Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Neuroscientists discover molecular mechanism that allows memories to form (2020)

news.mit.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 88 posts

Re: Neuroscientists discover molecular mechanism that allows memories to form (2020)

#41

Post by rini17 »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #13

Maybe one day we'll have pills to have total recall for a few hours, wouldn't that be cool for exams and learning languages ? I much prefer that than a chip in my head which the silicon valley seems super keen on selling me.

Making the absurd "drill, exam, forget" process flawless? That would be so sad to see.

Instead, the material+process should be adapted to support long term memory. We know how to do it, already have spaced repetition and mnemonics, sadly teachers mostly ignore them.

Re: Neuroscientists discover molecular mechanism that allows memories to form (2020)

#42

Post by iandanforth »

Please please don't take away from this that there are "memory cells" that "encode memories." The article is so badly written it seems to imply that. Memory is a whole brain phenomenon, and memory formation involves connections being formed and lost constantly between all types of neurons everywhere in the brain. One small aspect of memory (episodic memory) relies more heavily on hippocampal neurons during consolidation, and a small portion of that process is what is being discussed here.

Re: Neuroscientists discover molecular mechanism that allows memories to form (2020)

#43

Post by api »

iandanforth wrote: post #42

Please please don't take away from this that there are "memory cells" that "encode memories." The article is so badly written it seems to imply that. Memory is a whole brain phenomenon, and memory formation involves connections being formed and lost constantly between all types of neurons everywhere in the brain. One small aspect of memory (episodic memory) relies more heavily on hippocampal neurons during consolidat…

Proper title: "Neuroscientists discover one potential mechanism of memory formation and make a preliminary attempt to identify the most active regions where it occurs."

Less click baity.

Re: Neuroscientists discover molecular mechanism that allows memories to form (2020)

#44

Post by hatch_q »

jcims wrote: post #19
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #13

Maybe one day we'll have pills to have total recall for a few hours, wouldn't that be cool for exams and learning languages ? I much prefer that than a chip in my head which the silicon valley seems super keen on selling me.

My memory is generally terrible. One discovery that was alarming, encouraging and disturbing at the same time is that I do appear to have some form of nearly total recall buried in there somewhere. Unfortunately it only surfaces in one way. If I listen to a podcast while I’m doing something, then listen to that same podcast again within a week or so, I will have regular, intrusive visual recall of exactly what I was…

Reverse it? Watch video and check if you can remember the podcast?

Re: Neuroscientists discover molecular mechanism that allows memories to form (2020)

#45

Post by Robotbeat »

iandanforth wrote: post #42

Please please don't take away from this that there are "memory cells" that "encode memories." The article is so badly written it seems to imply that. Memory is a whole brain phenomenon, and memory formation involves connections being formed and lost constantly between all types of neurons everywhere in the brain. One small aspect of memory (episodic memory) relies more heavily on hippocampal neurons during consolidat…

So, isn’t the nature of memory in the brain still understood pretty vaguely? The “memory is connections and involves the whole brain” is still kind of a hypothesis and less of a hard, empirically-validated theory, no? May still be the best idea we have, but from what I understand (which isn’t much), it’s not nearly that cut and dry and we don’t really know enough to exclude a lot of the other models of memory formation.

Re: Neuroscientists discover molecular mechanism that allows memories to form (2020)

#47

Post by leemailll »

big deal, if this is the mechanism, the mechanism of memory was discovered dozens of times in the 90s

I hate institution's PR release hyperbole everything to the max.

And the senior author of the paper has a few listed on PubPeer https://pubpeer.com/search?q=li-huei+tsai

Re: Neuroscientists discover molecular mechanism that allows memories to form (2020)

#50

Post by deepsun »

Robotbeat wrote: post #45
iandanforth wrote: post #42

Please please don't take away from this that there are "memory cells" that "encode memories." The article is so badly written it seems to imply that. Memory is a whole brain phenomenon, and memory formation involves connections being formed and lost constantly between all types of neurons everywhere in the brain. One small aspect of memory (episodic memory) relies more heavily on hippocampal neurons during consolidat…

So, isn’t the nature of memory in the brain still understood pretty vaguely? The “memory is connections and involves the whole brain” is still kind of a hypothesis and less of a hard, empirically-validated theory, no? May still be the best idea we have, but from what I understand (which isn’t much), it’s not nearly that cut and dry and we don’t really know enough to exclude a lot of the other models of memory formati…

There's no single concept of nature that's understood completely. For example, there are a lot of things still understood pretty vaguely about milk. Or apples. So you can say that about pretty much anything.
Post reply on HN