Why human memory is not a bit like a computer’s

July 13, 2018Posted inAxis Praxis, neurologism

DisintegrationofPersistence(This is a cross-post of a 3 Quarks Daily article I wrote last year.)

A few months ago I attended a rather peculiar seminar at MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. A neuroscientist colleague of mine named Robert Ajemian had invited an unusual speaker: a man named Jim Karol, who was billed as having the world’s best memory. According to his website, his abilities include “knowing over 80,000 zip codes, thousands of digits of Pi, the Scrabble dictionary, sports almanacs, MEDICAL journals, and thousands of other facts.” He has memorized the day of the week for every date stretching back to 1AD. And his abilities are not simply matter of superhuman willingness to spend hours memorizing lists. He can add new items to his memory rapidly, on the fly. After a quick look at a deck of cards, he can recall perfectly the order in which they were shuffled. I witnessed him do this last ‘trick’, as well as a few others, so I can testify that his abilities are truly extraordinary [1].

A Clockwork Orange? (A brief musing on the concept of a neural “code”)

July 6, 2018Posted inneurologism

I was asked this question on Quora:

Are there many layers of neural codes from the human retina to the optic nerve and the optic nerve to the brain, or are they essentially same signals relayed?

Here’s how I responded:

Here’s a question: in a system composed of clockwork, is there a “code”?

I ask this because I find that the “code” metaphor is often misleading when thinking about biology. Codes are composed of symbols. But it is not clear that neurons communicate using symbols.

“Are thoughts just a bunch of electrical and chemical signals being tossed around inside the brain, or is there more to it than that?”

May 26, 2018Posted inneurologism

“In our world,” said Eustace, “a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.”

“Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of…”

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, CS Lewis

I really like the quote above, which is from the Chronicles of Narnia. It raises a neat little metaphysical question:

Why do we assume that what a thing is made up of is what a thing is?

Yanny or Laurel? A perspective from the science of mind and brain

May 16, 2018Posted inneurologism1 Comment

I really like the Yanny versus Laurel meme, which exploded yesterday. It helps illustrate some key points about human perception:

  1. In some situations people can differ wildly in their experience of low-level perception.
  2. Active top-down expectations (and other, weirder processes) have a strong effect on low-level perception.

So basically, it’s an auditory version of #ThatDress.