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Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

directorsblog.nih.gov

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Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

#341

Post by loa_in_ »

nh23423fefe wrote: post #321
loa_in_ wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's true. I can imagine a lot of aspects of systems around me I cannot possibly experience in any way, except maybe them leading to some outcome that I might experience as well. I sometimes do verify this experimentally, but that comes later.

I don't see how you are disagreeing with me? GP said something about compression being a component of intelligence, parent said also brains simulate, then I said yeah i agree, and believe that the content of the simulation is the experience itself, whereas people often think there are 2 things, themselves and the world. I don't believe that at all. There is only one thing happening, the experience you are having now.…

With this definition of experience, sure. My definition of experience is observable, palpable, etc. portion of the world

Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

#342

Post by nh23423fefe »

loa_in_ wrote: post #341
nh23423fefe wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how you are disagreeing with me? GP said something about compression being a component of intelligence, parent said also brains simulate, then I said yeah i agree, and believe that the content of the simulation is the experience itself, whereas people often think there are 2 things, themselves and the world. I don't believe that at all. There is only one thing happening, the experience you are having now.…

With this definition of experience, sure. My definition of experience is observable, palpable, etc. portion of the world

Ah ok, that doesn't work for me because I want to call dreams and hallucinations experiences as well. And those are disconnected from some idea of reality.

The primary aspect is first person perspective, not congruence with the external world.

Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

#343

Post by the_omegist »

nicoburns wrote: post #53
nice2meetu wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ditto on the "certain female family member who insists that she remembers things word-for-word". When she recounts her meeting with a friend it is needlessly tedious (I try to be a good listener of course). Complains that my recollections are too vague and she wants to know what really happened and is frustrated I won't give her details. I think a large part of it is just that you store what is important to you. To m…

The Myers-Briggs system distinguishes call these two perspectives "Sensing" (detail orientated) and "Intuition" (theory/model based) [not the best names]. And it posits that it's less a matter of importance people place on things and more that people literally notice different things and perceive the world differently (so it's not even just about remembering, it's about what you notice and how your mind represents th…

Exactly, I think it's about how everyone's brain process information (the whole pipeline, from getting it to storing it).

Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

#344

Post by vharuck »

milchek wrote: post #339
vharuck wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I can build up a relatively vivid mental image of my walking route to school (from the bus terminal) over 40 years ago. Is it accurate? Who cares. Not only that, but by recalling and rebuilding memories, how gaps are filled in depends on your current mental state. For example, if I'm feeling depressed and brooding over past social interactions, I'll likely imagine people having meaner expressions or saying harsher t…

Just thought I’d share an example of how this memory issue manifests for me. I listen to a lot of music and use it (like many) to index various stages of life - i even have playlists by year to help facilitate this. The problem occurs when I listen back to music i was listening to in, say, 2008. All of a sudden, i’m transported back. But, each time i do this, the effect wears off a little, because their is some - let…

I first heard the theory on an episode of RadioLab:

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/episodes/91569...

One of the researchers interviewed on that episode was Karim Nader, who focuses on what he calls memory reconsolidation:

https://www.mcgill.ca/psychology/karim-nader

Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

#345

Post by magicroot75 »

ThalesX wrote: post #8

As someone suffering from Aphantasia [0] (I don't have mental imagery at all) and I've been telling people for the longest time that this is how I relate to the world. I summarize things. Even my mother's face. A post by a Facebook engineer [1] felt like a good way to understand it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia [1] https://medicine.exeter.ac.uk/media/universityofexeter/medic...

Fellow aphantast here. I can dream and I think its somewhat visual. But when I try to recreate what that visuality was, I can't.

Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

#346

Post by BizarroLand »

Lich wrote: post #178
BizarroLand wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think it's being an megasavant, sort of like Kim Peek. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Peek Not capable of functioning independently or surviving for any long period unassisted but having a brain and cognition setup that allowed for amazing feats of mental wizardry. If you could have that ability and function normally in society you could do some astounding things.

I thought that the idea of Mentats (human computers from the Dune novel) were kind of ridiculous, but yeah, when you look at savants like Peek, makes you kind of wonder if such a thing would be possible.

Yeah, if you had the appropriate brain surgery as an infant and took highly specialized drugs to maintain or accelerate your mental functioning, you too could be like Kim Peek.

I like that Frank Herbert imagined that it would be possible and went with it before we had any real proof that it could be, and then he turned out to be right.

Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

#347

Post by [deleted] »

Joel1234 wrote: post #49
axg11 wrote: post #35

Compression is a component of general intelligence. A few years ago I was very sceptical of machine learning ever leading to general intelligence. I've since changed my mind. There are a lot of parallels to this work and the concept of "embeddings" in machine learning. Intelligence requires the ability to generalize. A prerequisite for generalization is the ability to take something high-dimensional and reduce it to…

Que gracioso tio

[deleted]

Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

#348

Post by bick_nyers »

sethrin wrote: post #256
bick_nyers wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ability to experience a memory as precisely as you want, including the option of a full mental transplant, like loading a save file for a video game. See, hear, touch, smell, taste, and think the exact same thoughts as you did 15 years ago. The playback mechanisms will have some caveats, as it may not strictly be possible to playback perfectly, as you are a different person with a different brain and body than sa…

I have aphantasia, so my experience of memories is generally closer to factual recall than sense experiences; additionally I don't have an inner monologue. Which is sort of why I asked: memory is not necessarily a record of our sense experiences. Keeping an arbitrarily precise record of our sense experiences would be quite cool and useful, but that would necessarily be a different physical process than memory, and an…

When I mean memory I mean every possible electrical signal in the brain, including sensory input. Maybe it won't be possible to "see what your eyes saw 10 years ago" directly into the brain, but perhaps you could render it on a monitor?

When it comes to not having an inner monologue, that complicates the example, but I think it's still possible to work with actual memory. What I suggested was a tool to search your memory by tapping into the words from the inner monologue, but if you don't have that available, you can still search the signals of the brain, it would just be less comprehensible. Say you're trying to quit smoking, you could pattern match the brain signals that are present when you have a craving by checking historical data, and pipe that feedback into a controlled release nicotine patch designed to slowly taper you down over a few months.

Edit: While that particular use case doesn't sound exciting (why not just use a regular patch?), I don't think it's because the possibilities aren't exciting but more so I'm just not the best at imagining what the use cases would be specifically.

Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

#349

Post by throw1234651234 »

copperx wrote: post #141
throw1234651234 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am very interested in the topic, and have been looking into it for ages. I think most people vastly exaggerate their ability to visualize anything. Most people can't really hold a square or a sphere in their mind, rotate it, or change colors. The only people who truly can are really good artists. My point - you may be mis-diagnosing yourself, especially since aphantasia doesn't seem to have clear tests or definitio…

Is it really unique? I can visualize a sphere, rotate it, rotate the "camera", see it in wireframe, apply any kind of texture, reflections, make it bounce, like working with CAD software. I can picture the image through a fishbowl lens, or through telephoto. However, I do not believe, for example, the reflections or the light sources to be realistic. I can "see" the effect of changing the lenses, but I don't think th…

This is absolutely exceptional if true. As far as I am concerned you should be a good artists out of the box. The argument that "well, it's drawing the line well" is mostly bs - it's being able to visualize proportions, distance between things, etc. Most artists actually don't - they follow rules. A person starts as a square and gets broken into quarters with each quarter denoting say the middle of the chest, the groin, the knees, etc. Each box is then broken down more (eyes in the middle of the top box, etc). If you can actually visualize things accurately, especially "wiremap it", you should be able to draw a portrait from memory in 3D. Otherwise you are lying to yourself.

As far as use - Tesla was said to have "run" schematics in his head to see what would break. I believe it. This allowed him to rapidly prototype.

Also, your working memory should be off the charts, which should be indicative of a very high IQ

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