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Brain Cells Observed Summoning a Memory
Anti-Globalism writes "Scientists have for the first time recorded individual brain cells in the act of summoning a spontaneous memory, revealing not only where a remembered experience is registered but also, in part, how the brain is able to recreate it."
and they gave me +5 HP.
Nah, this is sweet, as it puts one more dagger into the idea that memories are not stored in the mind but the "soul." (Whatever that is.)
Plus, of course, the scientific value of studying the brain.
Do not downmod posts "overrated" simply because you disagree with them.
Waiting for someone to post the content to yet-another-register-to-read-linked-article....
Like the one where I rtfa'd.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
As science progresses at an almost geometric rate, how long till we truly understand the brain and DNA etc... How long till we can artificially create a "sentient being" or even a "human". How long till we see "Borg" like (although hopefully more attractive) interfaces, or have the ability to read and or view peoples memory. Sounds very cool and very scary at the same time.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Past studies have shown how many neurons are involved in a single, simple memory. Researchers might be able to isolate a few single neurons "in the process of summoning a memory", but that is like saying that they have isolated a few water molecules in the runoff of a giant hydroelectric dam. The practical utility of this is highly questionable.
I'm hoping this six pack will wipe out 3rd grade. Man I hated that Tommy Butler douche bag.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Knowing how a memory is stored and how the brain can recreate it might lead to some crazy new technologies in the future, such as being able to load gigabytes of data into your brain by using energy to manipulate the brain into "remembering" things that were never there. Of course, it could lead to some extremely scary scenarios, like messing with people's heads by putting things in there that aren't supposed to be. I hope the scientists are being really, really careful on this one!
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
What does a memory of what a memory being recovered look like?
I wonder what will happen if you stimulate the neurons instead of listening to them. Despite the impressive results obtained, we still know nothing about how the brain stores memories. Maybe stimulating the neurons in a patient will help understanding that a bit.
-- Cheers!
What is this "nod" tag on all the stories? Is it the new "idle"?
I'd like to see them build an instrument a little like CERN's ATLAS. The person's head goes in the middle and the detector precisely measures the electric field (instead of particles) as a time varying function in the entire 3D region around the person with very high resolution. The measurements are then back projected to give a neuron level map of the entire brain in real time over logn periods of time. Yes it would generate CERN sized data sets and require CERN sized computers to crunch the numbers, but the results would be fascinating.
To summarize the article, researchers have determined that the neurons which are fired when an event is experienced are the same neurons that are fired when it is remembered. That's all it says. It does not say that our experiences and memories don't independently exist, just that they correlate with neural activity.
September 5, 2008
For the Brain, Remembering Is Like Reliving
By BENEDICT CAREY
Scientists have for the first time recorded individual brain cells in the act of summoning a spontaneous memory, revealing not only where a remembered experience is registered but also, in part, how the brain is able to recreate it.
The recordings, taken from the brains of epilepsy patients being prepared for surgery, demonstrate that these spontaneous memories reside in some of the same neurons that fired most furiously when the recalled event had been experienced. Researchers had long theorized as much but until now had only indirect evidence.
Experts said the study had all but closed the case: For the brain, remembering is a lot like doing (at least in the short term, as the research says nothing about more distant memories).
The experiment, being reported Friday in the journal Science, is likely to open a new avenue in the investigation of Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia, some experts said, as well as help explain how some memories seemingly come out of nowhere. The researchers were even able to identify specific memories in subjects a second or two before the people themselves reported having them.
"This is what I would call a foundational finding," said Michael J. Kahana, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, who was not involved in the research. "I cannot think of any recent study that's comparable.
"It's a really central piece of the memory puzzle and an important step in helping us fill in the detail of what exactly is happening when the brain performs this mental time travel" of summoning past experiences.
The new study moved beyond most previous memory research in that it focused not on recognition or recollection of specific symbols but on free recall â" whatever popped into people's heads when, in this case, they were asked to remember short film clips they had just seen.
This ability to richly reconstitute past experience often quickly deteriorates in people with Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia, and it is fundamental to so-called episodic memory â" the catalog of vignettes that together form our remembered past.
In the study, a team of American and Israeli researchers threaded tiny electrodes into the brains of 13 people with severe epilepsy. The electrode implants are standard procedure in such cases, allowing doctors to pinpoint the location of the mini-storms of brain activity that cause epileptic seizures.
The patients watched a series of 5- to 10-second film clips, some from popular television shows like "Seinfeld" and others depicting animals or landmarks like the Eiffel Tower. The researchers recorded the firing activity of about 100 neurons per person; the recorded neurons were concentrated in and around the hippocampus, a sliver of tissue deep in the brain known to be critical to forming memories.
In each person, the researchers identified single cells that became highly active during some videos and quiet during others. More than half the recorded cells hummed with activity in response to at least one film clip; many of them also responded weakly to others.
After briefly distracting the patients, the researchers then asked them to think about the clips for a minute and to report "what comes to mind." The patients remembered almost all of the clips. And when they recalled a specific one â" say, a clip of Homer Simpson â" the same cells that had been active during the Homer clip reignited. In fact, the cells became active a second or two before people were conscious of the memory, which signaled to researchers the memory to come.
"It's astounding to see this in a single trial; the phenomenon is strong, and we were listening in the right place," said the senior author, Dr. Itzhak Fried, a professor of neurosurgery at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Tel Aviv.
His co-authors were Hagar Gelbard-Sagiv, Michal Harel and Rafael Malach of
Can't get home. Oh wait, I rode the bicycle in today.
Dr. Itzhak Fried, the senior researcher involved in the project complained to the gathered reporters about getting frantic calls in the middle of the night.
The caller, who'd only identify himself as Alberto or as G, wanted Dr Fried to tell him how he could turn the little blasted cells off, the ones that did the "recalling" anyway.
That's quite fascinating! (I hope the condition isn't too serious, of course.) The idea of a brain processing garbage data is certainly thought-provoking. Do you have any buffer overflow vulnerabilities that could lead to an exploit?
Get out of my head!
This is interesting and I don't mean to be cynical, but neuroscience is at least 10 years behind cognitive science and psychology. I can't wait until they can use all their fancy technology to tell us something psychologists and psychophysicists don't already know :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_Embedded_Cognition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_cognition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situated_cognition
Where is my mind now ?
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
This is the kind of claim you make in the NY Times or another public media outlet: while it might happen, because sometimes people do stupid things, I doubt the actual research article will go so far as to say anything so far-fetched.
While it makes logical sense (memory, so far as it is located any single place, does seem to be strongly linked to the deeper, distinct organs within the brain, like the hippocampus), there is no actual way to "know" what exactly is going on: this is a quasi-experimental design, at best, and at most all they can reliably say is "Similiar structures in the brain responded in a similar way during recall of an event compared with how they behaved during the observation of the event itself." For example, it has been shown in some studies that areas in the occipital area of the brain (which has been strongly linked to vision) "light up" when a subject is asked to describe a previously viewed visual stimulus: however, researchers in these studies make no claims to such being evidence of an observed activation of a memory, which is essentially the claim being made here. Typically, the most they will offer in such studies is that the brain may be "spoofed" into thinking it is viewing the same stimulus again, thus activating certain, similiar function. Logically, both the visual research and this phenomena certainly sound like memory: but logic isn't science, nor is something true because it makes logical sense. Newtonian mechanics make logical sense, but good luck building a model of the universe as successful as one provided by quantum/relativistic physics, which often times make utterly no logical sense.
This is one of the key problems in any kind of study concerning phenomena which are part and parcel of the conscious mind/brain: being that we do not experience the subject's perceptions ourselves, and since consciousness is so singular and personal, we might never be able to say with any clear confidence what we are observing in the brain. However, kudos to the researchers. At the very least they've examined a function (whatever it is) within the brain that is an utter pain in the ass to study.
Mod Points: Helping you keep your opinion to yourself.
This talks about spontaneous memory recalling. What if it isn't spontaneous and you are trying to recall something, does that matter? Yes it seems to be good for the field especially for dementia, but what if what these people are experiencing is the wrong type of memory recollection and the type they are looking for is stored elsewhere? I guess I am just skeptical about the knowledge about that this "type" of memory has compared to others, if there are others (I assumed there were since it described the recollection as spontaneous instead of just a memory).
Anything and Everything about the Net
Understand TFA without RTFA. (my emphasis)
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Tits, every cell is optimized to remember tits.
We're one step closer to a "Forget your first sexual encounter" pill.
When I read the article, what stuck me the most was not that the specific pattern observed WAS the memory, but more like the control sequence needed to create it and then retrieve it.
In computer terms, it seemed like putting a set of addresses out on the memory bus, controlling the storage in and then out of a block of RAM.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Pics or it didn't happen.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Seven of Nine might say that waterfall/droplet analogy could represent a glimpse into the lack of order in the chaos in the human mind. No Vinculums available for puny human brains. But, i am SURE Lord Garth could do something about it. Even Dr Simon van Gelder's hijacked neural neutralizer chair could help out. Though, i'd steer clear of the Klingon 'Mind Sifter/Mind Reaper'. Don't bother trying to read the Kazon brain: Seven told Neelix 'The Kazon were UNWORTHY of Assimilation.' Best ST SLAM.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I'm fine, but thanks anyway.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
... my NYTimes password. Oh wait, I never even registered. Nevermind.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Neo: I know Kung-Fu.
Morpheus: Show me.
Neo: It starts at 0x21b3a5da.
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
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...can't be too far behind. Focus on a memory, figure out where it's stored, burn it away. With, uh....ultrasound, or something.
I've read a number of books which discuss in detail the fact that memory is stored non-locally, in a method similar to the way a hologram stores information non-locally. The book 'The Holographic Universe' is the most recent example that I've read. It's a fascinating book - well worth a read. In fact I've read it twice now. With respect to memory, it goes on to say that in experiments with mice, researchers said they were incapable of destroying a memory of how to complete a maze by surgically removing brain tissue. The more they removed, the more foggy the memory appeared, but it never disappeared. This strongly backs the holographic storage method that the book postulates.
If these scientists think they've seen an individual brain cell recall a memory, then I think they're horribly mistaken.
It's called Rhohypnol.
The study they're summarizing in the article seems to be this one: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/1164685
It sure would be nice sometimes to be able to download what you have experienced too. From normal days when you wonder what exactly you have been doing, cool experiences aka an airplane takeoff, driving fast in a car, good times with friends etc. and the more difficult experiences to remember such as what you really where doing between 12 and 3 last Saturday night and high-adrenaline situations when you really canÂt remember everything correctly. Either to some sort of computer for visual and audible playback... or.. maybe even to your sensory organs directly? I mean, since youÂre already "plugged" in, it should after time be possible.
Can they remember it for us wholesale?
I for one prefer to keep my memories in my head.. Call me conventional but I'd rather that someone NOT be able to forcibly remove/steal/borrow them as well. On the brighter side, I now have yet another use for my aluminium foil hat.
I would imprint me a memory of being a construction worker who is married to Sharon Stone and hates Mars.
You can't handle the truth.
As soon as I read the article title, I tried to imagine what kind of cartoon B. Kliban would have drawn for it.
You might not understand if you have never read any of his collections, but I have "Never eat anything bigger than your head" and "The biggest tongue in Tunisia" sitting here, and I tell you, "Brain Cells Observed Summoning A Memory" would have fit in with either collection.
It could be the basis of a competition. Draw a fitting cartoon for the headline in the style of Kliban.
The RIAA or MPAA or **AA start going after these scientists and others for "Unauthorised reproductions"?
WOW this is impressive. Maybe one day we can cluster people.
"You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile."
-The Borg collective.
-Viz
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
Pics or it didn't happen.
No, but seriously I'd like to be able to see a video or something of this.
:(){
Upon reflection, it becomes clear that one's self-concept is really just a high level abstraction (drawn from the endless stream of sense data).
When you die, every particle in your body continues to exist, and they continue to follow the same laws of physics they were following when they constituted your body. "You" are all still there, you are just organized differently and doing something different at that point. The only thing that is lost is the organizational pattern that is suggestive of the abstraction of a self.
In other words, all you lose is the imaginary part of you. All the stuff that you really were is still there, and lives on in perpetuity.
If you still can't cope, then I suggest practicing meditation. It helps you overcome the irrational addiction to an abstraction-of-self, and also the irrational fear of change.
Memory is notoriously unreliable. It's not too hard to implant false memories in unwitting subjects.
Visit the
So they were able to isolate the ONE brain cell in Paris Hiltons head as the point where a spontaneous memory generated?
In GOD we trust, all others we monitor.
Wow, so the pointer I made to write the data is the same one I use to read the data? Who'da thunk it?
"That's so plausible, I can't believe it!" - Leela
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/321/5894/1280b
Is this the article the NY Times cited? Anyone have a subscription and can verify?
This question has long been solved.
Men think primarily with the logical part.
Women primarily with the emotional part.
So if you say something to a women, it does not matter so much what it means, as what emotions it carries.
If she tells you something, listen to the emotions that it carries too.
That way you are going to intuitively understand each other.
Of course you can also expect her to do the translation work instead of you.
But in a discussion, often the emotions are too heated for her to be able to focus on the logic.
Be nice and switch to emotional communication, and all will be fine.
One result of this is, that women like to enjoy every emotion there is. ;)
Sometimes they want to argue, just for the feeling of it.
Or cry while watching a movie, just to feel that emotion.
It's fun to them. And I must admit, playing with your own emotions and training them like that, starts to be fun for me too.
I see it like a sport in emotional power. That way it can be manly too. (It's a *sport*!
I hope this helps you. I certainly opened my eyes.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
There needs to be some good reasoning behind a belief, not mere "well, I can make this fit the data."
I disagree that "somebody who exhibits sloppy thinking is probably a sloppy thinker" -- Roxton should study "bounded rationality." But beyond that, right on.
The first thing that came to mind(no pun intended) was that if a memory resides in a certain cerebral location, and all one would have to do to locate it is elicit that memory in a person, while scanning them, then one can conclude that once this has occurred, one could then go in and physically REMOVE the memory by destroying that particular location in the brain.
Maybe that was what Obi Wan was doing. He simply used telekinesis to destroy specific brain cells while rewriting in another location with verbal suggestion......"These are not the 'droids you are looking for......".
Okay. But it is the first TINY step. Infinitesimal. That is all I was saying. Using a long journey as an analogy, this is like reaching for the doorknob. Hardly impressive.