The entire area is a nest of feedback loops - with the visual information looping round in that area through several layers of neurons both above and below.
It could be that there are two caches: the visual cache is in the V5 layer, and the semantic cache is this one that they've found with the MRI.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
dude, you just need a heatsink... /dons his tinfoil hat/
see?..
Instead of enlarging the "cache" wouldn't something like increasing the speed of propagation of electrical signals in the brain help more? I mean, that would literally increase the speed of thought, right? Wouldn't it also lead to faster reflexes, faster hand-eye co-ordination and a loadof other useful things? So maybe we should be concentrating on improving the connections instead of deciphering the circuitry? Then again, maybe I'm totally wrong.
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
I have to work on our drive-thru all the time (it's money, at least - the job blows, but it's money), and half the time I'm not even at the register when I take someone's order. On average I can get up to 8 items memorized at a time before I get back to the register; typically the first six I've managed to "visually compile" (when I talk to myself, which I do on occasion, I see phantom text in my FOV - ain't synesthesia wonderful, ha ha), and the last two are still in auditory storage. Needless to say, I think I forgot what my point is. :->
The more advanced (creepy alphas, we don't hang around with them) carry PDAs.
Of course, an aid can become a crutch. I recall a story told me by a friend of mine. Her grandmother, an unlettered immigrant from Lithuania, has, perforce, a phenomenal memory, never needs shopping lists, etc. She rails against this new generation that has to write everything down.
Similarly, during classical times, there were widely practiced memory techniques that we modern barbarians have largely forgotten. See here.
The good news is that according to the image in the article, this cache thing is in the right side of the brain.
Alcohol acts in the left side of the brain first. So you won't become stupid by drinking without affecting functions in the left side of the brain first.
-- When did Ignorance Become a Point of View?
There was a link along the left side that said "edit this page" i added a test word, and it kept the changes. WTF?
"Short term memory" is a concept, nothing more. This is a case of deciding on an architecture in advance and presenting only that evidence that appears to support it. It comes from the current thinking about computer design which is in turn assumed to be equivalent to hardware concepts, which have nothing to do with how the brain actually works. At best, computers have tried to imitate the brain on occasion (at least the many imperfect concepts concerning the brain).
There is no credible evidence proving the existence of short-term memory, including this article. Sure it seems to be plausible, but that isn't proof and many myths throughout history have been perpetuated the same way.
It's all long-term memory - the only difference is whether you can find it after you stored it. Memory techniques help to cross-reference items so you can find them later, that's all. "Short-term memory" is a concept invented during the phony Drug Wars to make marijuana a bad thing where little else can be said against it, and the idea stuck and became an ingrained myth. Substitute "attention span" for "short term memory" and you get the equivalent outcome, therefore the popular presumption of short-term memory remains unproven.
Note that proving a thing and disproving it are two different things - I am doing neither here - I am merely debunking the arguments that attempt to demonstrate a favored idea. It lacks sufficient evidence, but it just happens to be a myth that people like to believe. Throughout history many such myths have existed, and myth-followers go to great length to defend their favorite ones, as if the truth lacks the ability to stand up for itself.
This article is not talking about working memory, it is talking about sensory memory. They are not the same. For a good explanation/theory of working memory, check out Charles Baddeley's work. Localizing visual sensory memory to the posterior parietal cortex is not a suprising finding. That would in fact likely be tertiary visual association cortex. I imagine that they picked the visual sensory memory task because it is difficult to generate an analagous paradigm across other sensory modalities.
I'm guessing that their next discovery is going to be thatthe neurons that do most of the processing of this short-term memory are near (probably surrounding or distributed among) the cache memory neurons.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Great, I just cut my finger on an imagined rose thorn!
This would fall in line with the fact that very smart people like Einstein, Feynman, and the like are/were able to visualize complex systems and ideas easily. 'Visual thinking' comes naturally to them. I'm not sure why this doesn't always translate into high mathematical talent. I've noticed that some very smart people are not able to calculate quickly or perform large calcuations without the help of paper or a computer They are able to plan out and model complex software systems in their heads, or design and understand complex mechanical systems and engineering problems easily. It seems like some people fall into the 'good at numbers' camp and others are in the 'good at language' camp. Not sure if this is related to their 'cache' size.
TallGreen CMS hosting
Well, in the case of blind people, the visual system of their brain is taken over by their auditory system. They end up processing sound they way sight is usually processed, allowing them to "see" with whatever limited audio cues are given to them. It's amazing how adaptive the brain is.
Not completely surprising - since the human brain also does some echolocation (and other processing of sound redundancies and missing energy in particular bands into information about nearby objects).
Both systems involve communication between processed sensory information and a model of the surrounding space. This implies that they might have evolved from a common system, whcih might make it easier for the nerve cells able to retarget from one to the other if one is hampered by lack of input. (Alternatively, lack of input in one system and expanded use of the other might make the heavily-used system grow or recruit more untargeted cells.)
Regarding echolocation: Try it. Go into a quiet empty room - preferably an empty one with hard walls and not much soft furniture and curtains - and close your eyes. Make a clicking sound with your mouth - or walk in shoes that make a sharp sound when they hit the floor. You'll be able to "feel" the walls as you approach them, and get a sense of the size of the room. Sound reflecting or absorbing objects may also be noticable.
Of course blind people make more use of this system. There was one case of a blind kid who could ride a bicycle on quiet streets using it - making clicking sounds with his mouth as the illumination.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
5 character digit buffer?
www.bannination.com Two things float to the top he
I felt the stem and now my finger hurts...
- Last digit is 9 (9 (last digit in root) ^3 mod 10 = 9 (last digit in cube))
- 3 (first digit in root) ^3 < 63 (millions in cube) < 4(first digit in root + 1)^3
- a) 99 (last 2 digits in cube) - 9 (last digit in root) ^3 = 99 - 29 = 70 mod 100
- 9 (either last or second to last digit in cube, not sure which) * 9 (last digit in root) ^2 * x (middle digit in cube) = 7 (first digit of result in (a)) mod 10
- 9 * 9^2 * x = 7 mod 10
- 9 * x = 7 mod 10
- x=3
which gives a result of 339, but the real root is 399. Please correct me if I did something wrong in the above. Now, it does work (always) for perfect cubes less than 1,000,000. The process (using an example of 421,875:b)
in fact, the whole brain is like a -search engine- as described here (the last page of the interview):n ame=Content&p a=showpage&pid=135&page=5
http://www.acmqueue.org/modules.php?
Think of the number 377 as a polynomial, like
a*x^2 + b*x + c (where a=3,b=7,c=7, and x=10)
When you multiply this out you get 10 separate terms:
1 * a^3 * x^6
3 * a^2 * b * x^5
3 * a * b^2 * x^4
3 * a^2 * c * x^4
6 * a * b * c * x^3
1 * b^3 * x^3
3 * a * c^2 * x^2
3 * b^2 * c * x^2
3 * b * c^2 * x^1
1 * c^3 * x^0
Since 0 <= [a|b|c] <= 9, we know a couple of things (since they are integers):
The only term that can contribute to the last digit is the c^3 term, that's how the first step works (since there is a 1:1 trick).
Only 2 terms can contribute to the last 2 digits: the c^3 term and the 30*b*c^2 (I've substituted x=10).
Essentially, you now have a relationship with 2 variables, one of which you already know. If you can remove its influence on the 2nd to last digit, then you can find the answer (or at least limit it to a couple of digits - I'm not trying for a proof).
Take the last 2 digits and subtract off the cube of the last digit in the root (i.e. the 7).
33 - 343 = -310
-310 % 100 = 90
(you get 90 adding/subtracting 100s until the number is 0 <= z < 100)
Remember that the term was 30*b*c^2? Divide by the 30 to get 3.
So if you multiply b * c^2, the last digit is a 3.
You already know that c^2 = 7^2 = 49 ends in a 9, so the mystery digit must satisfy (z*9) mod 10 = 3
For 9 that is easy, it has to be 7 (b/c single digits multiplied by 9 modulo 10 yield a 1:1 function):
7*9 = 63
63 mod 10 = 3
I'm not sure that this *trick* works for all integers. For instance, I think that 372 might break it.
- NSB
It could be short term memory if you have a habit of spelling words out when you think of them. But more likely you've spelled that website name so many times that its stored somewhere as long term nondeclarative memory. Then the ability to type what you were thinking of when you don't remember, is probably caused by *priming*.
When you think of a website i guess you're subconsciously planning ahead the movement of your fingers. sometimes when i think of words that start with S, my middle finger on my left hand almost twitches.
I believe you've typed the particular website name so many times that somewhere between your premotor cortex and possibly broca's area you have a "linked list" of letters to type to get to that particular website, as well as many others. For example, I might have a S->L->A->S->H->D->O>T "linked list" that is primed when I think of slashdot. That list may remain primed even after my short term memory forgets about slashdot.
The reason why you can't remember the name even though you have it primed, is because you have primed a linked list of motor commands rather than something that goes into wernick's area.
[I don't have a slashdot account - neocortex is my name]
They did not map STWM, they mapped ONE visual-only application of one part of STWM, the visuo-spatial "scratchpad". They did not test spatial relationships, so they did not test the entirety of V-S STWM. There is no reason to assume that had they tested spatial memory, the result would have been in the same place. For that matter there's no reason to assume that if the stimuli were words instead of dots the result would be the same.
They also did not test the auditory portion of STWM, the "phonological loop". Nor did they test the functional control mechanism that operates these, the "central executive".
One particular application of STWM might appear this localized. There's no reason to expect a different application to be in the same place. In fact, it'd be ridiculous to expect it. It's far more likely that, given all the possible localizations that could be found for the various tasks STWM can tackle, the outcome would be exactly the opposite of what's stated: STWM *is* distributed around the cortex.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Anyways, before everyone gets excited about the brain's "cache", it's important to remember that computer processors and neural networks like our brain process information in entirely different ways. You get similar results some of the time, but for different reasons. The key difference is that our brain processes information in parallel, on a massive scale.
People talk about the computer-brain analogy being useful on a general level, but it's actually entirely wrong on any level. When it comes to memory, this is especially important. Our brains work by sloshing around activity through enormous numbers of neurons across interconnected layers; basically, this leads to two types of memory: active memory (patterns of activity that are actively maintained across time) and weight-based memory (adjusting the connections between neurons to influence the future processing of activity.) Usually such "short term" memory as that is being discussed in the article is referring to active memory.
Anyhow, the important bit to take away from all of this is that active memory in the brain is something that requires a lot of upkeep. It's not like computer memory that holds specific information that can be erased or retrieved--rather, it biases current processing based on a pattern of activity that resulted from past processing. Without going into too much detail, in the case of remembering dots positioned on a screen, you can imagine that seeing the dots spreads activity through the cortex, including both the spatial processing areas and some "active maintainer" area that is able to lock in patterns of activity. In the context of the test, the representation of the dots in the spatial layer activates another pattern of activity in the "active maintainer," which sort of "locks on" to the activity in the maintainer that corresponds to the the represenation of the dots in the spatial layer. When recall time comes, the active maintainer sends activation to the dots representation in the spatial layer--you can then visualize what you just saw a moment ago (literally activating the same neurons). This depends on the quality of the represenation in the active maintainer, of course, and is really oversimplified, but you can sort of get an idea of the complexity involved.
Anyways, there's already a lot of evidence that the prefrontal cortex is heavily involved in actively maintaining a set pattern of activity in the face of distraction, but since prettymuch all distinctions in the brain are gradual and not absolute anyways, it wouldn't be too surprising to find that another part of cortex could be more specifically involved in maintaing representations in the spatial processing part of the brain.
As for cognition and intelligence, there's no question that active memory is important for intelligence--if you don't have it (if you are lobotomized, removing the entire prefrontal cortex), you can't direct your thoughts to reflect anything that came before, and you become a vegetable. But as to the contribution of this specific brain area, that's clearly going to be speculation at this point.
If they can't bike more than a few miles without having a heart attack it's due to ignorance, not lack of fitness.
Ok, this comment may not apply if you happen to live in San Franciso or Ithaca, NY. There are exceptions to every rule.
Including the one in this footnote.
KFG
I use opera because Opera has tabbed browsing.
IE doesn't. Obviously, I can keep more information in my mind at once than Micro$oft
deems appropriate.
It usually goes something like this:
1. I think "oooh, I need to recompile that kernel module on host foo."
2. I turn on the computer monitor to find Slashdot or something else distracting already up on the screen.
3. I start a MP3 stream, read a couple of articles... get generally distracted.
4. I think "What was I going to do?". I then just relax and let myself do whatever comes naturally, and which point I launch my SSH client, log into the host and get about half way to the task when I remember where I was going with it and "consciously" continue from where I managed to get myself without thinking about it.
I know, that sounds a bit odd.. but I'm serious- that's how it happens! And it happens more and more as I get older. (I'm almost 30.)
I attribute it to "muscle memory"... It feels exactly the same as being able to play the first part of a song on piano or guitar before remembering what it is I'm playing, which I'm sure any musician can relate to.
I figure I started planning the familiar sequence of computer events in my head back when I thought "I need to...", so I'm able to just plow through that sequence naturally and observe it to get clues where it was I was going with that action. God that still sounds odd, but that's exactly how it happens.
Of course, I drive my car in the same fasion... once again more and more as I get older, and it drives my girlfriend CRAZY.
"Ooops... sorry... everywhere else I drive starts with that sequence of turns."
{sigh}
So that's what they mean by a "Penny for Your Thoughts".
Just because activity is centered there dos NOT infer it is all stored there.
It is possible it works more like a north/south bridge, like a router to memory distributed elsewhere.
The activity would be centered there by definiion.
I have a tried and true method for increasing brain capacity. It has been practiced for thousands of years, and proven time and again to work. It is called "practice."
:shrug:
If you have problems doing math in your head, start doing simple math every time you buy something. Add up the price of your items, rounding up or down as you go, to arrive at an estimate of your total. Check it at the checkout counter. You will find the process gets easier the more you do it. You can stop rounding the prices, and start keeping track of cents, and pretty soon, calculating tax in your head. To many people, this is a "magic" ability, but really, it is simply a learned ability. Not many people were born able to talk, but somehow most of us learn how to parse a sentence without even thinking about it, regardless of our IQ test score.
If you spend any time exercising your brain, it will develop. Muscle control can be learned, reflexes can be improved, mathmatical ability can be enhanced, linguistic ability can improve. All these things are possible, and are the basis of modern educational systems.
Why one would think that the ability to hold multiple concepts in mind at once is a fixed quality is beyond me. No drugs are needed to enhance this ability, one just needs to exercise it. Of course, this line of thought begs the question: "Are those we consider the smartest people really gifted with innate abilities, or are they just exercising their brain more effectively than some of us?" I would say a little of each, but I may be biased
I would try to understand this but I can't seem to shake all the images from my dream last night. I took some new B-Vits and a Slim product. I dreamed I woke up and a multi-legged squatty spider was hauling it across the wall in front of my face. What does this all mean?! Maybe I should get married. www.newpath4.com/marryme.htm ... or find a roomate roommate ruminate? I've got to stop taking these dang hallucingene-based diet products! Maybe I should go for a drive and hold my head out the window www.newpath4.com/interstate81.htm . hehehehe be a neat trick eh?
" intelligence and maturity don't seem to have a 1 to 1 correlation "
;o], but at least you can back up a hypothesis with real observable empirical data.=) Too bad the author of the original article can't support the same claim.
;o)
You must have access to the Psychological Research listing Database. I see you must be from MENSA too
ha ha ha, your statement has a degree of truth though -- I do rate in the top percentile for IQ (Immaturity Quotient). However, I will agree with you in that most people often confuse education with intelligence -- and BS with science. lol
btw: "chunking" is the actual term for the number of memories held in short-term memory (the article alludes to this concept, but fails to identify the term -- or suggest "buffer" is a slang term).
E.X. memorize this string: AO-LC-NN-W-WF-U-P-NW-I-DO-WS
Try this string instead: AOL-CNN-WWF-UPN-WINDOWS
The most intelligent people I know can admit they do not know what they don't know - ya know how I know this don't ya know.
Psychiatry and Psychology are two differing fields. Meds vs. Therapy... lol
oh -- dat English Degree ain't a real science, but yer Masters will grab a job round Starbucks =oP''''
ha ha ha... that hurt... lol
All that the two articles *may* have found is the location of a part of VISUAL working memory. This would be the area that tracks objects through space and binds features that are processed seperately by the visual system (say color and form) into the same object. This is NOT the seat of all intelligence.
Do you suppose that colour-blind (or, more accurately, colour perception-impaired [1]) people have some enhanced visual abilities in order to compensate for this handicap?
Using CAD (there I go again with a CAD reference, sorry) is quite a challenge when green, red and yellow get smooshed into the same spectrum. Come to think of it, is there any other computer-related work that relies heavily on colour perception? I'm talking about fields where colour was never an issue before we all were looking at CRT/LCDs daily, not the graphic arts/photography/imaging areas.
[1] Not PC-speak. Most "colour-blind" people only have difficulties with some colours and not others.
I only operate off of 512k memory.
I agree that practice is a tried and true way to improve your brain, but I would characterize estimating your shopping total(3rdParty(719962)) as a change in life style that just makes math intrinsically relevant to it.
This just takes advantage of the fact that the brain is already optimized to keep what is relevant to your life style and skip what is not.
Regarding the size or capacity of the brain (or short term cache), experts (intelligent humans)can fill a given size memory with the most relevant information. Novices clutter the same size memory with irrelevant information leaving it effectively smaller.
It would seem that optimizing or increasing the effective capacity of the brain is a matter of organizing the neural connections so that they are the most relevant to your life style and to what you actually do rather than just adding more brain cells or exercising the brain on some abstract (and irrelevant) task.
This is reminiscent of Vernor Vinge's sessile plants with memory assist (A Fire Upon the Deep). We may need direct computer-assist input into the brain much more than we thought we did. ...And no wonder politicians seem short-sighted.
oregonnerd...a nerd in Oregon, of course
If intelligence is dependent on short term visual memory, and is the dominant factor. why not compare the mind of a visual artist to that of, say a computer programmer using their little blobs, it may produce some interesting results.
being an artist myself, and knowing the process involved in drawing something from life, the mind is continually taking in visual aspects of a portion of an object and promply forgeting them when they have been represented, continually exercising the WH... whatever.
If this is the indication of intelligence, which i doubt, surely the great artists of the past would dominate the top ten most intelligent people in history.
Please note that I am not denying that these individuals may have had the problem mentioned, I am just saying that there is not necessarily a causal link. For instance, are the savant skills displayed by an idiot savant the result of their 'idiocy', or may they be separated so that a normal person may have savant skill without the 'idiot' component? In this case, the genetic abnormality that causes the idiot-savant state may, perhaps, have multiple effects on the brain... one that causes the 'idiocy' and another that causes the 'savant' state. Begging the question (just for example's sake), if these were separable, then there would be no concrete causal relationship. Even if this example is not necessarily true (who knows at this point?) I am sure you will accede that there are many examples of such wrt to the human brain.
Utterly ridiculous.
Introverts have worse short-term memory and better long term memory. Extraverts are the opposite. Would that then lead us to say that this means that extraverts are "smarter"? Introverts many time need to "sleep on it", the reason being to associate the question with long-term memory, which happens during sleep. This obviously has nothing to do with short term memory.
Even so, both Freud and Jung point out the importance of the unconcious. Especially Jung, who believed the unconcious is always at work and "helping" us, the short term memory is completely irrelevant. It's how perceptive we are to our unconcious to make use of use all our strengths (and four functions).
Meyers-Briggs noted that Ss (~75%-85% of ther US population) tend to rember things more than "understand" them, where as the rest (Ns) tend to "understand" them rather than reemmeber them. For example, a N may understand that "1 + 1 = 2" means that the quantity represented my the number one ("straight line") added again to itself equals the quantity represented by the number two (the "curved line"). The S however, may not understand that and simply remembers that "straight line plus straight line equals curved line", whether they understand what "equals" means. This then leads to Ss developing better memories to get through school. Ostensibly, however, the Ns are considered "smarter".
Further, by what means are they evaluating intelligence? Keirsey suggests there are four types of intellengence. "Strategy" (long term goals even at the cost of short term goals), "Tactics" (short term goals even at the cost of long term goals), "Logistics" (reliable, acceptable methods of fullfilling goals), and "Diplomacy" (creating harmony and understanding in between people). Strategy is the most rare, found maybe in 6% of the population (of the US). Tactics, which is just as (if not more) important (think fireman, talker, cop, salesman, etc...) is not deemed as important. Everyone is mostly the same "smart", but the distribution of the four intelligences in people is different for everyone. As such, anything that rates "intellengence" is probably ignoring the gifts that most people have.
Further, this relationship of speed to intelegence is also specious.
In the same way that a computer with a larger working memory can crank through problems more quickly, people with a greater capacity for holding images in their heads are expected to have better reasoning and problem-solving skills.
Speed has nothing to do with problem solving. It just has to do with how long it will take. It is evidence of how shallow people can be when then mix up speed with understanding. Thus the common insult "he's slow". The response should simply be "and you're shallow".
So, this report is interesting, but it's relation to intellengence is utterly ridiculous, and should simply be rejected.
Have you read my journal today?
No mods are around anyway, though.