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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

#41

Post by embedding-shape »

mr_toad wrote: post #37
embedding-shape wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

No, but some of the references reports and studies (referenced in the above study), if truthful, would be too much of a coincidence, no?

> a heart and lung transplant at Yale-New Haven hospital in 1988. Following surgery, Sylvia developed a new taste for green peppers and chicken nuggets, foods she previously disliked. As soon as she was released from the hospital, she promptly headed to a Kentucky Fried Chicken to order chicken nuggets. She later met her donor’s family and inquired about his affinity for green peppers. Their response was, “Are you kidding? He loved them… But what he really loved was chicken nuggets”

> a 5-year-old boy received the heart of a 3-year-old boy but was not informed about his donor’s age or cause of death. Despite this lack of information, he provided a vivid description of his donor after the surgery: “He’s just a little kid. He’s a little brother like about half my age. He got hurt bad when he fell down. He likes Power Rangers a lot I think, just like I used to. I don’t like them anymore though” (p. 70, [8]). Subsequently it was reported that his donor had died after falling from an apartment window while trying to reach a Power Ranger toy that had fallen onto the window ledge. After receiving his new heart, the recipient refused to touch or play with Power Rangers

I'm sure there might be other explanations to all of these, but at least people are trying to study it more.

Re: The discovery that changed how scientists think about memory

#42

Post by MarceliusK »

kator wrote: post #16

I think the most interesting thing is that it took 15 years for people to apparently take this seriously. And another 40 to recognize its impact. The original paper[1] was from 1982... Having been in software development for 45 years, I find this crazy. Maybe it's because in our world, it often takes a month for something to spread from "interesting" to the new technology of the day, or the new way of doing things. […

I think part of the difference is that in software we can often try the new thing immediately and see whether it helps. In biology, "this is real" and "this is important" are much harder to establish because the system is noisy, the experiments are slow and the implications may not be obvious until other pieces of the puzzle show up

Re: The discovery that changed how scientists think about memory

#43

Post by mr_toad »

project2501a wrote: post #4
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.

i'm sorry, I cannot agree that anything like that can create "originality".

It still surprises me that people can complain about LLMs making things up (i.e. hallucinating), and simultaneously complain that they never produce anything original.

Re: The discovery that changed how scientists think about memory

#44

Post by MarceliusK »

layer8 wrote: post #22
kator wrote: post #16

I think the most interesting thing is that it took 15 years for people to apparently take this seriously. And another 40 to recognize its impact. The original paper[1] was from 1982... Having been in software development for 45 years, I find this crazy. Maybe it's because in our world, it often takes a month for something to spread from "interesting" to the new technology of the day, or the new way of doing things. […

It used to be slower in software development as well. The internet and the exponentially increasing number of software developers accelerated it. And of course new hardware that made things practical that were only a theoretical possibility before.

A lot of "rapid adoption" in software is really the result of unusually cheap distribution and feedback loops

Re: The discovery that changed how scientists think about memory

#46

Post by gibsonf1 »

This discovery fully validates the organic system side of Peter Putnam's theory on induction, the Neuro Conditioned Reflex Principle, that requires changing state at synapses over time to select the nested Relative Dominance feedback winner in a given Conditioned Reflex feedback loop. Its quite incredible that the functionality of induction proposed by Putnam in 1963 has been consistently validated since then. [1]

[1] https://www.peterputnam.org/outline-of-a-functional-model-of...

Re: The discovery that changed how scientists think about memory

#47

Post by stevenhuang »

boston_clone wrote: post #7
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.

A massive chasm exists between good, creative ideas and ideas that aren’t nonsense.

Yeah you should really familiarize yourself with the history of scientific achievements, it will quickly disabuse you of this notion. What separates is often a thin line and dogged persistence, hardly the chasm you make it seem.

Re: The discovery that changed how scientists think about memory

#48

Post by BobbyTables2 »

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…

Having a suddenly functioning heart probably does wonders for hormone levels and consequently personality.

I once realized that the “snowball” of dread/fear in my chest was likely a minor irregular heartbeat (that I’ve always had) exacerbated in stressful situations.

Re: The discovery that changed how scientists think about memory

#49

Post by fragmede »

Earw0rm wrote: post #30
embedding-shape wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's massive, hugely traumatic surgery, taking the patient past what was considered the point of death a century ago, bringing them back alive, and all with the aid of some of the most powerful drugs in modern medicine's arsenal. And if your heart is needing transplantation in the first place, you'll be running far below optimal for blood O2 and a dozen other things. It'd be more surprising if it didn't result in sig…

> if your heart is needing transplantation in the first place, you'll be running far below optimal for blood O2 and a dozen other things.

that's not obvious on the face of it from a mechanical standpoint. I'd you're sick enough to need one, wouldn't we just give you a mechanical temporary replacement, and keep that one going as high as possible instead as low as possible?

Re: The discovery that changed how scientists think about memory

#50

Post by fragmede »

Earw0rm wrote: post #26
christophilus wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

what do we know about memory other we think in our brains so that's where consciousness must be stored? What do we know about memory that makes that necessarily a leap? What is so special about semantic memory?
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