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The discovery that changed how scientists think about memory

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Re: The discovery that changed how scientists think about memory

#31

Post by goodmythical »

Earw0rm wrote: post #27
taneq wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creativity can be thought of as a combination of two things: A random idea generator, and a nonsense filter. Generate new random results ideas, filter out the nonsense ones, and you’ve generated good ideas.

IMV creativity that matters contains a third ingredient: intent, purpose, the will to make an artistic statement of some kind about how the world is or should be.

That's just an anthropomorphic viewpoint though.

One could argue from a religious standpoint that creativity requires a spark of divinity.

One could argue from a naturalist standpoint that natural selection has been a creative process in which nature tries random things until they stick for no purpose that we can directly observe.

One could argue from a platonic standpoint that creativity in this realm of existence is merely the process of approximating ideal forms.

I'd wager that creativity is a human construct and therefore up to interpretation. Kinda like how the ancient greeks didn't have as many colors words as we did. Was it because they couldn't see all the colors we could see? No, it was because in their opinion only certain color words were necessary to discuss what was important.

Re: The discovery that changed how scientists think about memory

#32

Post by unsupp0rted »

It's amazing after all these years we're still so bad at improving an average person's recall, even by 50%. It feels like there's a lot of low-hanging fruit there, and all we can do is spaced repetition systems, the memory palace, strong associative scents, etc

Weak.

If we had a better understanding of memory perhaps we could give the average person techniques for 10x'ing their recall without jumping through Anki hoops.

Re: The discovery that changed how scientists think about memory

#33

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

Roark66 wrote: post #11
Earw0rm wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flatworms branched off our side of the animal tree of life very early on. They're on the same side as molluscs, some of whom (cephalopods) are famous for having a more distributed nervous system. Granted though many/most organs are stateful and somewhat adaptive - in a sense they'll "remember" what happened. Even plants possess that to varying degrees.

Did you know human overies contain neurons? I suppose memories are not stored there :-) but still the fact is rather surprising.

That's interesting, but bear in mind that sensory neurons are basically just transducers that sense something and convert it into a neural output. It makes sense that a woman's brain would find it useful to know when she is ovulating.

Re: The discovery that changed how scientists think about memory

#34

Post by dboreham »

christophilus wrote: post #21
abc123abc123 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Every memory begins with tiny changes inside the brain. A discovery that helped explain those changes has earned neuroscientist Oswald Steward one of science’s highest honors. Steward received the 2026 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience, a USD 1 million award and one of science’s most prestigious awards, for research that transformed scientists’ understanding of how the brain learns and stores memories." And that's what it…

Well, it does seem that memories may be embedded in the nervous system as well as the brain, so I don’t think the OP is wrong. You sometimes hear of heart transplant patients having other people’s memories / preferences. So, it’s not good evidence, but it’s a possibility.

Er no. That doesn't happen.

Re: The discovery that changed how scientists think about memory

#35

Post by piskov »

abc123abc123 wrote: post #17
bambax wrote: post #3

> Every memory begins with tiny changes inside the brain Maybe. But the brain is not the only place where memory is stored. Flat worms remember things (and skills!) after their head has been cut off and they regrew it: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/these-decapita...

"Every memory begins with tiny changes inside the brain. A discovery that helped explain those changes has earned neuroscientist Oswald Steward one of science’s highest honors. Steward received the 2026 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience, a USD 1 million award and one of science’s most prestigious awards, for research that transformed scientists’ understanding of how the brain learns and stores memories." And that's what it…

Memory stored in RNA is a known thing:

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.11.711021v1

https://www.sciencealert.com/worms-can-share-memories-of-a-b...

Re: The discovery that changed how scientists think about memory

#37

Post by mr_toad »

embedding-shape wrote: post #28
Earw0rm wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's quite a leap. The idea that _semantic_ memories are encoded so as to be transmissible via blobs of neural tissue stretches plausibility.

It doesn't seem so implausible: Personality Changes Associated with Organ Transplants ( https://www.mdpi.com/2673-3943/5/1/12 ) > Personality changes have been reported following organ transplantation. Most commonly, such changes have been described among heart transplant recipients. [...] A cross-sectional study was conducted in which 47 participants (23 heart recipients and 24 other organ recipients) completed an o…

Just 47 participants in the online study and a wide variety of psychological issues: “depression, anxiety, psychosis, and sexual dysfunction.”. A few of them found religion.

Is anyone surprised that surviving traumatic surgery with a long debilitating recovery time causes mental stress?

Re: The discovery that changed how scientists think about memory

#38

Post by MarceliusK »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #32

It's amazing after all these years we're still so bad at improving an average person's recall, even by 50%. It feels like there's a lot of low-hanging fruit there, and all we can do is spaced repetition systems, the memory palace, strong associative scents, etc Weak. If we had a better understanding of memory perhaps we could give the average person techniques for 10x'ing their recall without jumping through Anki hoo…

[dead]

Re: The discovery that changed how scientists think about memory

#39

Post by strogonoff »

bambax wrote: post #3

> Every memory begins with tiny changes inside the brain Maybe. But the brain is not the only place where memory is stored. Flat worms remember things (and skills!) after their head has been cut off and they regrew it: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/these-decapita...

“A memory begins with tiny changes inside the brain” as truth statement is a basic fallacy of naive physicalism. There is no falsifiable way to ascertain in which direction causality points, nor is natural science even intended provide a definitive answer—it is designed to make predictions and any models that arise in the process are necessarily faulty and do not describe the true nature of underlying reality, which this ultimately comes down to.

Re: The discovery that changed how scientists think about memory

#40

Post by MarceliusK »

Animats wrote: post #2

Great result on the biochemistry of memory storage. Then they venture into philosophy: "They still struggle to explain the spark that transforms information into insight." Go watch Stable Diffusion iteratively transform noise into originality.

So I'd say diffusion models make the philosophy less mystical but not necessarily solved
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