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'Super memory': Why Emily Nash is sharing her brain with science

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Re: 'Super memory': Why Emily Nash is sharing her brain with science

#41

Post by coldtea »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #39
coldtea wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is fascinating, but I’m left confused at the banality. Maybe it’s just the way the article was written, but truly, who cares that she can remember what was playing on Netflix three years ago? Anybody who can understand the implications this has for understanding how memory works, creating memory enhancing drugs or gene alterations, and enhancing human cognition? I mean, DUH!

I mean - is that really the case? It almost sounds like she’s just passively absorbing banal shit rather than there being any kind of consciousness. Kinda like a camera with an endless hard drive. Interesting, but what do you do with it?

>It almost sounds like she’s just passively absorbing banal shit rather than there being any kind of consciousness.

So? They don't want to use her as a trove of historically important information, but to study her as a person which "super memory".

For that, it doesn't matter if it's about human anatomy, quantum physics, or what was said in every episode of Melrose Place.

The mechanism by which those are absorbed and retained, and in such quality and recall is what's interesting, the content is not important.

>Kinda like a camera with an endless hard drive. Interesting, but what do you do with it?

If I was an engineer for a storage company I'd very much like to know how an "endless hard drive" works. It would solve tons of storage and archiving problems, and could make trillions.

For human memory, a 2x or 3x or 10x increase in storage/recall efficiency would be a huge thing.

Re: 'Super memory': Why Emily Nash is sharing her brain with science

#42

Post by 7thaccount »

progman32 wrote: post #34
schoen wrote: post #33

The reverse of this is "severely deficient autobiographical memory", which has been in the news recently as well (and I think discussed on HN too). I think it's interesting that I consider myself to have a good memory but it is by far best at verbal associations (e.g. facts about a specific topic, object, word, or concept). The autobiographical part feels quite weak for me: I often find it hard to remember experience…

My experience is similar. I feel like I experience past events more as modifications to my world view rather than a log of moments. I like it, to be honest. I don't need to know the exact details. The only time it gets me in trouble is people sometimes equate remembering an event as somehow "caring" about that event. I forget details fast. Sometimes people interpret that as not being interested in the people I met or…

Memory is weird. I was once on a street in maybe 2005 with my mother when a song from the 90s came on the radio. I was thinking that the last time I had heard the song we were at the same red light, but something like 10 years prior. My mom then said, "I think we were in the same spot like 10 years ago the last time I heard this song". It was a very bizarre moment as the song wasn't important to us or anything like that which should have made it memorable.

Re: 'Super memory': Why Emily Nash is sharing her brain with science

#44

Post by elijaht »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #23
hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #21

Johnny von Neumann was another likely candidate for having HSAM, based on all those stories of him being able to repeat almost everything he ever read verbatim. I wonder if it had anything to do with his mathematical prowess, given that autobiographical memory is usually considered a separate thing from wherever math goes.

Can this lady(or other people with HSAM) actually recite what they've read in the past verbatim? It seems like she can just tell you what she was doing or what happened on a given day, but didn't delve into how far that goes - maybe she can tell you she was reading book X, but couldn't necessarily recite passages from book X?

From the article:

Her father, Jason, said he would show Emily a series of coloured bowling pins for about 10 seconds and then spin her around, asking her to name the order they were in.

“She would knock them off right away in terms of identifying every pin, in terms of, you know, red, yellow, green, blue,” he said.

Her mother, Julie, discovered Emily -- at age five -- could watch a Peanuts cartoon and then recall and repeat the dialogue from any point in the episode.

Re: 'Super memory': Why Emily Nash is sharing her brain with science

#45

Post by thefourthchime »

zackmorris wrote: post #20

I'm curious how this relates to neurodivergent/ADHD/autistic learning where someone has weak rote-memorization skills and mainly remembers things as a fractal of associations. For me, I can't remember that I have an appointment tomorrow, but if you ask me how computers work, I'll start with explaining electron orbitals and band gaps, doping, masking, VLSI, assembly language, C, functional programming and where AI is…

I don't have a good memory at all, but for some reason, if I listen to a podcast a second time I can recall exactly where I was as the podcast goes on.

For example, if I listened to the (fantastic) “search engine” podcast about pig butchering I would know where I was walking my dog, or cleaning the kitchen, etc…

It's very odd

Re: 'Super memory': Why Emily Nash is sharing her brain with science

#47

Post by robertlagrant »

progman32 wrote: post #34
schoen wrote: post #33

The reverse of this is "severely deficient autobiographical memory", which has been in the news recently as well (and I think discussed on HN too). I think it's interesting that I consider myself to have a good memory but it is by far best at verbal associations (e.g. facts about a specific topic, object, word, or concept). The autobiographical part feels quite weak for me: I often find it hard to remember experience…

My experience is similar. I feel like I experience past events more as modifications to my world view rather than a log of moments. I like it, to be honest. I don't need to know the exact details. The only time it gets me in trouble is people sometimes equate remembering an event as somehow "caring" about that event. I forget details fast. Sometimes people interpret that as not being interested in the people I met or…

> I feel like I experience past events more as modifications to my world view rather than a log of moments

That's interesting - I'm similar. I think of it in terms of remembering conclusions, rather than the reasons for the conclusions. Which can make it difficult to explain my reasoning sometimes - I tend to only remember the axioms/assumptions, and the conclusions, and have to try and recreate the intermediate steps every time.

Re: 'Super memory': Why Emily Nash is sharing her brain with science

#48

Post by wouldbecouldbe »

It raises a few interesting questions, Im sure there is already lot of research in the area.

- What about storage? The brain seems to be limitless.

- Seems like there are more mutations that improve memory, but overal our memory is terrible? Doesn't have seem to be a favourable quality, maybe that changes in an information society

- So why do we forget in the first place? Bio clean up? Trauma processing? Focus?

Re: 'Super memory': Why Emily Nash is sharing her brain with science

#49

Post by swagmoney1606 »

wvh wrote: post #36
zackmorris wrote: post #20

I'm curious how this relates to neurodivergent/ADHD/autistic learning where someone has weak rote-memorization skills and mainly remembers things as a fractal of associations. For me, I can't remember that I have an appointment tomorrow, but if you ask me how computers work, I'll start with explaining electron orbitals and band gaps, doping, masking, VLSI, assembly language, C, functional programming and where AI is…

This sounds familiar, including an unstable or uncertain view of oneself caused by – depending on the situation – not knowing if one's pretty smart and inventive, or a total idiot not capable of living life. Finding the right environment and well, just age help a lot.

> This sounds familiar, including an unstable or uncertain view of oneself caused by – depending on the situation – not knowing if one's pretty smart and inventive, or a total idiot not capable of living life.

Also a familiar feeling to me as well.

Re: 'Super memory': Why Emily Nash is sharing her brain with science

#50

Post by hsjsbeebue »

thefourthchime wrote: post #45
zackmorris wrote: post #20

I'm curious how this relates to neurodivergent/ADHD/autistic learning where someone has weak rote-memorization skills and mainly remembers things as a fractal of associations. For me, I can't remember that I have an appointment tomorrow, but if you ask me how computers work, I'll start with explaining electron orbitals and band gaps, doping, masking, VLSI, assembly language, C, functional programming and where AI is…

I don't have a good memory at all, but for some reason, if I listen to a podcast a second time I can recall exactly where I was as the podcast goes on. For example, if I listened to the (fantastic) “search engine” podcast about pig butchering I would know where I was walking my dog, or cleaning the kitchen, etc… It's very odd

My memory is rubbish generally except I can draw the floorplan of anywhere I have lived or stayed. But directions, conversations, dates, forget it!
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