To Remember, the Brain Must Actively Forget

  For Robert Calin-Jageman, it’s exciting that forgetting
  seems to be a biological process like digestion or excretion
  because that means it can, at least in theory, be ramped up
  or down.

Huh? Of course it's biological. Why would one believe otherwise unless they made naive deductions from the metaphors du jure--computers and neural networks. Perhaps the journalist is misinterpreting the researcher, and was, indeed, working backward from modern metaphors to conclude that it's somehow novel to think the mechanisms intrinsically corporeal.

Re: To Remember, the Brain Must Actively Forget

#5

Post by svachalek » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 9:45 PM UTC

wahern wrote: post #4

For Robert Calin-Jageman, it’s exciting that forgetting seems to be a biological process like digestion or excretion because that means it can, at least in theory, be ramped up or down. Huh? Of course it's biological. Why would one believe otherwise unless they made naive deductions from the metaphors du jure--computers and neural networks. Perhaps the journalist is misinterpreting the researcher, and was, indeed, wo…

I think the keyword here is "process" not "biological"; i.e. that it's an action taken rather than random decay.

Re: To Remember, the Brain Must Actively Forget

#6

Post by misterprime » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 9:48 PM UTC

Looks like Married With Children was on to something back in '94:

"When the Bundy TV set blows its condenser, Al decides to try out for a place on a new sports trivia game show, hoping to win $10,000 for a new TV set as the first prize. But when he is denied because of his lack of personality, Al tries to transfer his knowledge of sports to Kelly to win the show for him. But for each fact that she takes in, another falls out."

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0642312/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_...

Re: To Remember, the Brain Must Actively Forget

#7

Post by hanniabu » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 10:03 PM UTC

Well I guess the saying "if you don't use it, you lose it" must be true

Re: To Remember, the Brain Must Actively Forget

#8

Post by maneesh » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 10:05 PM UTC

sevagh wrote: post #3

The book Behave by Robert Sapolsky describes this topic (among others) nicely. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/311787/behave-by-ro...

This book was fantastic, and elegantly laid out in how it described behaviors that human beings take.

Re: To Remember, the Brain Must Actively Forget

#9

Post by eruci » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 10:19 PM UTC

Makes sense. It is best to forget useless things and fill the brain with useful ones. I was also going to say something else, but I forgot.

Re: To Remember, the Brain Must Actively Forget

#10

Post by Aardwolf » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 10:24 PM UTC

> Eleven of those genes, they discovered, were still active on one side of the animals’ brains but not on the other, even after the animals had apparently forgotten about the shock.

What exactly does active genes mean here and how can they do that in a living slug and be different on both sides? Afaik, genes are mostly constant throughout one individuals' lifetime, and usually the same in all cells

With almost a GB of data in the DNA of a single cell and 100 billion human brain cells, the DNA sounds like a great storage medium for memories (725 exabytes)! But that's not how it works, right?