There are a variety of really great lectures called TED Talks. Go to http://www.ted.com/talks and look around for a lecture that relates to a topic discussed so far in our text - preferrably on memory. This might take some doing, but there are a few and they should be worth your effort.
After you watch the video discuss how your text discusses the material covered in the Ted Talk?
Next, briefly discuss including 1) Why you picked that video, 2) What you expected to see, 3) What you actually saw and if you liked it or not, 4) What interested you the most?, and 5) What will you remember from the video.
Make a list of key terms and concepts you used in your post.
Let me know if you have any questions,
--Dr. M
Web Divergence – Week #9
Ted Talks: “Daniel Kahneman: The riddle of experience vs. memory”
My book didn’t have any information regarding Kahneman’s theory of the two types of self, The Experiencing Self and the Memory Self, but instead, did talk a lot about our memory store. Our memory store is our ability to store, retain, and recall information and experiences. Our sensory memories take in information approximately 200–500 milliseconds after an item is received. It is the ability look at an item, and remember what it looked like after a second of observing or memorizing. Sensory stores usually focus on environmental information. This information is then held in the sensory store for a brief period of time and then moved along. This information can be moved on to short-term and even long-term memory depending on how much we focus, observe, or memorize the information.
I chose this video because, quite honestly, I didn’t find a whole lot of options related to the topic of Memory which was a requirement for finding a video on the Ted Talks website. The Riddle of Experience vs. Memory was one that I found though that seemed related. I chose it because I find that is related quite well to things talked about in class. I expected to see that our memories are correlated with our experiences, but not always. As we have seen before, our experiences are not exactly what we are remembering to exact form. The basic idea may be the same, but the details get confused and lost and therefore our minds make up the small things, to make us think that what we are remembering is exactly, the way it happened; details and all. Since this video was related to happiness, I expected to see our memories and experiences and how they bring us happiness. To be clear, I thought that the video would describe that how we supposedly remember our experiences will bring us happiness. For example, if we remember a something in our childhood, we will probably be more than likely to focus on the good parts of that memory versus the bad and therefore refer to that as a happy childhood memory.
Daniel Kahneman is sometimes regarded as the world's most influential living psychologist. He won a Nobel Prize for his work in behavioral economics. Kahneman talked about cognitive traps that make it impossible for us to think straight about happiness. The first trap is the word “Happiness” is hard to define and therefore we have a complicated and distortion view of what we consider happiness. The second trap that Kahneman talked about confusion between experience and memories. To break that down, he mentioned that this breaks down into two major concepts of happiness. Being happy in your life and being happy with your life and yet we lump those two into the main topic of Happiness. He gave a great example that talked about an experiment that he had done regarding happiness. He had someone listen to beautiful music for twenty minutes and then the music cut off and replaced with a loud screeching noise. The person was left with a bad memory of that. The experience that he had with the music was good, but the ending impression made the memory overall, bad. The memory was ruined by the loud noise and the memory was all that he got to keep from the experience. Also, He talked about how to describe us. We must break ourselves down into two main parts. There is the present view, experiencing self, it knows the present and is capable of remembering the past. Then there is a Remembering Self, and it “keeps score”. This self is a memory story. These two are very different and yet we confuse the two on a regular basis. This was very interesting and something that I definitely learned from this video. Kahnemen used this information very literally. He based all the information on experiments done in the past and related it to his theory. I really liked the video and learned a lot from his theory. It makes sense.
Terms: Cognitive trap, memory, experiences, Remembering Self, Experiencing Self, memory store
Interestingly enough, I watched the exact same video as the comment above, The Riddle of Experience vrs. memory. This video had a central focus on happiness. Daniel talked about how being happy in your life and being happy about your life are two different things. Experience and memory are two different aspects of life, and they are not necessarily connected in any way. Certain cognitive traps put us in a world that is constructed on a false sense of happiness. While we may be happy in the moment, thinking about it later may reveal that we were not as happy as we thought we were.
Daniel talks a little bit about going on vacation, and how you felt about the vacation will push you to go back or to not go back to the same destination. Going back to a place that you once had fun at should confirm a sense of happiness because it had before. This is a form of interpretation. In interpretation prior knowledge provids a basis for interpreting new events, and these become part of memory. This type of event also deals with what is called a mood congruence effect. In this, people are induced into a happy or unhappy mood by thinking about positive or negative things. Bower, a psychologist, found that the best learning occurs when the material is being learned by someone with an induced mood. If you are really happy about being on a vacation, you learn that this type of place is one where you want to return.
Another example offered by Daniel was an experiment where multiple people were to report the pain they felt during a colonoscopy. Patient A had a shorter time at the doctor as Patient B, and patient B had the same pain but for a longer time. Despite this, patient A reported experiencing more pain. The reason for this Daniel stated was because the last thing that Patient A experienced was pure pain, not a lull or small amount of pain. With recency effect we tend to remember things that come at the end of something. This could be at work here, Patient A rememebred being in a ton of pain at the end, and this was all they could talk about, even though patient B had suffered for a longer period of time, but ended on much less pain.
One last example Daniel talked about was percieved happiness. He stated that people may believe that people in California are happier than someone who lives in Ohio based purely on the climate. A person who moves from Ohio to California may believe that they are happier, but only view this this way because they look back on what the weather was like in Ohio. A person from Ohio remembers the weather being crappy because it pertained to them. In self-reference effect we tend to think of our own self concept as superior. The person believes that California is better because it pertains to them. An outsider who has never lived in either place may say that there is not much a difference between the two places, or say that being one place does not make you happier than the other. The Ohio person believes they are happier there and there is not much that can be said to change this.
I picked the video strictly based on the fact that I could not really find anything. I don't know if I just wasn't searching things the best, but it seemed to be that this was the only thing I could find pertaining to memory. Aside from that, I actually really liked it. I like seeing people talk about a topic they are really interested in. You could tell that he was a brilliant individual and knew his topic backwards and forwards. I did not really know what to expect from the video because I did not really know what it would be about. I was glad I picked it, because it was interesting, but did not really have any views about the subject beforehand.
I really liked the examples he gave. Instead of just stating his opinion or just stating the "facts" he gave examples. The examples made sense, and really made the audience laugh at times. Colonoscopies are kinda awkward to talk about, but he made it apply to the topic at hand, and had fun with it. This info was something we can really apply to our lives. There has been many time where I have dwelled on the past... or remembered something as being crappy because of one thing that ruined it. Who hasn't had a time where they were having fun but one thing ruined it all?
terms: cognitive trap, interpretation, mood congruence effect, recency effect, self-reference effect
I had a hard time finding a lecture based only on memory. Instead, I found a lecture that discusses the brains construction of perception and brain plasticity. My book does a good job at explaining constructive perception which relates to the lecture that I watched. Within my text, constructive perception is said to occur when the perceiver builds a cognitive understanding of a stimulus. For example, our sensory information is used as a foundation for the structure but we also use or "construct" other sources of information to build a complete perception. Also, the lecture briefly discusses our "self" experiences that play a role in our construction of perception. This idea is brought up in my book as well. It suggests that perception is reciprocal with the world we experience. Everyone's perception is different because of our past experiences. Overall, our perception is affects and is affected by the world as we experience it. For example, chances are that if you have a license then you are able to recognize and interpret a stop sign. Therefore, if you are driving and see a red octagonal shaped sign and the first letter is S, however the rest of the letters are covered by branches, you will construct from previous experiences a perception that this is a stop sign. Our perception allows us to act appropriately in our environment.
I picked this video because the title, "Re-wiring the brain," seemed interesting to me. Also, I read the description of the lecture before actually viewing it and the topics discussed seemed to relate to material we have covered in class. I wasn't sure what to expect since this was my first time on the website and I had a hard time finding material to relate to class. Part of me expected to listen to a boring lecture about different functions of the brain yet I was hopeful to be able to find some interesting aspects of the lecture!
After listening to the lecture, I found the majority of topics to be interesting however there was some boring & repetitive information. I liked how the speaker, Michael Merzenich, provided power points throughout his lecture to help the audience and listeners follow along. Also, Merzenich provided examples and cases of brain studies which were also interesting to listen to. Some of the information seemed repetitive throughout the lecture and there was some information that was vague in which he could have expanded more into.
I was most interested in the "self" experiences, brain-strategy, and brain plasticity research. As I discussed before, our own self experiences play a role in how we perceive our environment. All of our experiences differ from each others, therefore our perceptions are different as well. The brain strategy is a topic that Merzenich says helps us to construct and adapt to our environment. Our brain strategy helps our perceptions grown and develop by choosing which constructs are most helpful and important. Brain plasticity research was another interesting topic in this lecture. This research suggests that we are able to train the brain to overcome difficulties. For example, elderly people who are suffering memory loss can undergo intensive and substantial brain training for an estimated 30 hours. This is called neuroscience-based training. Results indicate brain plasticity research allows us to view changes in the brain during this type of training and how functioning is distributed throughout our brains. I think what I'll remember most from this lecture is how our brain constructs our perception. It's interesting to really think about how we are able to 'perceive' things without experiencing them on a daily basis. Our personal experiences and histories give us the knowledge to perceive information and sensations. As children our perception is very small and we lack vital knowledge. However, by the time we are adults we are able to use our perception skills to make wise choices and construct new perceptions.
Terms: constructive perception, "self-experiences"/perception, brain plasticity, brain strategy,
"Jeff Hawkins on how brain science will change computing"
I think this particular video relates to the chapter on memory because the speaker, Jeff Hawkins, is trying to get his point across that humans are intelligent species because of our ability to make predictions about what will happen next. We are able to do this because we experience the world through a sequence of patters that we store and recall at a later time. Jeff does a nice job of explaining that the neocortex, specifically the memory system, memorizes things that go on. Then, when our brain experiences something similar, the old memories are recalled, which allows us to predict what may happen.
It was a little harder for this assignment to find material in the text that related specifically because this is a newer theory that Hawkins has in regards to how intelligence works. However, there are a few broader topics discussed in the text about memory that can be related. The first term deals with how memories are reconstructive. This means that prior experience, postevent information, perceptual factors, and even one’s desire to remember certain events over others influence what we recall (Solso, MacLin & MacLin, 2005, pp. 199). This relates to the Ted Talk video because it is from these personal experiences that we draw conclusions about what may happen next in a familiar situation.
Another concept that would serve as a good example for this video lecture is prototype matching. We also talked briefly about this in class lecture. It is relatable to this video because prototype matching is pattern recognition that occurs when a match is made between a perceived pattern and an abstracted mental pattern. In this type of matching, we are searching for resemblance. This concept was indirectly mentioned in the video when Hawkins talked about how our brains know when we are viewing a face because of the past memories we have of viewing other faces. Eye movement trace studies have been done in which the human eye scans a face for familiarity, moving from eye to eye to nose to mouth. By doing so, the visual system can then tell the brain that what is being perceived is, in fact, a face.
It took me a bit of time, but I eventually found a video that seemed interesting and seemed like it would relate to memory. After reading the summary paragraph about this video I wasn’t sure how it matched up with the title, specifically about computing. After actually viewing the video, I thought it was very interesting. I specifically liked how Jeff Hawkins stated why science does not have a theory for the brain and what has kept us from understanding the brain more fully. He stated that the incorrect assumption that science assumes is that “intelligence is defined by behavior.” Or in other words, we are intelligent by the way we do things. I liked how he then went on to say why this assumption is wrong. We are not necessarily intelligent because of our behavior but because we are able to make predictions which then acts on our behaviors.
Terms: memory, making predictions, neocortex, reconstructive, prototype matching
http://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_hawkins_on_how_brain_science_will_change_computing.html
I was looking for the TED lecture related to memory but when I saw a video with V.S. Ramachandran the choice was made immediately. I could not help but write about the topic he spoke about in the video - mirror neurons. It is related to the physiology and functioning of brain most of all – information we covered at the beginning of the semester, but I hoped to find out something new and interesting. My book does not actually provide a lot of information about the topic, except for some basic things.
Mirror neurons were first discovered by Giacomo Rizzollati at the University of Parma, Italy. The peculiarity of these neurons is in the fact that they are firing in two situations: first, when an individual performs an action, such as grasping an apple; and second, when a person sees another individual performing such action. This activity of neurons was detected in human inferior frontal cortex and superior parietal lobe by fMRI technique. Nowadays the function of mirror neurons is still debated, as some researches tend to connect their functioning with learning in general, some claim that they are responsible for language learning. There is evidence that their abnormal functioning might be connected with autistic syndrome. Others suggest that such abilities as “theory of mind” and empathy are based on mirror neurons functioning mechanism.
In the video V.S. Ramachandran makes an interesting point. He says that mirror neurons have actually “sharpened our civilization”. If we look at our species evolution, we see that about 100 000 years ago the humanity made a Great Leap Forward. It basically revealed in fast widespread of using tools, fire, building shelters, development of language and “theory of mind” ability. From everything we know the brain of those ancient people was pretty much the same as in modern humans, but at the same time something happened and provided a fascinating growth in human’s abilities. Something very important pushed the sudden emergence and rapid spread of unique human abilities. V.S. Ramanchandran claims that this “something very important” was the sudden emergence of the sophisticated mirror neuron system. This particular ability made us the most successive species on the planet. It gave a group the opportunity to spread skills tremendously fast. Thus if one individual discovers something new, he/she can transmit the experience immediately in minutes, as his/her group mates would learn by imitating and emulating; instead of just dying out it spreads wide across the population. While in wild nature the process would have taken many generations to acquire a single innovation and transmit it vertically through generations. Such scenario is an example of Lamarckian instead of Darwinian evolution.
Thus if we admit the claim that mirror neurons are responsible for the empathy and in many terms for learning, we can also say that they are have played a big role in creation of our civilization. Moreover, as Professor V.S. Ramanchandran says, they are a bridge between science and humanities. Mirror neurons applying a particular interface allow us to think about issues like consciences, self-representation, what separates us from other human beings, what allows us to empathize to them and also the emergence of culture and civilization, as unique to human beings.
Terms used: inferior frontal cortex, superior parietal lobe, fMRI, mirror neurons.
Michael Merzenich on re-wiring the brain.
This video made me think back to my first course in psychology and remembering the stages of Cognitive Development developed by Jean Piaget. Of course, they are in my text as well. The Sensorimotor stage, from birth to about 2 years old is when we are forming our perceptions of the world and our brain is in a mechanically developmental stage. From pre-operational, concrete operational and formal operational stages, we undergo many more changes and developments in our ability to process the world and absorb new information. Interestingly enough is the massive increase in our memory over this time. A term I have heard from a lot of behavioral psychologists is "clean slate". Essentially, our brains are clean slates as infants, and it is nothing short of a miracle how much our brain can store after just a few months, years, a lifetime even.
I chose to view this video because I have always had an interest in neuroscience and brain plasticity. It is remarkable how we are so "empty" and inexperienced as a newborn, yet in a mere matter of a few years, our brain has stored thousands of images and objects and is able to make rapid associations.
I expected to hear a boring lecture about something I may have heard before, yet Merzenich was quite entertaining and enjoyable to listen to. I learned a great deal from this video.
What interested me the most and what I will remember are the same. These are the "Two Epochs of Brain Plasticity". The Infant, or critical period where the brain sets up an ability to process information and the basic neural network. This conveyed a message to me as building a race car, but having yet to race. Therefore, our brains are constructed, but we need to begin to test drive them as an infant. In adult plasticity, the brain masters many skills and abilities as it has refined the original framework; or rebuilt the race car based on past experiences to make a more efficient way of operating.
Terms: Brain Plasticity, Neuroscience, Critical Period, Adult Period, Two Epochs of Brain Plasticity, Clean slate, Piaget's stages of Cognitive Development.
Daniel Kahneman: The riddle of experience vs. memory
I am going to report on the following video I watched which is mentioned above. In his speech Kahneman explains how memory may distort one’s vision of happiness. The conflict occurs because there is confusion between the “remembering self,” and the “experiencing self. Kahneman also makes it clear that it’s not that we choose between experiences but we choose between memories of experiences. He then goes on to ask, “Why do we put so much emphasis on memories and not as much emphasis on experiences?” In summation he states that people should not substitute happiness for well-being because it is a completely different notion.
After watching the speech given by Kahneman I immediately thought of what is known as episodic memory, which is memory of a specific event that occurred at a specific time. Since we have covered episodic memory already in class I wanted to cover topics I have not yet learned about in depth. While reading about memory I came in contact with what is known as the three-store model. This model assumes that encoding and storing events in long-term memory involves rehearsal (Kellogg 2003). Psychologists refer to maintenance rehearsal as the action of reusing information that is stored in the short-term memory by verbally talking about the memory. There is also elaborative rehearsal which occurs when a person links information from their short-term memory with information in their long-term memory. My book went on to explain examples a person can use to improve their elaborative rehearsal techniques. As a college student I take advantage of one technique which calls for visual images to represent objects in memory. Other ways elaborative rehearsal can be expressed is through the use of categorizing items into separate categories. I understand elaborative rehearsal to be every student’s goal when they are studying for an exam. They are trying to link information with information already in their long-term memory so they are more likely to remember the information when they have to take the exam. I know in my experience as a student I have used elaborative rehearsal a lot in my college career.
I decided to watch this specific video because it was one of the few that dealt specifically with memory on this website. I also chose it because I agreed with most of what Kahneman said. His ideas about memory made perfect sense to me. I expected to see a video that showed how experience and memory differ, but instead saw a video that explained how these two topics are linked and the confusion that can occur because of it. I did enjoy the entire speech, but was also surprised in some ways. What Kahneman covered seemed to be an obvious point that others would notice, but I have never looked at memory in this perspective and it was interesting to understand how memory shapes our level of happiness. What interested me the most was the study that Kahneman talked about which used participants who had received a colonoscopy. I won’t forget that just because group “B” experienced more pain at the end of the procedure while group “A” did not, group “B” responded that they experienced overall more pain than group “A” just based on the fact that their last memory was a one of pain. I think everyone has judged someone or something based only on their last memory they recall, which usually is the most negative memory they can remember. Even if that someone or something had a lot of positive aspects, the negative memory will cover all of that information and allow the person to judge based on that one negative memory.
Terms: Maintenance rehearsal, elaborative rehearsal, episodic memory, experiencing self, remembering self
I watched the video called, “I am my connectome,” by Subastian Seung. There were many areas that my textbook covers that were mentioned in the film I watched. Seung starts our by describing what a connectome is. A connectome is every single connection that our brain has between our neurons. All possible connections. Our brains are way to complex to actually have a mapped image or a model of all the connections. However, researchers found a worm with a very simple nervous system therefore, very few connections - compared to a human. Scientists spent a couple of decades mapping out every neural connection that this worm had - the made its connectome.
Seung goes on to describe what a connectome was and what impact is has on our brains processes - including our memories. Sueng says that in speculation our brain stores memories in between our neurons with in the connections of our neurons. I understood this as a retrieval process. We have our memories stored and when we retrieve them electrical impulses use chemicals to send the message through our brain that we need to recall this information. Therefore, our memories are stored within these connections that send our memories throughout our brain (this may be wrong- but this is how I understood this process).
Sueng talks about the neurons and their synapses. He gave a three - dimensional image of a neuron in a mouse’s brain. He discusses how these connections are made and mentions that as we grow and age these connections change. In other words our connectome is constantly changing too. With certain environmental events the connections in our brains change. Sueng mentions that this means that even the connectome of monozygotic twins with identical genetic makeup are actually different from one another! This idea refers back to one of the first statements that Sueng says, “We are more then our genotype,”.
Our brain’s processes do impact what information we take in and how we use it. The information we take in to our brain also effects how our brain processes it. A great metaphor that Sueng used is the stream and the stream bed. The water in the stream follows the path that the bed has laid out for it. However, over time the water that runs through the bed can also change the shape of the stream bed. The same idea applies to information that goes through the brain.
Now knowing what we have just discussed - how the information in the brain is processed and how those processes can be changed with information we can look at some errors and process of the brain in a new light.
An idea that is fairly familiar by now is conceptually driven processes. These are schemas encoded in long-term memory that guide processing of information. Now we know that each process for an individual may be different. We may have similar schemas for processing certain information such as a tragic experience or an exciting experience - however the exact connections that are made in our brain may be different. This means that the recollection of this event may be recalled differently - even by identical twins. An error in reconstruction of a memory due to the retrieval process differences is called assimilation. The memory may be slightly different because our schemas are slightly different.
To push this idea a little further we could look at confabulation. Where we remember things that in reality never happened. Could this be a result of an intervals connectome? Could something of happened in their tangled neurons that caused a connection to occur that made someone recall a memory that actually never took place? Maybe their confabulation was a result of a memory of a movie or a story that was connected or shared a synapse to a memory that actually happened. In the tangled mess that makes up our neural activity there is a lot of room for error.
There is also a theory that uses neural connections (like the brain uses) to describe how the mind works. This theory is called the connectionist model. Where the functions of the brain mirror that of the mind - all the way down to the function of neuron-like connections. This theory goes on to look at connection weight, that is the amount of amount of knowledge that is being processed. It uses mathematical measures of the output value. In terms of the brain we could compare this measurement to the amount electrical chemical processing that our brain has going between neurons. Also in these processes is a checking processes. When there is too much or too little information being processed it is sent back through. If the connection weight is off then the back-propagation of error signals feedback. This could be comparable to when our brain lies to us. When we see part of a square but no the whole thing our connection weight may be too small. So, the information is put through again and then our brain creates the image of a full square.
I chose this video because it dealt with the functions of the brain and new theories. It also touched on some information relating to memory. I expected to see either a boring clip with many words I didn’t understand or a clip that had few subjects that would related back to class or my text. I was pleasantly surprised when I understood just about everything in the video! The speaker made it easy to relate to and the information was broad enough that there were several connections to be made to our reading from the text and in class discussion.
What I am interested in the most is our future ability to untangle the connectome of human brains and have more insight to how we process and recall information. At the end of the video Sueng talks about people who have their bodies frozen post-mortem and stored to be resurrected in an era where technology provides a way. The question here is are our connectomes preserved after death? Or are they erased? If they are intact the resurrection of people with the same thoughts, memories, knowledge etc. is possible but, if we lose our connectomes at death then there is no way to bring back the same people with the same consciousness.
I will remember many things from this video. The fact that people actual have themselves frozen awaiting resurrection with probably keep me up nights… where are their bodies stored? Is it like an Austin Powers thing? But seriously, I will remember the fact that with new technology we will be able to make a map of all the connections in the human brain! This could mean major progress when it comes to the medical field, such as, dementia, Parkinson’s, brain damage, mental illnesses - Schizophrenia, autism, other forms of mental retardation. Also if we can find a way to regenerate some lost connections we could bring back people who are brain dead or considered vegetables. The possibilities seem endless at this point. This is a very interesting topic and a very good video.
Terms: Synapse, Conceptually driven process, Confabulation, Back-propagation of error, Connection weight, Connectionist models, Assimilation.
http://www.ted.com/talks/sebastian_seung.html
I chose to watch a clip by Oliver Sacks called “What hallucination reveals about our minds.” It begins with a quote that I thought was interesting: “seeing with the brain is often called imagination.”
The video relates to sections of the text that discuss the mind-body findings. The mind refers to the tasks or processes carried out by the brain. The brain is the actual physical parts of the brain. Changes in neural activity in the brain produce changes in our mind. For instance in Charles Bonnet syndrome fragments or clusters of cells are interrupted and instead of seeing full images of faces or shapes we see fragments. These fragments are typically flashes of images that appear spontaneously. The video and as well as the text mention fMRI and its uses. fMRI scans are used to detect active areas of the brain; and to discover the parts of the visual brain that are activated during hallucinations. Temporal lobe epilepsy is a disorder we have also touched on in class.
Oliver basically uses real life examples of elderly patients in there 90’s who he has diagnosed as having Charles Bonnet syndrome. The woman had macular degeneration; it is typically found in the elderly and causes blindness. She started seeing fragments of images such as animals, deformed faces and in another case cartoons. The hallucinations of these images are random and had no significance to the patient. Charles Bonnet syndrome is unrelated to problems in the brain or dysfunctions in the brain. Generally around 10 percent of the visually impaired are diagnosed with CB syndrome. The discrepancy is due largely to embarrassment about the hallucinations and the failure of individuals to voice concerns. As we lose vision, visual parts of the brain become inactive and fire spontaneously which causes us to “see” things. Oliver describes the difference between temporal lobe epilepsy and CB syndrome. Temporal lobe epilepsy causes individuals to feel transported back in time, all senses appear to be involved and hallucinations related to the condition involve all senses. CB syndrome involves elaborate hallucinations of figures, faces or deformed faces (deformed faces are most common).
During geometric hallucinations, the primary visual cortex is activated; the part of the brain that’s responsible for perceiving patterns and edges. When images are being formed, the more complex part of the brain is activated. This complex part is known as the temporal lobe or the fusiform gyrus. Damage to the fusiform gyrus causes us to lose the ability to recognize faces and abnormal activity in the fusiform gyrus causes hallucinations. It’s interesting that different parts of the brain are responsible for the recognition of cartoons, drawing cartoons and hallucinations of cartoons. Also specific areas of the brain are responsible for recognition and hallucinations of buildings and landscape; wow our brain is complex! Without going into much detail about the causes of CB syndrome, when the syndrome is present we don’t process high levels of functioning. CB syndrome involves clusters of cells and our normal process that takes place is interrupted causes a random firing of cells. The release of the cells causes one to see fragments of shapes, faces or flashes of images. The brain tries to make sense of this and attempts to organize the cells but it’s extremely difficult.
I browsed through various clips and different topics and found this one in particular caught my eye. I hardly found any videos on memory and thought this one related somewhat to previous readings. I really didn’t expect the clip to thoroughly discuss the Charles Bonnet syndrome. I had never heard of the illness and knew nothing about it. A few times throughout the video I had to stop and replay a section because it was rather confusing; especially when Oliver spoke about cells and how cells are related to a specific part of the cortex and deal specifically with hallucinations. It was interesting that a section of the brain is responsible for the recognition of cartoons, drawing cartoons and hallucinations of cartoons. I will remember the Charles Bonnet syndrome because it was an illness I didn’t know anything about before watching the video.
http://www.ted.com/talks/oliver_sacks_what_hallucination_reveals_about_our_minds.html
Terms: temporal lobe epilepsy, neural functions, visual cortex, fusiform gyrus
Daniel Kahneman: The Riddle of Experience vs Memory
This TED Talks video describes how there are two different parts of the self that deal with perception. The two parts of the self are the experiencing self and the remembering self. A couple examples he uses in the video revolve around emotions (more specifically, happiness) and experiences such as getting surgery or vacations.
The experiencing self seems as if it just exists. We have that part of our self so we can live. The experiencing self deals with situations as they happen. Regardless of what others may think, a person's happiness has very little to do with time and the experiencing self. According to Daniel, people often confuse being happy and being satisfied with your life. He refers to this as one of the cognitive traps that people deal with when dealing with the idea of happiness.
According to Daniel, the remembering self is where the story takes place. The remembering self is the entity that is in charge of recollection, it's also in charge of making decisions based on your memory. People don't make decisions based on their experience of an event, they base decisions on how the individual REMEMBERED the experience.
In a chapter based on remembering events in my text; encoding and recollection are discussed briefly. I get the feeling that encoding is very similar to Daniel's view on the experiencing self. Encoding is the process of taking in information and interpreting it for future uses. By that same logic, it would appear that the remembering self is very similar to recollection. First, they're derived from the same base word. However, in addition to that; recollection is the actual act of recalling information that the individual had previously experienced.
In a related tangent to the topic, the textbook also discussed distinction and repetition in terms of memory. That is to say if an event is distinctive (stands out, is strange, abnormal, or exceptional in some way) it is more likely to be remembered by an individual. The same can be said about repetition in terms of memory recollection. If a piece of information, or an event, or anything really is repeated to an individual; the likelihood of an individual remembering that information is greatly increased.
1) In all honesty, I really wanted to watch something on memory and after digging for 15 minutes or so; this was the only one I could find.
2) I had expected to see a lecture comparing experience and memory. The delivery was slightly different than I had expected in the regard that he did not treat them as mutually exclusive entities, however the main points were anticipated.
3) I had seen what I had anticipated, the gentleman appears to have a firm knowledge base and is comfortable speaking around people, so yes; it was an enjoyable experience. In terms of content it was interesting to hear about and he went into enough detail that it was easy to visualize without bogging people down with jargon.
4) I really liked finding out that in this man's opinion, memory is really the driving force in a lot of the decisions that we as people make. It is consistent with how I feel about memory and perception, so naturally I'm going to like it.
5) The information that I'm going to remember the best however, came at the end of the lecture when the host asked a question about the study. I am going to remember that money can't buy us happiness, but it can prevent us from misery. I was shocked to find that after interviewing 600,000 people there was NO change in emotions based on income once the family reached the $60,000 annual income marker. I was not as surprised to see that general life satisfaction DECREASED though as families fell below that $60,000 mark.
Terms: Remembering Self, Experiencing Self, Memory, Encoding, Recollection, Distinction, Repetition, Emotion, Perception
Henry Markram - Builds a Brain Supercomputer
This can be related to perceptions in general (which deals with detection and interpretation of sensory stimuli). Object recognition is one area that can deal with perception. Object recognition is being able to distinguish something in particular. Many times this is after someone was already exposed to the object (actually seeing it, in a photograph, or from someone else describing it). Object recognition is also when a person can recognize something based on its shape, color, and texture - can get meaning out of what the object is for and knows how it can related to other things. Example - vehicle (frame with four wheels, moves, allows for transportation and helps people to complete their tasks in everyday life).
This clip also relates to memory because it talks about how the brain has evolved over time and how it is ever-changing. Some models of memory include... The first modern dualistic memory developed by Waugh and Norman. This provided evidence that forgetting in STM is influenced more in interference than decay. The information-processing model by Atkinson and Shiffrin assumes that fixed memory structures each have a number of subsystems, and variable control processes with activation which is determined by demand characteristics of the task. The level of processing theory states that memory is a by-product of analyses performed on incoming stimuli.
I picked this clip because it seemed like it would be interesting and it related the human brain and its functioning. The clip talked about the fact that it is essential to understand the human brain for many reasons (medical reasons, functioning, and for the fact that we cannot do animal experimentation forever, and drugs are largely imperative in our life). Henry spoke about the fact that much of their research is based off of the theory that the brain builds a version of the universe and projects it like a bubble that surrounds us (perception). Everything we perceive involves us constantly making decisions (is this building bigger than that one, how far away is that desk, what color is this shirt, etc.). We cannot constantly perceive everything. Evolutionary-wise it has take over 11 billion years to build the brain, which essentially started with the neo-cortex. Humans began the evolution for social interactions and cognitive functioning. Our brain is still evolving today. Henry noted that the brain is like a massive grand piano - if stimulated it produces a symphony of the universe (many neurons interacting together just like notes on a piano would); however, if a person has a disease then a note is off and the whole symphony is corrupted.
From Henry's research he has learned that everyone’s neurons are different and can be situated differently. Each neuron carefully gets to chose exact ally what it connects to. Where they intersect is called the synapse, which is how they communicate (it is the circuit of the brain). Henry has been carefully examining the brain for a long time because he believes he will be able to recreate every neuron in the brain and then put it all together to show how the brain works. In order for him to do this he has to put many computers together (his supercomputer) because making each neuron takes up enough data for one computer.
I was surprised that the video talked so much about specific functioning’s of the brain, I thought it would take more about building this recreation of the brain on a computer, but it did not go too far in-depth with that. I really liked the theory of how what we perceive the universe to be is what we actually see (reminds me of the Matrix a little bit - and I did not know this was an actual theory that someone came up with). I also really liked how Henry compared the brain to a grand symphony or grand piano, and how if one thing was off it was like a note being off. This video did get a little boring after awhile, but it was interesting to see and hear about. What interested me the most was to see how the brain evolved and how the brain is still evolving. What I will remember is that everyone’s neurons are different. This is a crazy concept to learn about. To figure out that not all of our neurons are in the same place or connected to the same things, yet we all tend to function the same way, just seems wild.
Terms: Neocortex, perception, neuron, synapse, dualistic memory model, information-processing model of memory, levels-of-processing theory, object recognition
A video that is really interesting that is about illusions (which I talked about before) is with Al Seckel on the same website. It talks about how even though illusions can trick us we still find some joy and happiness out of it when we are fooled. Also, talks about the fact that no matter how hard you try, even if you know a perception is wrong, your brain will still see it that way (ex: with shapes looking 3D and being flat).
Well, at first I watched the video Daniel Kahneman: The Riddle of Experience vs. Memory but I quickly saw that was a popular one among the posts. So instead I watched another one called Jill Bolte Taylors’ Stroke of Insight.
I picked this video because I find strokes a sad and fascinating thing that occurs all too often in our brains. It interests me what happens during a stroke and to hear the story of a brain scientist who went through it. And that is what I expected to see. I thought she would discuss what physically happened to your brain during a stroke and the long-term affects it had on brain function, whether it be motor function or memory.
What I actually saw was what she mentally went through more than what physically happened to her brain. She had a hemorrhage in the left hemisphere of her brain and ultimately lost its function. She explained that this half of the brain is responsible for our sense of identity and that it is responsible for remembering our past and projecting our future. Without it, she states, her right hemisphere took charge and she was one with the world and she experienced euphoria and only care for the here and now. She alternated between the states and tried to get herself help during the sporadic times that the left hemisphere worked, which she eventually did.
She claims that we can choose which hemisphere we want to live our lives by. We can be one with the world and have peace and love and happiness if we choose to live using our right hemisphere or we can be unique….an individual if we choose our left hemisphere.
I really enjoyed many of her detailed description of what was happening during her stroke, I mean I could really visualize what she was describing. But I do believe she was a little out-there or eccentric. She was very passionate in what she believed, almost to a fault.
What interested me most and what I will remember was what happened to her when her left hemisphere wasn’t working. The way she described not being able to figure out where she stopped or began or the pixels on the business cards was amazing. In a time of crisis she was not only pretty calm and quite clever as she used her useless arm to remember where she was in dialing a phone number and weighing the pros and cons of having a stroke.
Terms: Stroke, Memory, Hemorrhage, Sense of Identity Euphoria, Left/Right Hemisphere
http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html
The ted talks I viewed was “The riddle of experience vs. memory, by Daniel Kahneman. What I first expected to hear about was the sense of self; I thought it may have more to do with identity. As I find that is where a lot of my concentration goes when I look at the self and its effects on memories. What I was presented was something rather different. Daniel discusses what he defines as traps of happiness; the differences between the experiencing self, and the remembering self. He also mentioned a cognitive trap that I am fascinated with which is” we are not able think about experiences without distorting them.”
Things I will remember most about the video is that experience really only last a few seconds, it’s a moment that is not linear or expanded. While memory is capable of expanding and shaping experiences, and create from that experience a story. This particular story is a product of manipulation and follows the discourse dictated by the remembering self. I think that this is really important because it really plays into my ideas that our memories are based on our sense of identity. I think that the remembering self often times shapes our stories to fit our overall sense of self. I think one thing that Daniel didn’t look at is what type of personality the person had when discussing levels of pain. What I mean by this is what if the person was a story teller themselves, someone who frequently over exaggerates an event. He may not realize that is remembering self is creating a story one that identifies with his sense of self, which may be a story teller. That yes the ending moment in his experience was painful, but what about those cases of a boy cried wolf. Where the experience is remembered as painful yet in reality the level of pain discussed never existed. I think that this clip once again brought to mind the fact that there are so many traps and discrepancies within the world of psychology and especially cognitive. That one cannot remove the many different layers of the self to get one definitive being. That more often than not it is a combination of things that create our sense of self and the memories that we hold.
Surprisingly, none of the Ted talks were actually on memory. I saw a number of them but the only one coming close to talking about memory was the one presentation by Daniel Kahneman titled The Riddle of Experience vs. Memory. I expected it to be over the Nature/Nurture debate because that is sort of what it sounds like. But I see it was a rather foolish anticipation.
Kahneman talks about memory in a way my text book does not. He argues that there are essentially two selves, one that lives in the moment and the other that remembers the past. He gives an example that I find meaningful. Apparently a student of his went to a symphony and it was perfect until the very end where one of the violinists made a horrible screeching noise. Because of that screech, the student said that “it ruined the entire experience.” Kahneman refutes this, saying that it did not ruin the experience itself. The enjoyment of that experience was completely unaffected by the screech at the end. But the memory of it definitely was ruined. So nothing changed for the experiencing self but the remembering self took it negatively.
Because the remembering self has memory and is capable of reanalyzing memories, it is the one that is responsible for decision making. But it is not fool proof. Exactly as there are problems with long term memory and it is open to contamination, memory of events can also be easily tainted.
He cites the case of the colonoscopy patients. The patients underwent surgery and were exposed to pain for a time being afterward. There were two groups of patients. One group had extreme pain for a short time but the painful experience was over just as the extreme pain ended. The other group also had extreme pain for the same duration but then had lesser pain for some time afterward. So in both cases, the experiencing self had a lot of pain and in the second case had really experienced more pain than the experiencing self in the first group. But the remembering self had it all wrong. The first group reported remembering a lot more pain than the second group did. Somehow, the memory of the pain was more influenced by the last pain experienced rather than the peak of the pain.
Overall, I enjoyed this Ted talk. They are all actually very interesting, but nearly all outside our subject area of interest. I want to point out one that really blew me out of my mind. It is the one by Keith Barry on Brain Magic and he is talking about how illusionists are really doing magic by subtly directing the audience’s attention away from the true area of interest and then can produce surprise from that. You should check it out, it is a newer one.
Terms: memory, long-term memory, remembering self, experiencing self, pain perception