Volatility of Human Memory

prostoalex writes "Scientific Americans looks into the human brain, trying to figure out why some events just tend to stick in our memories forever, while the others are gone: "How does a gene "know" when to strengthen a synapse permanently and when to let a fleeting moment fade unrecorded? And how do the proteins encoded by the gene "know" which of thousands of synapses to strengthen? The same questions have implications for understanding fetal brain development, a time when the brain is deciding which synaptic connections to keep and which to discard. In studying that phenomenon, my lab came up with an intriguing solution to one of these mysteries of memory.""

Comments

poor /. synaptic function

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this article explain the dupes on /. ??

Re:poor /. synaptic function

[grub]

No, but this does.

This is kinda interesting

[gtrubetskoy]

From the recently noted on slashdot Edge poll What do You believe is true even though you cannot prove it, I remember this bit by Terrence Sejnowski caught my attention (I'm pasting it here cause I can't figure out how to link to that specific part of the page):

How do we remember the past? There are many answers to this question, depending on whether you are an historian, artist or scientist. As a scientist I have wanted to know where in the brain memories are stored and how they are storedthe genetic and neural mechanisms. Although neuroscientists have made tremendous progress in uncovering neural mechanisms for learning, I believe, but cannot prove, that we are all looking in the wrong place for long-term memory.

I have been puzzled by my ability to remember my childhood, despite the fact that most of the molecules in my body today are not the same ones I had as a childin particular, the molecules that make up my brain are constantly turning over, being replaced with newly minted molecules. Perhaps memories only seem to be stable. Rehearsal strengthens memories, and can even alter them. However, I have detailed memories of specific places where I lived 50 years ago that I doubt I ever rehearsed but can be easily verified, so the stability of long-term memories is a real problem.

Textbooks in neuroscience, including one that I coauthored, say that memories are stored at synapses between neurons in the brain, of which there are many. In neural network models of memory, information can be stored by selectively altering the strengths of the synapses, and "spike-time dependent plasticity" at synapses in the cerebral cortex has been found with these properties. This is a hot area of research, but all we need to know here is that patterns of neural activity can indeed modify a lot of molecular machinery inside a neuron.

If memories are stored as changes to molecules inside cells, which are constantly being replaced, how can a memory remain stable over 50 years? My hunch is that everyone is looking in the wrong place: that the substrate of really old memories is located not inside cells, but outside cells, in the extracellular space. The space between cells is not empty, but filled with a matrix of tough material that is difficult to dissolve and turns over very slowly if at all. The extracellular matrix connects cells and maintains the shape of the cell mass. This is why scars on your body haven't changed much after decades of slougare contained in the endoskeleton that connects cells to each other. The intracellular machinery holds memories temporarily and decides what to permanently store in the matrix, perhaps while you are sleeping. It might be possible someday to stain this memory endoskeleton and see what memories look like.what makes you a unique individualhing off skin cells.

My intuition is based on a set of classic experiments on the neuromuscular junction between a motor neuron and a muscle cell, a giant synapse that activates the muscle. The specialized extracellular matrix at the neuromuscular junction, called the basal lamina, consists of proteoglycans, glycoproteins, including collagen, and adhesion molecules such as laminin and fibronectin. If the nerve that activates a muscle is crushed, the nerve fiber grows back to the junction and forms a specialized nerve terminal ending. This occurs even if the muscle cell is also killed. The memory of the contact is preserved by the basal lamina at the junction. Similar material exists at synapses in the brain, which could permanently maintain overall connectivity despite the coming and going of molecules inside neurons.

How could we prove that the extracellular matrix really is responsible for long-term memories? One way to disprove it would be to disrupt the extracellular matrix and see if the memories remain. This can be done with enzymes or by knocking out one or more key molecules with techniques from molecular genetics. If I am right, then all of your memories

Re:This is kinda interesting

[FleaPlus]

That's bullshit.

I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it. Terry Sejnowski is probably one of the most prominent neuroscientists alive today, and generally knows what he's talking about.

You do not need constancy of material/molecules to keep a memory - in a sense you can exchange a building brick by brick, one at a time, with new bricks, and maintain your building like new, for millenia.

This is true, and undoubtedly works well for short-term and medium-term memories. However, all of this exchange takes energy, and if there's a more energy efficient way of doing things (such as, perhaps, storing memories in the extracellular matrix), evolution would tend to select in favor of it.

Re:This is kinda interesting

[nucal]

The idea that the extracellular matrix might control neuron plasticity is not all that far fetched - there are many studies showing that cell function is controlled by the extracellular environment.

Another aspect to consider is that diseases such as Alzheimers are associated with the accumulation of misfolded proteins (plaques) in the extracellular environment. Although the prevailing idea is that these plaques might be toxic or the residue of dead cells, it's not impossible to think that plaques could also "de-program" neurons by altering the normal extracellular environment.

Re:This is kinda interesting

[greg_barton]

However, all of this exchange takes energy, and if there's a more energy efficient way of doing things (such as, perhaps, storing memories in the extracellular matrix), evolution would tend to select in favor of it.

Not necessarily so. Just because process A is more energy efficient than process B does not mean that process A will be more likely selected for. Evolution is not hill climbing. In fact, evolution tends to create the opposite effect. Organisms become more complex (and usually less efficient) over time. If evolution tended to select for efficiency over other factors then entropy would be winning, not losing. Wouldn't that suck? :)

Re:This is kinda interesting

[Tlosk]

While I belive Sejnowski is absolutely correct that there's probably a lot worth investigating in the extracellular material, one possibility is that very long term memories are illusory.

Rarely are these long term memories of the same quality as very recent memories, and I don't just mean of strength, but that they are qualitatively different. That you no longer have access to what one might call witness memory, where if someone asks you questions about the event you can search the myriad details of the event to find the answer.

Given that the bulk of our early memories are lost over time, what's special about that handful of memories that we do hold onto and that are veridical? I suspect that most of this subset of retained memories are not the original memories but rather memories of the memories.

Personally, when I go over the longest memories I still hold onto, they are almost all experiences that I at some point either told someone else about, thought about, or had cause to remember at some point in the past. Each time you do this the memory is copied to other areas (whatever those might be, we still don't have a good grasp on this). And most of a given memory that I now have owes its features to the nature of the account I gave earlier.

For example say someone remembers the experience of riding on their grandmother's lap on a train when he goes to visit her at the age of three. Shortly after that he will have all sorts of specific stored information relating to that particular event. If the event is never revisited it will likely be almost entirely lost, but if several years later he tells someone else about the experience, a memory of the event recounted still many years further down the road would depend heavily on what exactly the person shared during that earlier recounting. That is, the person is no longer remembering the event, but rather recalling the earlier recounting.

Oh if you're cued well enough you can remember all sorts of things from way back, but they are so fragmentary that it's probably just the distributed nature of memory that saves them from complete loss most of the time. There will always be a few bits and pieces floating around in there.

Uh... sorry...

[hadesan]

Forgot what I was about to type...

Yeah, my lab came to the same conclusions...

[gardyloo]

... but then -- OOH! Shiny!

This reminds me of...

[astebbin]

...Dory the fish, who suffered from the same condition as HM in the Scientific Americ...Ameri... umm...

Sorry... have we met?

Re:This reminds me of...

[FiReaNGeL]

P. Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney!

Re:This reminds me of...

[TheShadowHawk]

Wow! What did you type into the google engine to get back "Victor.. you are a dumbass!"?

;)

Pain for me

[purduephotog]

I remember back to when I was only 2 years old- I had had surgery on ... well, we'll call it a sensitive part of the body.

Now I don't remember the surgery, and I don't remember the antics I pulled at showing nurses why I was in the hospital... but I *do* remember the first time I had to goto the bathroom after surgery.

That memory is so seared into my brain I can even recall I was high enough to look out a window over the cityscape, and that there was a bricked church in the background and the window had blinds (the black slatted ones) on it.

And I remember so much so terribly much pain I don't know how I survived it.

My parents tell me that after that brief moment of screaming I was OK... and I don't remember anything else of that event save for that moment.

And just for comparison (of a little kid) I've had 18 kidney stones... I have a good memory for pain. But that memory makes me cringe and shiver every time I have it.

Re:Pain for me

[savagedome]

Well at least they didin't send you to school right away.

A teacher noticed that a little boy at the back of the class was squirming around, scratching his crotch and not paying attention. She went back to find out what was going on. He was quite embarrassed and whispered that he had just recently been circumcised and he was quite itchy. The teacher told him go down to the principal's office, phone his mother, and ask her what he should do about it. He did it and he returned to the classroom, where he sat down in his seat.

Suddenly, there was a commotion at the back of the room. She went back to investigate only to find him sitting at his desk with his penis hanging out. "I thought I told you to call your mom!" she screamed. "I did," he said, "And she told me that if I could stick it out till noon, she'd come and pick me up from school ..."

Re:Pain for me

[MBCook]

Actually, you're both right and wrong. See my sibling post to yours for some more info.

There is some pain that is important to remember. It's VITAL to remember. This is stuff like knives are dangerous (learn this after a cut), a stove is hot (ouch!), it hurts having people piled on you (making it hard to breath), etc. All these things are important to remember for your survival. If you forgot that putting your hand on a stove hurt, how many times would you do that during your life? This is important stuff, so this comment's parrent is right.

At the same time there are things that are painfull that need to be forgotten. Some (like childbirth, mentioned in my other comment) could be a BIG problem if they were remembered. Others (highly traumatic events, abuse, serious car wrecks when you're bleeding on the pavement, etc) could prevent you from functioning if you remembered them. These things should, must, be forgotten to live a normal life. These things are fewer, and more likely to be emotional or abuse related.

As for "recovered memories", I agree completely. They are bogus, and very dangerous. There are some good books out there about the falacy's and dangers of recovered memories.

Oops..

[ackthpt]

Dang. I had the perfect post, but forgot what it was just after hitting Reply..

I hate when that happens.

On another note... when I was 13 years old I was walking around the house for about 20 minutes trying to find the screw driver I just had, where the heck could it have gone, I just ... had ... it ... in ... my ... hand. It was still there and at that point I knew what lay ahead for me in life.

Does this shed any more light on coding solutions?

[Sowelu]

I've been tracking the periphery of AI for quite a while. Even though directly emulating the human brain is probably not the best solution for artificial intelligence, has this research opened any new doors lately?

At last...

[teneighty]

... I can erase goatse and tubgirl from my memory.

Catch 22

[DrKyle]

If we can figure out what proteins need to be expressed to convert short term to long term memory and somehow in the future find some sort of drug that ups the expression of that gene we will still have a problem with what do you do when every memory is a lasting one? Do ou need to know the plate# of every car you drove by on the way home or the order of the commercials when watching Oprah? I think if we mess with the number of long term memories we make we may also lose the selectivity which is so important in making sure the brain isn't cluttered with irrelevant memories and we strengthen only important ones.

Increase the signal to noise ratio of my memory, then w're in business.

Human memory

[user32.ExitWindowsEx]

I don't know when I realized this, but the human mind is like the internet. everything you could ever want to know is probably in there, but you need google to find it all and every search eventually leads to something sex-related.

Fake memories

[D H NG]

Sometimes our brains can be tricked into remembering things that did not happen. Elizabeth Loftus had done much research in the area of misinformation effect, which actually has legal repercussions.

Re:A few memories I would like to remember...

[Mr.Zong]

"The first time I had sex. The second time I had sex. The third time I had sex. How about the fourth time? And the fifth?"

That reminds of me of the first time i lied on /. And the second time. And of the course the third. But the fourth? And the fifth? Those I don't remember.

Prudent Memories

[EdwinBoyd]

If evolution teaches us anything (no comments from the Intelligent Design category please) it's that our memory is working just fine. The memories that really stick with us and are the most vivid are the huge mistakes and successes. This is for the sole purpose of helping us deal with future situations by drawing on past experiences. So not being able to remember where your keys are when you're late for work may seem like the product of a faulty memory, the brain is simply full of more pragmatic information like 'fire burns' or 'never bet on the Steelers'.

or, 'Potential Programmability of Human Memory'

[brian.glanz]

A leitmotif the article turns on is the potential programmability, more than the volatility, of human memory. They discuss how the older view of our memory as volatile and mysterious has been refined, as we've discovered the mechanisms for transition between short and long term memory. From the physiological to the cellular level, the idea here is a familiar one -- we know more than ever, and we're learning faster than we had before, in this case about memory and about learning.

Most intriguing are the material implications of the article -- they find memories transitioning to long term storage when information is reinforced at specific intervals and with specific techniques. This matches some experimental evidence as referred to, like the familiar ideas of studying or preparing in the same location you will test or perform in -- but, its level of specificity begs for more experimentation and refinement of memory management techniques. Learning and memory across the whole human experience can be biologically maximized if we find just the right process -- read that slippery section in x minute increments and take 10 minute brakes between 3 repetitions. Or maybe, do asdf to remember x words by rote for the next 4 hours, and do ;lkj to sufficiently remember x for a month. Without running a cord into your ear, the article is promising for its level of detail in exact ways we might approach finding best practices for our current hardware.

I'm curious generally about how soon articles like this, especially up at the Scientific American level of exposure, translate into experiments at universities (and, self-help books?). I'm tempted to modify my own learning accordingly, n/m waiting.

BG

Re:Data storage

[laughingcoyote]

However, there seems to be another difference...

Data on a hard drive, until the hard drive -does- begin to malfunction, is stored perfectly. That is, if I type a paragraph (or an entire book), save it, come back a year later, and reopen that file, then provided that the hard drive is functioning properly, that book will be pulled right back up, word-for-word. While the brain might remember the -idea- of the book, then chances are, if you are asked to repeat, word for word, the third paragraph on page 287, you will not be able to do so, even five minutes after reading it.

Of course, the ability to condense, interpret, and distill the important points out of information is what makes humans superior to computers. But there's something to be said for having a medium (paper and pen, computer, camera, whatever) that can store something exactly, and pull it up to refresh your memory (which likely still has the outline and highlights of important subjects, but may be missing the details) when the need be.

Also, whatever the brain may do, it doesn't always seem to work flawlessly at distinguishing important from unimportant. I have quite a few things pop into my head, at various times, some from when I was as young as 2. These things weren't really important to me even then, and sure in the hell aren't now. But they stay around. Now on the other hand, I'm sure my boss told me to do something, but I just can't remember what it might've been...

superflies

[Gunark]

The protein you're talking about appears to be CREB (I love how 90% of slashdotters feel compelled to post their opinions without reading the f'ing article :) For a good couple of years now, we've known that transgenic fruit flies -- and recently mice, if I'm not mistaken -- engineered to over-express CREB do have strikingly improved memory... but not in the way you think. These flies don't appear to form "more" memories, instead they just learn faster. In other words long-term potentiation seems to happen with less training/effort.

What this means for us humans -- if it means anything at all -- is pretty questionable. However if you want to go out on a limb here, drugs or genetic modifications to increase CREB production could make you learn things faster, without sacrificing that important relevance filter (i.e. remembering every license plate you see or whatever).

Re:Women memory

[Jesus 2.0]

Spoken like a Slashdot nerd who has never actually encountered a real woman.

More accurately:

Men forget but never forgive.
Women pretend to forgive but neither forgive nor forget.

Yeah... ish.... but what about.... Trivia?

[kaladorn]

Hmmm. This doesn't exactly explain how one can, with crystal clarity, remember absolutely useless bits of information when not being able to retain information that is far more important to ones success in life. For instance, one can forget ones fiance's birthday or the day you got engaged or little things like Valentine's day, while remembering the gram molecular weight of ethanol or the exact number of Tribbles sat on by James T. Kirk.... so I'm not sure that evolution has strictly wired us for efficiency.

The truth is evolution is a coarse brush. In order for something to offer a significant chance of being genetically propagated, it has to offer a sizeable benefit (25%+ if I recall my conversation with one of the world's better population modellers working for CSIRO). Less than that and it will tend to get lost in the noise.

So I'm sure that memory setup the way it has been (to forget some pains, to remember others) has been something we've grown into, but I'm also sure some element of it prevades almost every intelligent animal as well. I bet our cat has that same setup (well, there is the claim they may in fact remember nothing, but I know too well this is just propaganda...). But I wouldn't say the system was yet 'fully optimized' for being able to deal with future events.

The fact is, there probably is no fully optimized configuration, given an infinite range of possible future events. So we're probably in that fuzzy zone of mostly useful in most situations, which is right where we should be (that is to say though I disagree with the particulars of the comment, I agree with the general conclusion).

Sure, we can probably enhance memory via drugs or nanos eventually for certain things. Handy, perhaps an advantage. We may be able to help blot out trauma (a pill, for instance, for a recent victim of physical trauma so the trauma does not become the stuff of recurrent nightmare but fades from their memory over time). So these applications would have some use. But giving everyone an eidetic memory might not be either a good idea nor terribly feasible.

Imperfect memory? Yes, please...

[Reteo Varala]

Personally, I'd prefer a volatile memory.

There are some good things about a clear memory. Being able to recall things with a minimal amount of effort, and maybe, if it's stubborn, the easy recall of where to find it. Immediate notice of a flaw in a pattern, no matter how miniscule or unnoticeable. Noticing inconsistency in a conversation. Tracking how much money you have left.

However, it does have it's downside.

Ever hear the saying "Someday we'll look back and laugh at this?"

I'm still waiting. I still cringe over every single embarassing memory in the 30-year period that is my life. Those memories, when I recall them, are much too clear, and it feels like it just happened, despite the fact that some of those events had occurred over 20-25 years ago. Sometimes it's so strong, I feel the need to shut down, and lately, it's started to cause nervous reactions; too many things are drawing them up as I work to re-integrate myself into that thing known as "Humanity."

Thankfully, my memory, while vivid, is still selective, and I can find the mercy of forgetfulness. I don't think I could survive a photographic memory with my sanity intact.

It is said that if you recalled every single thing, it would take a strong will not to go mad. I believe it.

Memory vs. Memories

[Couzin2000]

It's interesting to read the point of view of others. That generally is the way for us to form opinions, and, well, I have my own opinion formed.

I think it's probably not so much a matter of "strengthening" a synapse to remember more clearly. I think it's more of an associative memory thing. As we all know, remembering certain things are "triggered" by events, occurences and coincidences. Certain things could be remembered during a conversation on a certain topic, for example; haven't we all played that game where someone says how bad a fall they took from their bike when that someone was young, and then we go on to say "Well, check out the fall I took..." and then go on to tell them an even worse fall? I think it's things we see, hear, taste, smell, touch, that trigger these memories into surfacing.

Part of this is associative, and we all do it. But, some events are almost omnipresent in our minds. For example, a rape victim. The victim will remember this event on the premise that so many times she's heard about how bad that could be, how intolerable a behaviour that could be for a human, and we get it drilled in our minds. When the event actually happens to her, it will trigger all these memories of hearing how bad it is all at once.

The reverse will then happen: anytime a rape victim will see a commercial on rape prevention, or a attempted rape scene in a movie, that will in turn trigger all these times that she was told that rape is bad, and the event itself. (Keep in mind here, I'm in no way saying rape is just an "event" - I do NOT condone it. We're just not discussing the moral implications here.)

Associations are made between memories and, in turn, synapses, because of all the possible interconnections they have. Based on all the similarities or closeness of incidents in our lives, we re-associate events that happen daily to old, pushed-away-to-the-side memories. That's how when you see an old friend you haven't seen in so long can "bring back" so many great memories.. and bad ones as well.

I doubt that certain events are more powerful than others, but I think they might be more potent than some, simply by all these things we associate together.

My 2 cents!

More recent memories unravel first

[ynotds]

one possibility is that very long term memories are illusory

I know it can feel introspectively that our oldest memories are really memories of memories of memories, because certainly the ones we most often bring to mind ourselves are ones we have remembered from time to time. Yet on vacation recently I was reminded by my brother of an allergic reaction I experienced almost 40 years ago which I'm sure I had not thought about for at least 25 years, yet the memory was still there once reactivated.

More telling, visiting an elderly friend in hospital, he introduced me to the wife of the patient opposite who had stroke-related dementia. They were immigrants and he had spoken both English and another major "second" language fluently before his disability, but now can only use his birth language, which is a lonely way to exist in an English-speaking hospital.

Even my mother, who had a very slight stroke a couple of years ago, now starts many more conversations about things from her childhood than about the last third of her life in the house where she still lives reasonably independently in a community where she played a very active role for most of those years.

So I felt Sejnowski's idea sounded sensible when I first read it. However I don't see it as being inconsistent with the SciAm article linked here. To form something more permanent in the intracellular matrix around a synapse, most likely you are still going to need to start with some special protein finding its way to that particular synapse.

And we still need a credible story as to how one or several persistently strengthened synapses actually encode one of the countless details we accumulate in a life time in all their contextual detail.