Do we erase memory or just forget where our brain stored it?

Discussion in 'Human Science' started by Marsel, May 29, 2010.

  1. Marsel Registered Senior Member

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    So when you forget doing something do you actually forget it which means does it completely get erased from your memory or its still stored but we just cannot link to it. I can't really explain what I mean I hope you guys understand what I'm trying to say
     
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  3. baftan ******* Valued Senior Member

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    If you consciously thought about this task that you forgot to do it, it must definitely be somewhere in your brain. Even the thoughts, incidents that you don't intentionally formulate could still be recorded/neural connections are made; but the things that you specifically planned to do -or you are instructed and understood the instructions-, and then forgot to recall them when they are needed, were once formulated by your brain, that is to say, your brain made a physical record of these thoughts, they are still there. Because while you were formulating this or that task, you call many other thoughts, symbols, words and construct this new thought as a package among other things in your brain.

    However, I also would like to remind the time and importance factors: Imagine you thought of doing something then you forgot it. And it was not a thing that you would classify as "important" (or your brain doesn't take it seriously). Then 10,20, or 30 years passed on this incident and nothing has ever come up to remind you what were you going to do. Obviously those cells that recorded this incident might have been overwritten by other things and there could be no practical way to recover this task after all those years and incidents.

    By the way, if you suddenly remember this thing after all those years, that means it was not so unimportant after all. At least your brain took it more seriously than you expected. Yet, this is not unconditionally true for every single task or event: Brain also needs to forget things, otherwise all these information that coming from external world and the thoughts we produce in our brains would fill it up in a matter of days or weeks. Brain is constructed to forget as much as to remember.

    Why do you forget something is completely different area of discussion, but let's say you forgot it because of some sort of distraction. Yet if you are able to remember what you forgot, this alone proves that it is recorded. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to remember what you forgot. If you can not remember it no matter how hard you try, it still doesn't prove that it is irrecoverably erased; this might mean that your method(s) could be insufficient to recall it, that's all.

    We all do that, don't we?
     
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  5. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    As you age your brain cells die off by the billions. That means that many memories and thoughts you have had are now gone forever. The brain cells start dying at about 35 years of age.
     
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  7. Orleander OH JOY!!!! Valued Senior Member

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    hmmm, I'm just happy to know I have billions of brain cells to start with. I can spare a few
     
  8. Skeptical Registered Senior Member

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    Researchers have discovered something quite strange about recalling memories. We all tend to think of this as being a bit like a video. Sits in storage, and then gets played. Goes back into storage, and when played again, is identical to the first time it was played.

    Apparently memory is more dynamic than that. Each time we recall some memory, there is potential to change the memory. The classic example is the fisherman who caught a 50 cm fish. After numerous times recalling the subject, and boasting about it, the memory is of a 75 cm fish.

    However, apparently, even for mundane memories, each time we recall it, we are likely to alter it. If you think you remember clearly something that happened 30 years ago, don't be too sure. What really happened may be quite different to what you remember.
     
  9. madanthonywayne Morning in America Registered Senior Member

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    I heard something about that on the radio. It seems we have a "Chinese telephone" effect going on inside our own heads!
     
  10. Invs89 Registered Member

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    It reminds me of something one of the Organization XIII members said from Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories:

    "Try too hard to remember, and your memory might lie to you."
     
  11. Invs89 Registered Member

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    How do you quote someone in a box like that?
     
  12. Skeptical Registered Senior Member

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    It is also relatively easy to install fake memories. Researchers have done all sorts of things to their hapless subjects in this area. For example : If you ask someone to recall a day when their parents took them to a fair, and rides on the roundabouts, you can add a little sneaky item such as : "You really enjoyed that ride on the hot air balloon, didn't you?" and show a grey photo of said balloon. Obviously the photo is fake.

    This example was taken from a real experiment, done on a number of people, and a high percentage a day or two later, when asked to write down their fairground experience, added in a description of that hot air balloon ride. A new and fake memory was added.

    This is also the origin or the "recovered memory syndrome" which has put a lot of innocent men in prison. Here is a reference to a woman who falsely accused her father of raping her, due to a "recovered memory" induced by a psychiatrist.
    http://www.rickross.com/reference/false_memories/fsm119.html

    This is not uncommon, and a lot of unfortunate guys have been falsely imprisoned due to overzealous counsellors who were sure their neurotic patients got that way due to sexual abuse, and pushed that story onto their patients until they formed false memories.
     
  13. Invs89 Registered Member

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    That's scary.

    In KH: CoM Marluxia tried to make Sora his slave by messing with his memory.
     
  14. Search & Destroy Take one bite at a time Moderator

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    1,467
    It might be compared to a hard-drive being reformatted. The data is there and recoverable, however the pointers are gone.

    However in the brain, I believe memories are destroyed or replaced over time. There are parts of my life, only a video camera in my eye hooked up to a computer via internet would be able to record for long.
     
  15. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Probably both.

    One can be sure that your "pointer is gone" idea is sometimes the case. That the "pointer" is not always "really gone" can be seen in the "tip of the tongue" experience. (Knowing there is the word for something but not being able to recall it at the moment - only later.)

    Certainly, some memory can be permanently unavailable (but one can not tell if they are "really gone" or just their "pointers" are permanently gone.)

    For example, after very local strokes some people suffer highly specific linguistic defects for the rest of their life or at least many months. (They may be able to relearn using other neural tissue) These local stroke cases have provided a great deal of understand how linguistic memory is organized. It is a hierarchal structure. I.e. detailed terms (noun words)* are subdivisions of more general terms and the similar items of each level of one category are "listed" in order of decreasing frequency in this memory structure.

    Reaction time experiments in a task that, for example, flashes the name or photo of a bird vs. a non-bird animal on the screen and requires you to push "bird button" your finger is already resting on or say "BIRD" show that you are slower to tell that an osprey or penguin are birds than robin or sparrow as they are "further down" on the list. Likewise "birds" is a sub category of "animal." I.e. if task is to tell "animal" or not-animal, you are on average faster at that than telling that robin is a bird. There are some stroke victims that can no longer name any fruit but all other food subgroups such as meat, vegetable still function normally. However, here too one can not know for certain if the stroke destroyed the memory or only the path to it.

    I lean to the idea that it is the path that the stroke destroyed, as there is little evidence that specific memory is stored in a specific location. I suspect that memories are not "locally stored" but are "loop circuits" of potential neural activity. The neurons in these loops are shared. - Are part of many other memory loops. That is why you can sometimes recall something by first recalling related things. I.e. the related thing's loop as it is activated, activates some of the neurons of the loop you are having difficulty in activating.

    After years of research, the hierarchal structure of the "lexicon" is well known and appears to be basically the same for all, even across languages! Thus, the formation of various categories, at least in the lexicon, seems to be an innate feature of man. I.e we are innately disposed to organize the world in to categorical groups.

    *Verbs in the lexicon are also reasonably well understood. I will not give many details as his post is already too long, but basically only the root or "stem" is stored along with many requirements. (Needs and an object or not, has irregular past tense of XXXXX, etc.) Then for the regular verbs you construct the specific form you currently need. For example, before the young child has fully developed his lexicon, he will "over regularize" - Say: "Yesterday I runned across the street."
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 30, 2010
  16. Randwolf Ignorance killed the cat Valued Senior Member

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    In general, I tend to agree with the destroyed "pointer" concept. Other than random bits and pieces read here and there, this conclusion is based purely on personal anecdotal evidence. (Speaking of, does anyone else remember the little pamphlets of obscure, mostly useless factoids titled "Bits & Pieces"? Just occurred to me - haven't thought of them in decades - prime example...)

    The older I get, the more I forget. While this may be normal, I am not yet that old, and most things that I can't remember at some specific point in time are recalled later.

    That is the crux - if I learned or observed something thirty years ago, I may not be able to remember it "on demand". However, some particular stimuli, or even just the passage of a small amount of time (a few hours, a few days), I can in fact recall this event. Often in great detail... How would this be possible if the underlying memory itself were destroyed?

    Also, one of the most frustrating experiences is knowing that you know something, yet not being able to recall it - the "tip of your tongue" syndrome. Then, tomorrow, usually when the knowledge is no longer pertinent, it just "pops" into my mind, only to be lost again the following day. Rinse and repeat...

    I have experienced one nearly insignificant TIA, (short stroke like event, often unexplainable by the medical profession - sort of a "default" diagnosis, if you will) I can not attribute all, or even most, of these memory loss symptoms to that event. They started occurring long before, to some degree all of my life. They just keep getting worse the older I get....

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    Anyway, knowing that you know something that you don't know at the moment - grrrrr.....

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  17. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    I read about that a few days ago and was kicking myself for not saving the article. I'm glad somebody else saw it too. That means my memory is not playing tricks on me!

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    It's analogous to the early computers back in my day that didn't have disk drives, so all the data was stored on magnetic tapes. (Well they had one for the operating system but it was too expensive and bulky for data files.) Whenever a program ran that updated a file, it read in the entire last-generation tape and created a whole new next-generation tape. The updated records were inserted, but the original records that were not modified were simply copied and rewritten on the new tape.

    This created the opportunity for write-errors. Of course it almost never happened on computer tapes, but organic memory isn't so precisely manufactured and it doesn't have parity-bits, so it's a lot easier for an error to go undetected.

    Apparently every time we access a memory we have to re-store it. This makes sense if you stop and think about it. When you remember an event that happened long ago, you will automatically remember the discussions you had about it later.

    The example the writer gave was his memory of 9/11. He clearly remembered seeing the live TV image of the second plane crashing into the WTC--it was such a stunning experience. Then someone reminded him that that video was not shown until the day after, so he could not possibly have seen it in real time.
    Just hit the QUOTE button right above the post and it will prepare all the tags for you. If you want to quote more than one post then hit the +QUOTE button, and when you've got them all hit POST REPLY and it will put them all in the composition box, correctly formatted.

    Every quote has to be preceded by the word QUOTE enclosed in [brackets] and followed by the string /QUOTE enclosed in [brackets]. (I can't type them with the brackets or the software will assume I'm building a quote and it won't display them.)
     
  18. Randwolf Ignorance killed the cat Valued Senior Member

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    Geez, Fraggle, are you deliberately trying to make me feel senile? I don't know where you're from, but I'm pretty sure you're in America. I was sure that I had seen that second plane hit the same day (9/11). I wasn't sure about "live", but certainly the same day. I did a little digging:

    At about ~31:40 on this ABC news video
    The second plane was, in fact, aired on 9/11, right? I could have sworn it was - perhaps you are thinking of some specific shot angle?

    Wiki:
     
    Last edited: May 31, 2010
  19. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Sorry, I wasn't watching. I just took the guy's word for it since his entire article was based on it.

    Or maybe I remembered his article wrong.

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