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Aging brains blend memories together instead of just forgetting them

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Re: Aging brains blend memories together instead of just forgetting them

#81

Post by jjk166 »

D-Machine wrote: post #75
thesz wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fascinating story of "Patient Sh." [1], the man who did not forget. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Shereshevsky "His memory was so powerful that he could still recall decades-old events and experiences in the smallest details. After he discovered his own abilities, he performed as a mnemonist; but this created confusion in his mind. He went as far as writing things down on paper and burning it, so that h…

"The brain is not a computer" != "Parts / aspects of the brain do computation". "A computer" in the first statement is IMO obviously intended in the common usage sense of the term, i.e. the brain is not a desktop computer or smartphone, or Turing machine, or etc, and thinking of it like these things will cause more error than insights. Also, billions of interlinked mini bio quantum computers arguably produce somethin…

> "A computer" in the first statement is IMO obviously intended in the common usage sense of the term, i.e. the brain is not a desktop computer

No one has ever thought that a brain is a desktop computer, and that is not the common usage sense of the term in this context.

Re: Aging brains blend memories together instead of just forgetting them

#82

Post by mdavidn »

MarkusWandel wrote: post #50

Being an "aging brain" myself I can totally relate to this. I've been a relatively obsessive photographer (i.e. visual diary) since digital cameras were practical, i.e. over 25 years now. 238K photos in the collection so far, and I can actually find things in it. And I've more than once found that an anecdote I've been telling has been incorrect, precisely in a "melded memories" kind of way. It happened at this sort…

Can confirm. This "aging brain" regularly and vividly inserts my child into memories created before they existed.

Re: Aging brains blend memories together instead of just forgetting them

#83

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

thesz wrote: post #49
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #23

I wonder how much of this is directly related to age (biological aging), and how much is just someone's brain becoming "full" due to more memories getting added every year? It seems that memories must be stored as embeddings with single multi-neuron assemblies (cortical columns?) storing multiple embeddings as a kind of contents-addressable memory that is able to keep memories distinct due to the very high dimensiona…

A fascinating story of "Patient Sh." [1], the man who did not forget. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Shereshevsky "His memory was so powerful that he could still recall decades-old events and experiences in the smallest details. After he discovered his own abilities, he performed as a mnemonist; but this created confusion in his mind. He went as far as writing things down on paper and burning it, so that h…

> Live with that. ;)

Well, sure, it's a computer of sorts, although in the abstract sense of being able to perform computations so is our liver, so perhaps not a very useful concept.

What I meant (as I assume you realize) was "not a von Neumann architecture computer", but I'd also fairly confidently assert that it's not a quantum computer either.

Our ANN model of a neuron is obviously too simple (especially being a synchronous model, not a real-time asynchronous one), but it's hard to imagine that all of the classical chemistry, let alone quantum, details are important. It's necessarily built out of chemistry, but selection is happening at the level of behavior - presumably depending only on a much higher level set of abstract capabilities (ability to learn, etc), not the exact details of chemistry.

The success of LLMs, a crude prediction mechanism built atop a crude ANN, does tend to support the idea that low level details don't matter. Timing will matter if we want to go beyond LLMs to AI that can learn time-based things and not just sequence order, but how much else will matter remains to be seen!

Re: Aging brains blend memories together instead of just forgetting them

#84

Post by thenthenthen »

BariumBlue wrote: post #68
rectang wrote: post #62

The concept of memories blending together resonates after watching a recent Kurzgezadt video entitled "How Are Memories Stored Inside Your Brain?". It makes the point that the very act of recalling a memory changes it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqtggjVAi8M > But memories are not static like photos. Like dioramas made from wax, each time they’re under the spotlight of your attention they can melt and change a ti…

I suspect my oldest memory, of me getting into a booster car seat as a child, is no longer the actual memory, but the accumulated imaginings of me trying to remember that specific memory, masquerading as a memory.

My earliest memory… turned out to be a videoclip I discovered 20 years later… I really thought I experienced this!

Re: Aging brains blend memories together instead of just forgetting them

#85

Post by MarkusWandel »

mdavidn wrote: post #82
MarkusWandel wrote: post #50

Being an "aging brain" myself I can totally relate to this. I've been a relatively obsessive photographer (i.e. visual diary) since digital cameras were practical, i.e. over 25 years now. 238K photos in the collection so far, and I can actually find things in it. And I've more than once found that an anecdote I've been telling has been incorrect, precisely in a "melded memories" kind of way. It happened at this sort…

Can confirm. This "aging brain" regularly and vividly inserts my child into memories created before they existed.

I think that's because memories really are highly compressed, with the average complex memory (of a grand day out, for example) being compressed into at most a paragraph of text's worth of information. Everything else is made up of context.

For example, having no photographic memory, I can remember the general "feel" of the innards of an antique shortwave receiver I used to have as a kid. But almost all of that is context. I know what canned octal base vacuum tubes and big tuning capacitors look like, what sort of components were in the big band selector "sled" (for geeks: This was an NC2-40D) and so on. So I can "zoom in" on the coarse memory by just filling in details that are generic, not specific. And these details may be from different sources than the original memory too.

And so the brain needs to remember - if one is not faceblind, which in fact I am - just the overall geometry of someone's face, and all the other stuff can be filled in as needed (how they look when they smile or are anxious etc.) Compression, compression. We have a lot to learn from nature. Note that a faceblind person does this too, of course - just not with a geometrically exact visualization of that person's face, just one with the correct "feel".

And that's also why synthetic memories can be formed so easily. You really don't have to insert much. The brain infers the rest as needed.

Re: Aging brains blend memories together instead of just forgetting them

#86

Post by MarkusWandel »

MarkusWandel wrote: post #85
mdavidn wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can confirm. This "aging brain" regularly and vividly inserts my child into memories created before they existed.

I think that's because memories really are highly compressed, with the average complex memory (of a grand day out, for example) being compressed into at most a paragraph of text's worth of information. Everything else is made up of context. For example, having no photographic memory, I can remember the general "feel" of the innards of an antique shortwave receiver I used to have as a kid. But almost all of that is co…

This of course applies to my (sarcastic) description of women's memory too. A given conversation is compressed to a small amount of memory, a significant part of which is the "feel" of the conversation rather than the actual words. So of course the memory is not word-for-word exact. But, let's just say, a subset of persons, a majority of which may or may not be female, does not acknowledge this and insists that the (reconstructed) sequence of words is exactly what was said 20 years ago.

Re: Aging brains blend memories together instead of just forgetting them

#87

Post by mashygpig »

MarkusWandel wrote: post #50

Being an "aging brain" myself I can totally relate to this. I've been a relatively obsessive photographer (i.e. visual diary) since digital cameras were practical, i.e. over 25 years now. 238K photos in the collection so far, and I can actually find things in it. And I've more than once found that an anecdote I've been telling has been incorrect, precisely in a "melded memories" kind of way. It happened at this sort…

I don’t think the sexist comment at the end is appropriate for HN

Re: Aging brains blend memories together instead of just forgetting them

#88

Post by D-Machine »

jjk166 wrote: post #81
D-Machine wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The brain is not a computer" != "Parts / aspects of the brain do computation". "A computer" in the first statement is IMO obviously intended in the common usage sense of the term, i.e. the brain is not a desktop computer or smartphone, or Turing machine, or etc, and thinking of it like these things will cause more error than insights. Also, billions of interlinked mini bio quantum computers arguably produce somethin…

> "A computer" in the first statement is IMO obviously intended in the common usage sense of the term, i.e. the brain is not a desktop computer No one has ever thought that a brain is a desktop computer, and that is not the common usage sense of the term in this context.

You are wrong, as I didn't limit the analogy specifically to desktop computers only, try reading the rest of what I wrote. The original analogy was obviously hedging against simplistic brain-computer analogies (GP could be read as: "the brain is not a simplistic computer"), so the response demanding to "live with that" citing computational aspects of the brain was misguided and arrogantly wrong.

Multiple other responses also point out the definition given leads to absurdities / triviality (the liver is a computer in this context), so the "correction" with citations is both inept and inapt.

Re: Aging brains blend memories together instead of just forgetting them

#89

Post by tharkun__ »

YesBox wrote: post #58
MarkusWandel wrote: post #50

Being an "aging brain" myself I can totally relate to this. I've been a relatively obsessive photographer (i.e. visual diary) since digital cameras were practical, i.e. over 25 years now. 238K photos in the collection so far, and I can actually find things in it. And I've more than once found that an anecdote I've been telling has been incorrect, precisely in a "melded memories" kind of way. It happened at this sort…

Just throwing out an idea: I recently stumbled upon an old-school website where someone is uploading a photo of their day (almost) every single day since 1998. Came across screen captures of the original Everquest (SO COOL) and other games, photos of anime/cosplay events, city shots, family, friends, etc. Really fun for them, and fun for people who like me who still enjoy surfing the web. edit: Screencap of an Everqu…

Everquest looked sooooo good back then. Man! No more Meridian 59!

Why did you have to destroy my memories? :)

It's like looking at the first DivX encoded movie that was soooooo good vs. VideoCD/LaserDisc. And then you look at it today and it's so damn blocky and also in that tiny resolution. Ugh!

Re: Aging brains blend memories together instead of just forgetting them

#90

Post by fsckboy »

mashygpig wrote: post #87
MarkusWandel wrote: post #50

Being an "aging brain" myself I can totally relate to this. I've been a relatively obsessive photographer (i.e. visual diary) since digital cameras were practical, i.e. over 25 years now. 238K photos in the collection so far, and I can actually find things in it. And I've more than once found that an anecdote I've been telling has been incorrect, precisely in a "melded memories" kind of way. It happened at this sort…

I don’t think the sexist comment at the end is appropriate for HN

>I don’t think the sexist comment at the end is appropriate for HN

I don't think the ageist comment in the headline is appropriate anywhere.

It is well known that memories and perceptions at every age are largely constructed more as "what makes sense" ("no, a gorilla did not run across the basketball court") than "as recorded" recordings.

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