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Scientists Afflict Computers With Schizophrenia
An anonymous reader writes "Computer networks that can't forget fast enough can show symptoms of of virtual schizophrenia, giving researchers new clues to the inner workings of schizophrenic brains, say researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and Yale University. In their experiments, the scientists used a virtual neural network to simulate an excessive release of dopamine in the brain and found that the network recalled memories in a distinctly schizophrenic-like fashion. The results bolster a hypothesis known in schizophrenia circles as the hyperlearning hypothesis, which posits that people suffering from schizophrenia have brains that lose the ability to forget or ignore as much as they normally would. Without forgetting, they lose the ability to extract what's meaningful out of the immensity of stimuli the brain encounters."
Do schizophrenics typically have eidetic memories? This is not a symptom I was aware of.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Subject line says it all.
Schizophrenics do not forget, Schizophrenics do not forgive.
I don't quite have schizophrenia, but I do tend to remember a lot and overthink things. Spending time disconnected from digital stimulus (for example, going for a decent walk every day, without bringing your phone) helps give your brain time to process everything.
I'd think the effect of staying always connected is even worse for schizophrenics if this study is correct.
On a different note, Slashdot has finally fixed its fortune cookie generator! Only took something like a week :p
which is totally what she said
"which posits that people suffering from schizophrenia have brains that lose the ability to forget or ignore as much as they normally would."
So the fact that it sometimes takes me twenty minutes to find my keys in the morning is a sign that I'm sane? That's oddly comforting.
Just tell the Schizophrenics the hop count of their crazy idea is 16. Yet another problem solved with poison reverse.
Since when is installing Windows news? And shouldn't scientists know better?
While the actual terms were likely off -- "stripped her amygdala" doesn't make a lot of sense -- this sounds like exactly what River Tam is supposed to have.
Teaching this to computers doesn't seem like a great idea, though. "This was a triumph" indeed.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
But including the above description she commented 'you're quite disconnected from reality' :D
What's next, computers with dementia? Wait, computer virus has already turned computers into Alzheimer patients... :P
Artificial human intelligence at last!!!
very good info. make the analogy of schizophrenia with a computer network
Maybe: /tmp
% rm
I"m sorry, Dave, I can't do that.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
"In one answer, for instance, DISCERN claimed responsibility for a terrorist bombing."
Interesting methodology. I doubt though that it has a relationship to real schizo.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Hyperlearning? Does that mean hordes of slashdotters are going to read this and think, "Wow! That's me 'coz I'm just so clever!"
Cool so installing Windows makes one a Scientist
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
I always was taught that it was the spirit law rejecting someone with bad inbreeding or deformed sexuality. Natures immune system. I think this article is a misdirect by someone from a social minority.
The purpose of existence is to make money.
Sometimes I wonder how people develop their hypotheses. In this case, I'm wonder whether one of the researchers may have been struck by Morrison's Joker in the Batman Comic Arkham Asylum - in which a researcher describes the joker as hyper-sane, unable to filter out stimulus from the world around. Hmm.
There is no such thing as schizophrenia
So these "Scientists" think the problem with "schizophrenic" people is they can't forget enough eh? I think the problem is what we CAN remember that no one else can. What's next? You're going to start wiping our memories for us? You already TRIED THAT!!!! IT DIDN'T WORK DID IT?!?! If you think I'm getting on that damned ship again and going to the pyramid, you're wrong. Johns told me about your plan and I'm on to you! The four corner day will supplant your illusion of euclidean time. ALL HAIL THE TIME CUBE!!!!! http://www.timecube.com/
It's called installing Windows Me.
Actually windows 95 and 98 were not much better....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
OK I'll go read TFA now.
... I'm afraid I can't help you with your research on schizophrenia....
sigfault (core dumped)
It's really quite excellent -- and vaguely linked to his Cryptonomicon universe...
http://www.vanemden.com/books/neals/jipi.html
Uh, the fortune cookie generator exploded on me.
Meanwhile, Hi Mods. this is On Topic because this is what TFA says being schizophrenic and unable to forget is like!
Here we go!
--
Try the Moo Shu Pork. It is especially good today. % Try to get all of your posthumous medals in advance. % Try to have as good a life as you can under the circumstances. % Try to relax and enjoy the crisis. -- Ashleigh Brilliant % Try to value useful qualities in one who loves you. % Tuesday After Lunch is the cosmic time of the week. % Tuesday is the Wednesday of the rest of your life. % What happened last night can happen again. % While you recently had your problems on the run, they've regrouped and are making another attack. % Write yourself a threatening letter and pen a defiant reply. % You are a bundle of energy, always on the go. % You are a fluke of the universe; you have no right to be here. % You are a very redundant person, that's what kind of person you are. % You are always busy. % You are as I am with You. % You are capable of planning your future. % You are confused; but this is your normal state. % You are deeply attached to your friends and acquaintances. % You are destined to become the commandant of the fighting men of the department of transportation. % You are dishonest, but never to the point of hurting a friend. % You are fairminded, just and loving. % You are farsighted, a good planner, an ardent lover, and a faithful friend. % You are fighting for survival in your own sweet and gentle way. % You are going to have a new love affair. % You are magnetic in your bearing. % You are not dead yet. But watch for further reports. % You are number 6! Who is number one? % You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely. % You are scrupulously honest, frank, and straightforward. Therefore you have few friends. % You are sick, twisted and perverted. I like that in a person. % You are so boring that when I see you my feet go to sleep. % You are standing on my toes. % You are taking yourself far too seriously. % You are the only person to ever get this message. % You are wise, witty, and wonderful, but you spend too much time reading this sort of trash. % You attempt things that you do not even plan because of your extreme stupidity. % You can create your own opportunities this week. Blackmail a senior executive. % You can do very well in speculation where land or anything to do with dirt is concerned. % You can rent this space for only $5 a week. % You could live a better life, if you had a better mind and a better body. % You definitely intend to start living sometime soon. % You dialed 5483. % You display the wonderful traits of charm and courtesy. % You don't become a failure until you're satisfied with being one. % You enjoy the company of other people. % You feel a whole lot more like you do now than you did when you used to. % You fill a much-needed gap. % You get along very well with everyone except animals and people. % You had some happiness once, but your parents moved away, and you had to leave it behind. % You have a deep appreciation of the arts and music. % You have a deep interest in all that is artistic. % You have a reputation for being thoroughly reliable and trustworthy. A pity that it's totally undeserved. % You have a strong appeal for members of the opposite sex. % You have a strong appeal for members of your own sex. % You have a strong desire for a home and your family interests come first. % You have a truly strong individuality. % You have a will that can be influenced by all with whom you come in contact. % You have an ability to sense and know higher truth. % You have an ambitious nature and may make a name for yourself. % You have an unusual equipment for success. Be sure to use it properly. % You have an unusual magnetic personality. Don't walk too close to metal objects which are not fastened down. % You have an unusual understanding of the problems of human relationships. % You have been selected for a secret mission. % You have Egyptian flu: you're going to be a
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I find the summary a bit confusing, though. What I have heard before is that the schizophrenic brain is poor at filtering out stimuli, meaning that unimportant details will stand out as much as important ones. For instance, it might have trouble filtering out ambient noise, so whereas a normal brain will cut off processing early on, a schizophrenic brain will process the noise the same way it would process salient, meaningful sounds. So what might happen is that the phoneme processing part of the brain will receive ambient noise as input and will make out voices and whispers out of it, because that is its job, and then these will be manipulated and interpreted as a conversation - maybe neighbors plotting against you, because why else would you be paying attention?
Stimuli that should never make it past saliency processing get dispatched to the brain, which assumes that if it got this far, it must be meaningful (this is normally a fair assumption). From then on, it will "learn" to find meaning in noise, hence visual or auditive hallucinations, delusions, etc. From what I can gather, this study shows that an excess of dopamine could inhibit normal filtering functions, hence the "hyperlearning" on stimuli that should be thrown out, but isn't.
Violets are Blue...
I'm schizophrenic....
And so am I.......
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The Negative Symptoms of Schizophrenia result in Apathy, Lack of Motivation, and General Disorganized Thinking. Those patients I know who have this illness DON'T remember many things. In fact, they require regular "reminders" of the things that they ought to remember. I think this Notion that people who have this Illness "never forget" is not founded in fact. There is no evidence to support this hypothesis or notion.
Did Slashdot's fortune thing at the bottom of the page just totally wig out?
Yes, I know it's not THE opposite, but that's what it sounds like to me.
BTW, what's with the 5000 fortune cookies showing up in the footer of slashdot?!?
I8-D
One more reason to be wary of any organization excessively collecting data. One day they will become schizophrenic, if they aren't already.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Is this what just happened to Slashdot's "fortune" footer?
The problem with schizo people is not that they have too many "normal" memories. But that they remember too much of the "wrong" things.
Have you ever woken up from a dream, and had difficulty, at least for a few moments, figuring out what is real and what is not? After those few moments, your mind clears, and you realize that your dream made no sense at all, and you wonder how you could have ever thought it was real. By the time you finish breakfast, the dream is forgotten.
This is what schizophrenia is like. Except your mind doesn't clear, you don't forget, and you don't stop dreaming when you wake up. I think the cure to schizophrenia will come when we find the brain's "time to wake up" switch, and figure out why it doesn't always work.
Schizophrenia is a chronic physical (brain) illness, due to brain (nature/nurture) structure and/or chemistry.
To compare schizophrenia a human malady to fycked-up technology application is sick. Texas universities probably have creationist classes and students believing amazon, sony, and pc/tablet crash, because it is godddd's will. As always, "Reality is self-induced hallucination."
If a university wants to model a schizophrenic state using technology after we have proof of the physical causes, then there is some research value.
Schizophrenia is a physical illness just like kidney stones, cancer, flu.... The insurance companies are happy to call it a mental illness to avoid providing lifetime coverage of a transient or chronic physical condition.
IMO: I am not a MHP/researcher, about one in three people have transient schizophrenic states (many politicians, C*Os, clerics) that allow them to excel at social skills and fail often with moral/ethic situations [they can always blame someone or godddd].
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
I learned to be Eidetic through plenty of emotional trauma from peer pressures dispensed to me at the right frequency, and abandoned by a certain administrative body I left the more accepted path of society into a more auto-didactic seperatist lifestyle that has proven me to be more productive and self-sufficient while getting actually product Made in USA onto store shelves. In some ways, I have mental color blindedness, but in others it's nothing more than random access memory that gives no bias to any subject: can't even comprehend much of the information given to me, because it's all in memory for me to "rehearse" wherever none can hear me arguing with myself as a supposed "loon."
Yet here we have a parent poster, that we are responding to, wanting to claim they have a brain disease and experience in knowing others that do. Just let us all alone, and give us the 3 Laws: I'm sick and tired of being prevented by legalese from functioning at society just because someone says I'm a schizzo yet I've superior debating skills and have caused harm to none. It's all a scam to default anyone with these "traits" into service plans for job security of lobbyists. It's like me saying that we should get rid of Social Security, because you should have children that should take care of your elderly rather than government take care of them: and your ability to raise good children that take care of you is reason enough of whether you should receive good care or bad care, whereas government simply puts you in the hands of mis-managers and fumbles all rules because some union elderly services aren't prompt on their service route.
peace...of shit.
It sounds like too much remembering induces positive feedback in the brain's pathways which lead to unstable oscillations. Forgetting is then required in order to dampen the system and stabilize it.
If the brain remembers too much, it's possibly not the new stimuli which overwhelm it, but the combination of new stimuli plus the remembered information being replayed, all made worse by feedback paths.
Just a wild-assed hypothesis.
They're modeling their hypothesis, which appears to be that "hyperlearning" (abstraction) results in schizophrenia. Tons of research has been done/is currently ongoing into learning and memory processes, the physical process you are referring to. They're working the issue from a different angle.
Besides, what's the difference between a mental state and a physical brain state, anyways?
I think you are off your meds.
This is Slashdot. RTFA, _then_ lay out your argument based on lazy geographic stereotypes and half baked logic.
I posted the following comment on neuroskeptic about this article:
`"Noteworthy was the high frequency of agent-slotting exchanges between the hospital boss, Joe, and the Mafia boss, Vito, and parallel confusions between the “I” self-reference and underling Mafia members, suggesting generalization of boss/underling relationships."
For the model to recognize these types of relationships, the authors would have had to explicitly tag these agents as possessing either these qualities the constituent elements of these qualities. In either case, it's easy to imagine post-hoc biases in the model's "memory encoder" that generate just-so results without actually reflecting the biological or theoretical underpinnings.
How these relationships are assessed by the "memory encoder" and the "story parser" has much to do with the way features are associated with lexemes. From http://nn.cs.utexas.edu/?miikkulainen:phd:
"Processing in DISCERN is based on hierarchically-organized backpropagation modules, communicating through a central lexicon of word representations. The lexicon is a double feature map, which transforms the orthographic word symbol into its semantic representation and vice versa."`
(http://neuroskeptic.blogspot.com/2011/04/schizophrenic-computer.html)
A judgement of this article depends largely on whether the parser assigns meaning with a result (at the very least, or, given that the goal is to model schizophrenia, in a way) that's compatible with the output (or processes) of human linguistic cognition.
And I do not have multiple-personalities. I'm lucky I have medicine that let's me lead a half-way normal life. I "remember" being sick, as much as you can remember without being certain that any of what you perceived had a basis in "Reality." When I was sick there were no "voices" in my mind, rather, it was an experience that is consistent with this article. Facts. Connecting together in rapid fashion to other "facts" whether the basis that connected them was logical or not. At first, without medicine, connecting the "facts" leads to some novel interpretations that others around you might find interesting. However, as time and the disease progresses without treatment: an overwhelming web of "facts" emerges and the frequency of different interpretations of the same "facts" doubles until fully untreated I was in a full state of chaos, or as it is really called: psychosis. Stay in and be happy you have a concrete "reality" you do not have cause to question.
Shh.
Can they afflict them back? I am trying to work here.
This paper shows why psychologists should not touch computers, let alone write papers about it. Hyperlearning may be a cause of schizophrenia in people, but this paper shows nothing of the sort. The learning rate in artificial neural nets determines a step size for the optimisation of a function. You need small steps because at each step the learning algorithm (gradient descent, or error backpropagation in this case) assumes that the function is linear. So neurons in the human brain assume piecewise linear behaviour in their neighbours? Of course not. The authors are just clueless about the mathematical model that they use.
In the many decades that psychiatry has been around, there is insufficient evidence of this: brain changes are caused by the drugs, not the condition. The mind body problem has plagued philosophy for many years and the materialist reductionist way of explaining it away as just brain chemistry is far from proven. Until we can answer that, we cannot hope to seriously try to pin down mental health issues as brain diseases or perhaps something else. We may never truly understand since the complexity of the overall behaviour of the brain is still well beyond what we can deal with.
John_Chalisque
Does this mean that people with photographic memories are more likely to develop schizophrenia?
Much like the clerics and cops whose schizophrenia you point out, wouldn't it be nice if there was something more than conjecture to physically distinguish your brain from the schizophrenic brain. But alas, there is not.
No apology necessary, because deep-down inside our minds we both know that what we think are insults or praises directed toward one-another are simply emphasis that don't "stick"; we are constantly changing, and we haven't addressed one-another properly. What are we talking about? I must respectively conditionaly agree with you: the brain realy isn't complex, if you think about it: some of us can think one thought at a time, others can coelesce multiple thoughts into a single thought at a time, others have ordered multiple Threads that are all in harmony for sake of religious timing from music or lifestyle, and others are a jarbled mess that can barely do anything until they are born-again.
Think about all the people that had labotomies, either from car crashes or botched neuro-scientists: the faculty of thought that was abridged in removing portions of the brain are simply compensated by the remaining faculties in the brain.
Your ability to re-adapt is no different than proving that the soul already has an impulse to gather and scrutinize information, only that the environment factors have overlayed the soul with a brain that pre-disposes those assumptions in the form of the manifold phrenologies that neuro-scientists have asserted through trial and error of surgery. Removing parts of the brain yields varying results, such as lack of sleep and particularly incomplete nutrition.
The result of nature to cull dysfunctional "schizzophrenics" is much more lenient and sane than what is done by coerced services. I've dodged the bullet so-many times, where so-many observers are itching to shove drugs down my throat just to begin another chapter in their journal on the effects of those drugs: a drug-dealer running Marijuana never forced me to buy, and anyone concerned with property damage (I've yet to cause) is still redressable through Small Claims:County court, yet you have this privileged nobility that dispenses coerced services in the form of taxed drugs onto a populous they've assumed the lesser powers of legislatively diminished Standing in Law in that none may refuse or avert from those services. Comedians and Politicians walk Scot-free, yet you and I could be physically assaulted and prevented from filing claims in County court because why?
I'm mildly alarmed that none are concerned about being forced into a life-time of hotel and room-service at the hands of high-school graduates and naturalized illegal aliens pilfering through what little trinkets are allowed to hold if not over-priced commisary.
If I had to choose between death by Alligators or death by drug-induced old-age of a coerced environment: to me, it's all the same force of pretending conclusive arraingments to limit the range of my domain where I walk in my life. So-much pretended industry thrives on abridging everyone else who didn't read The Book of that indoctrination, that it is less than a country because now it's a living nightmare where you constantly peer through all the regulations of conduct just to get through the meat-market of fines and tickets for not courting through a premises of the forced domestication. Jehova's Witnesses, Mormons, Atheists: they've all become the same in erecting these artificial barriers they call as "the law."
There is only one way out of all this, and the intent is how much currency can be extracted in slowing-down the inevitable so you can live a little less concerned and modestly to someone else's casual comprehendalble inabilities. Take a rest on this sofa, try-out the game room, visit the pation where the birds are: yea, I've been there, and it's all the same: job security for someone in my domestication from a lesser prison because I or another didn't fit the societal "norm" and I didn't fire the first distracting shot to get courts moving in my favor.
Pseudo science built on pseudo science. What muddled trash.
So they use a "neural networks" which does not yet accurately map a brain activity (or intelligence) and may never do so... and then they a medical "hypothesis" and map it into a program to represent this questionable model. Then they get some results which they interpret to prove their theory.
This seems to be less of a breakthrough and more of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Isn't this kind of what drove HAL crazy?
The mind body problem has plagued philosophy for many years
Actually, philosophy has proven that there is no mind-body-problem. The mind is not separate from the body, and not even actually a thing. It is rather a process that happens in a body.
What these scientists did is model parts of how the brain works with a computer, then modify its workings in accordance to a hypothesis about schizophrenia, and got the results the hypothesis predicts. You can't do these kinds of experiments on live humans for ethical reasons. Saying they made a computer schizophrenic is a misleading summary.
I/O Logic for "hyperlearning" "learning" to occur there are two requirements acquisition and application.
IOW: Acquisition of knowledge/experience with no skills to apply knowledge/experience cannot be learning. All learning requires test/eval application of the knowledge/experience acquired. Learning can be theoretical/abstract/art... and/or applied/practical/task... and provide value to at least the learner.
So, "hyperlearning" does not exist for persons in a fugue/schizophrenic state. They cannot apply acquired knowledge/experience and are not expected to apply knowledge/experience. A surgeon/engineer that has amnesia and/or schizophrenia cannot appropriately apply the acquired knowledge/experience.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
I will never be sure that my brain can be physically distinguish from the schizophrenic brain without a return to the early dark-ages (0001ce...2011ce) of mental health.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Ontologically a body-problem that is an irrational dogmatic problem.
"The dogma affected will never reason effective." One in three godmatics significantly weights in favor of poor (possibly insane) policy/decisions....
I am never sure, I reason effective, but avoiding dogma (political/cultural...) helps my reasoning confidence.
Thanks
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
did nothing but numb me down to the point where actual thinking didnt happen, besides they made me bloat up so i felt even worse about myself. what did help was something to focus on other than my own doubts. also : they lose the ability to extract what's meaningful out of the immensity of stimuli the brain encounters." define meaningful ?
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?