Veronica O'Keane

[Guyau]

 

How We Make Memories and How Memories Make Us

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Stephen.

Here is the video embedded.

I'm definitely going to get into this one.

This is right up my alley.

 

Just some preliminary musing.

In the model of the brain Angus Fletcher uses (he's the neuroscience story guy who trains both Hollywood and the Green Berets), there are sensory input neurons that run on data, and there is the motor part (motor neurons) where data plays a minor role, really really minor, and that's where he says story and causality come from. That's one of the reasons fantasy and the like can entertain us so much even though it is not directly connected to observed reality. Those neurons evolved to help us navigate the unknown future (like running from or fighting a predator that comes out of nowhere and b might want to eat us  ).

I also have a theory of my own that is emerging from all this. The sensory input neurons only deal with the known, which means the past--and they process this in the present. Since the past cannot be changed, this is where determinism comes from--in epistemological terms, determinism comes from ignoring half of our brain.

The motor neurons process in the present, but they propel the organism (all living organisms that have them) into the future according to evolved and learned schema.

Then there is the connection and interaction between the two. This interaction covers the past, present and future.

That is where I am interested in memory from people like the above. The reliability and unreliability of our memory throws another monkey wrench into surviving and evolving. 

In Rand's writings, there is no real theory of memory presented. The closest I remember her coming was when she said that sensations are not recorded in memory, then implied, not even stated, that percepts were. And that this happened through a process called "differentiation and integration." In other words, if this process is taken to a logical end, memories are made by abstractly sorting and combining observed things. I have never been happy with that, not even when I was just getting into it (in my Randroid phase) and didn't understand what the hell I was talking about.  

So I am eager to see this video, whether I agree or disagree with the ideas presented. I am sure there will be a lot to think about and open questions to follow. This is an area, to me, that needs a lot of thought and discussion in O-Land from intelligent and studied people. Not to mention how important it is for our lives in general.

Incidentally, O'Keene's book looks very interesting: The Rag and Bone Shop: How We Make Memories and Memories Make Us (referral link). I am going to read it if I like the video.

Michael

[ThatGuy]

2 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Stephen.

Here is the video embedded.

I'm definitely going to get into this one.

This is right up my alley.

 

Just some preliminary musing.

In the model of the brain Angus Fletcher uses (he's the neuroscience story guy who trains both Hollywood and the Green Berets), there are sensory input neurons that run on data, and there is the motor part (motor neurons) where data plays a minor role, really really minor, and that's where he says story and causality come from. That's one of the reasons fantasy and the like can entertain us so much even though it is not directly connected to observed reality. Those neurons evolved to help us navigate the unknown future (like running from or fighting a predator that comes out of nowhere and b might want to eat us  ).

I also have a theory of my own that is emerging from all this. The sensory input neurons only deal with the known, which means the past--and they process this in the present. Since the past cannot be changed, this is where determinism comes from--in epistemological terms, determinism comes from ignoring half of our brain.

The motor neurons process in the present, but they propel the organism (all living organisms that have them) into the future according to evolved and learned schema.

Then there is the connection and interaction between the two. This interaction covers the past, present and future.

That is where I am interested in memory from people like the above. The reliability and unreliability of our memory throws another monkey wrench into surviving and evolving. 

In Rand's writings, there is no real theory of memory presented. The closest I remember her coming was when she said that sensations are not recorded in memory, then implied, not even stated, that percepts were. And that this happened through a process called "differentiation and integration." In other words, if this process is taken to a logical end, memories are made by abstractly sorting and combining observed things. I have never been happy with that, not even when I was just getting into it (in my Randroid phase) and didn't understand what the hell I was talking about.  

So I am eager to see this video, whether I agree or disagree with the ideas presented. I am sure there will be a lot to think about and open questions to follow. This is an area, to me, that needs a lot of thought and discussion in O-Land from intelligent and studied people. Not to mention how important it is for our lives in general.

Incidentally, O'Keene;s book looks very interesting: The Rag and Bone Shop: How We Make Memories and Memories Make Us (referral link). I am going to read it if I like the video.

Michael

I just saw this elsewhere, and can't help but feeling there's something to connect this to that...

"The chicken that lived for 18 months without a head"
(excerpts):

Seventy years ago, a farmer beheaded a chicken in Colorado, and it refused to die. Mike, as the bird became known, survived for 18 months and became famous. But how did he live without a head for so long, asks Chris Stokel-Walker.

On 10 September 1945 Lloyd Olsen and his wife Clara were killing chickens, on their farm in Fruita, Colorado. Olsen would decapitate the birds, his wife would clean them up. But one of the 40 or 50 animals that went under Olsen's hatchet that day didn't behave like the rest.

What happens when a chicken's head is chopped off?

• Beheading disconnects the brain from the rest of the body, but for a short period the spinal cord circuits still have residual oxygen.

• Without input from the brain these circuits start spontaneously. "The neurons become active, the legs start moving," says Dr Tom Smulders of Newcastle University.

• Usually the chicken is lying down when this happens, but in rare cases, neurons will fire a motor programme of running.

• "The chicken will indeed run for a little while," says Smulders. "But not for 18 months, more like 15 minutes or so."

But by any measure Mike, bred as a fryer chicken, had a good innings. How had he been able to survive for so long?

The thing that surprises Dr Tom Smulders, a chicken expert at the Centre for Behaviour and Evolution at Newcastle University, is that he did not bleed to death. The fact that he was able to continue functioning without a head he finds easier to explain.

It was suggested at the time that Mike survived the blow because part or all of the brain stem remained attached to his body. Since then science has evolved, and what was then called the brain stem has been found to be part of the brain proper.

The chicken that lived for 18 months without a head

WWW.BBC.COM

---

Seventy years ago, a farmer beheaded a chicken in Colorado, and it refused to die. How did Miracle Mike survive so long without a head?

 

[tmj]

Chicken farmers could really cut costs if they cloned oleMike, eighteen months without feed or water , that’s some bird !

[ThatGuy]

6 minutes ago, tmj said:

Chicken farmers could really cut costs if they cloned oleMike, eighteen months without feed or water , that’s some bird !

Some bird> some pig. (Sorry, Wibur...)
 

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Stephen,

I watched the video and I have a few comments.

But first a bit of housecleaning.

On 1/7/2023 at 8:22 AM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Incidentally, O'Keene's book looks very interesting: The Rag and Bone Shop: How We Make Memories and Memories Make Us (referral link). I am going to read it if I like the video.

The link to the book in the video description goes to the same edition as the link above. However, that is an English edition published by Allen Lane. There is an American edition that includes a Kindle version and audiobook version published by W. W. Norton & Company under a different name: A Sense of Self: Memory, the Brain, and Who We Are by Veronica O'Keane. (referral link)

When I looked her up, I thought it was weird that she published one book in February, 2021 (the English version), and another book in May, 2021 (the American version). Since the titles were different, at first I thought the books were different. But Amazon allows a preview and when I looked at both, I saw the Table of Contents and some other texts were identical. For now, I recommend the American version because of Kindle and audiobook versions.

 

There is an interesting comment she made about memory near the the beginning of the video. She talked about a type of memory a lady had where she was able to function in the world with a sense of self (walking, sitting, eating and so on) and another kind with a sense of self, but with what we would call a lot more memory.

This is identical to what Angus Fletcher refers to when he talks about two kinds of neurons, ones for processing sensory inputs and the other for governing muscles. I just saw a recent video by Angus where he made this super-clear.

Here is part of the transcript (Angus speaking). It starts around 17:07.

Quote

To your point about the human brain having evolved to be a pattern finder, that's true of half the human brain. So, our visual cortex and the logical sections, those identify patterns very powerfully. But other parts of our brain are actually not interested in patterns at all, in that way. At least not in terms of patterns. They're interested in reproducible behaviors, which is a little bit different. And there's a tension there. And so actually a big part of increasing creativity, which you see, for example, in theater students or anyone who does improv, is actually just encouraging spontaneous movements as opposed to a kind of focusing on fixed stable patterns. Because a stable pattern exists permanently. You know outside of time. Whereas movement is always dynamic and inherently kind of disruptive.

One half of the brain is for patterns (including concepts). And the other half is for reproducible behavior (including story.)

Don't forget that in Angus's theory, story arises from movements that get reproduced.

 

Angus didn't say the following to my knowledge, but I believe story is the way we connect all the different parts and modules of our brain. And all memories are connected to a story one way or another.

So story is more fundamental to our brains than concepts, although we need and work with both. At any rate, we have to remember concepts to be able to use them and we have to remember stories to be able to tell them. But, as O'Keane showed with her lady who lost her autobiographical memory, we don't need to consciously remember a story to live one, but we do need to consciously remember a person, place, pattern, concept, and so on to be able to live that. It seems like O'Keane's patient only had short-term memory for that part due to her tumor. So she was only able to live that sensory input part for short stretches of time and not enough to throw the experience into long-term memory.

 

I will read O'Keane's book with relish. I don't agree with everything I heard her say in the video (her bashing of Freud as a charlatan because he was--at root--protecting incest in the upper classes in order to protect his paycheck and status, well, that part leaves me cold.  I can't help but notice that she is a psychologist and her own bread is buttered by Big Pharma, so her jump from serotonin uptake inhibitors and so on to psychedelics leaves me a bid cold. But I might be using the same pay check and status bias against her as she used against Freud.  Who knows? Maybe there is some of that in both...

However, if you look at the Table of Contents of her book, it is a dream come true for anyone who wants to get a notion of how memory is processed in the brain.

So thank you for posting her video.

After I read the book, I might return to this thread with other comments.

At first blush, I am pretty sure there are parts I will not agree with, but this looks like one of the best primers on memory I have come across. Later, I might change that view or add nuance, but so far, I am looking forward to this.

Michael