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."

Comments

The magical number 7

[foobsr]

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.

A coincidence

[Gyan]

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.

Re:Man vs machine

[Zan Zu from Eridu]

Before that mechcanical systems, I would imagine fluid systems, etc.

Steam engines were mighty popular, Freud's psychoanalysis is partly based on the stream engine analogy (mental "pressure" a "governor", etc.) Today, quantum mechanics is popular with psychoanalists.