The Neuroscience of Memory - Eleanor Maguire

There are two demos in this talk that you can try at home exploring how we perceive and recollect visual scenes:
1. Image distance demo:
You are given a 3 second countdown before seeing a quick sequence of two pictures of the same object, divided briefly by a visual mask. The challenge is to identify whether the second picture is the same view as the first, or whether it's moved closer or further away. Try it yourself • The Neuroscience of Me...
2. Drawing from memory demo:
You have 15 seconds to look at a picture, which you'll then be asked to draw, as accurately as possible, from memory. Try it now • The Neuroscience of Me...
Our memories are our lives, and a fundamental basis of our culture. Collective memoirs of the past both bind society together and shape our potential future. With our brains we can travel through time and space, calling to mind places of significance, evoking images and emotions of past experiences. It's no wonder, then, that we so desperately fear the prospect of memory loss.
Many regions of the brain are involved in memory, but one of the most critical components is the hippocampus, which plays a crucial role in the formation of long-term memories. Damage to the hippocampus can therefore result in significant memory loss.
In this Friday Evening Discourse, Eleanor Maguire draws on evidence from virtual reality, brain imaging and studies of amnesia to show that the consequences of hippocampal damage are even more far-reaching than suspected, robbing us of our past, our imagination and altering our perception of the world.
Maguire also explains how, despite our beliefs, our memories are not actually as accurate as you might think. In fact, they're not really even about the past.
This event is part of our all-women line up for Friday Evening Discourses in 2014 as part of our year long celebration of women in science. Find out more here www.rigb.org/about/news/spring...
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Thumbnail image credit: Gontzal García del Caño on Flickr
(www.flickr.com/photos/euskalan...)

[@neillamas8929]

0:00: relevance/importance of memory, types of memory: definitions and origins. 5:00: 1) memory is improved if can be related to past experiences (old experiment) 2) memory is not accurate (live experiment) 13:00 superior autobiographical memory patient 15:00 patient H.M. - hippocampus for autobiographical memory and memory formation 19:00 place cells (discovery + new experiment) 33:00 scene construction 38:00 boundary extension 49:00 questions

[@leahrockstar]

The delivery of this lecture was a Rockstar performance, the voice with character, great use of the stage, a set list that kept you interested and hooked.

[@alistairbalistair9596]

it was ok

[@sergef.7822]

Way too controlled in my opinion. She needs to loosen up. Great content though.

[@gunterbraunkinder4876]

shes reading her lecture. Ah it must be about memory...

[@pamelarose1547]

Her voice is gentle on the ears; her pacing suits people new to this info; she involves the audience with preparation and well-timed repeats; her focus is on sharing the info not so much on making a big impression so she does! I learned about one's memory as related to the hippocampus (spell check: really?) when I was still a blank canvas and am left curious for more since she made it seem attainable...I'm gonna track her down and look for more

[@alexandermills382]

pamela rose OO

[@alistairbalistair9596]

she was ok

[@HarryNicNicholas]

thank you for that insightful comment, it will live in my memory forever. perhaps one day i will fathom why you bothered.

[@conservaliberaltarian2753]

Is this an actual British dialect? She's just speaking in a British accent with an American R.

[@billymanilli]

I dunno... that "smacking" noise (like she has peanut butter in the roof of her mouth), kinda ruins it for me. Just my humble little 2 cents. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[@ryanfrizzell736]

Now I have the memory of the neuroscience of memory in my memory. Oh what a memorable memory!

[@efox2001]

Fascinating presentation, thank you so much for making this available!

[@carolinepaquier8156]

I would love to see an RI study of the cognition and behavior of Alzheimer patients before, during, and after hearing music. This is being studied by observable behavioral results but it would be valuable to see what's happening deep in their brains which could possibly lead to a treatment for this terrible disease.

[@Dr10Jeeps]

Thank you Dr. Maguire and RI for another excellent lecture. Very interesting and informative.

[@TheTrueReiniat]

MY MIND IS BLOWN. The best part of this is I had read Kant's quote before and I was thinking about it as she brought it up.

[@thomassoliton1482]

Congratulations - you have an intact hippocampus!

[@beuxjmusic]

Not only a great lecture, but some solid questions! All in all, I enjoyed this video very much, and very consistently, throughout!

[@treeburgess]

This is an excellent set of facts for refuting the still practiced recovered memory therapy.

[@histreeonics7770]

43 minutes in most of the memory she has talked about has been visual. My recovered memories (mostly confirmed by my mother) are very visceral. That is perhaps the difference between traumatic memories and 'normal' episodic ones.

[@emeriosuarez4642]

Took me 6 years to enjoy this lecture!. But still think is up to date!!.

[@diynevala]

So, the "star trek explanation" is that hippocampus is a sort of a holodeck in your mind, where you can play back and even generate plausible simulations based on limited data.

[@ThisIS_Insane]

Ms Maguire is so stunning, I almost forgot the subject matter, several times! It was a very intriguing lecture! Thank you, Prof Maguire!

My wife has that "all life" memmory. She remembers everything. Say any day she will tell you what she did, who were she was with, wich day of the week it was, what was she wearing, what was the person she was with was wearing, what soup opera was on TV and what happenned on that chapter. And she is the happiest person I've ever seen.

[@Originalimoc]

😯

[@arunshukla7322]

Excellent. Very informative, useful and comprehensible to laymen.

[@kennethpao1355]

Just stumbled across this wonderful KZbin video explaining human memory in thoroughly enjoyable Queen's English and excellent presentation. Thank you RI.

[@teeI0ck]

showing an accurate and deep understanding; great perceptive. 💡 Muito obrigado for all the insightful information. 🤝

[@alanbunyan5007]

Fascinating stuff. So, put very simply, it would appear that the primary function of memory, rather than to recall the past, is to help us make sense of the present and anticipate the future...

[@dlou3264]

Excellent information and presentation! Excellent questions and answers!

[@TheWyrdSmythe]

Interesting talk! I've wondered, given physical determinism, if free will might be found in our ability to visualize different potential (future) realities. I like the idea that memory's main function is enabling our ability to make those visualizations. Memory enables free will!

[@zack_120]

22:22 - Excellent! The virtual tour of London with fMRI of brain activities shown along is very informative for learning about brain.

[@beth6787]

Well done Dr. Maguire ! very well explained for a lay audience. In a nutshell, the hippocampus acts as a "hub" for co-ordination of input signals from various brain regions to facilitate construction of a "mental landscape" in space & time.

[@sheriffoftiltover]

So the output from the hippocampus is essentially the input from multiple senses encoded for storage in memory? Does that mean it works backwards when recalling memories as a decoder of sorts?

[@Ludifant]

19:48 ah, that makes perfect sense, that anekdotal or autobiographic memory is so closely linked to the memory of places. That would be why most memory athletes make journeys or memory castles or roman rooms. It is one of the strongest and most flexible ways to bind anekdotes to memory. The next ones in my opinion and experience of memory training would be persons/objects, actions, causes (relational information) and for some people stories. If you have a strong autobiographical memory, using personal touches works a treat as well. And singular or strange things are easier to remember. That´s why I use PECS, making things personal, emotional (or urgent), crazy/peculiar/singular, and specific to attach them to places and autobiographic memory. And I use people and objects for coding systems, which makes it necessary to be very specific. Other people use stories, which is also quite flexible, but that is not my strongsuit, especially under pressure. It seems rats, humans and roombas have more in common than previously thought.

[@Ludifant]

On the importance of memory: you couldn´t hear a sound, without your body keeping track of what happened before, since sounds are CHANGES in air pressure, sustained for more than one 850th of second. This is true for more or less all senses, in sight it´s 250th of a second etc etc, so I maintain, that without memory in it´s most primitive form, perception is impossible. We don´t usually think of these processes of involving memory, unless it is in the process of making sense of what you hear or see (categorization), but that is merely shortsightedness.

[@Littleprinceleon]

Can there be a system consisting of only information processing parts? I mean where the results of processing immediately change the environment from which the information flows into the "processor". So in a sense the environment acts as a storage system "recording" the changes. Just thinking aloud along the lines how molecules could have assembled into self-replicating systems, without more permanent storage.

[@Gandalf17]

her voice is so beautiful

[@MrJamesdryable]

You wouldn't say that if she was a fat chick.

[@Peter_Scheen]

Learned something new today. Thank you.

[@klhughes8908]

Outstanding! Thank you!

[@garret1930]

I have a feeling that good comicbook artists are familiar with the concept of boundary extension and how to use it to shove extra background in to a scene without having to draw it.

[@I.m_glad_you.re_here]

Hahaha! I didn’t think of that, but I’m sure that’s exactly what happens! Great point!

[@piroskamohacsinagy1360]

Outstanding lecture & exceptionally engaging. Thank you !

[@Ludifant]

@41:54 I have to contest this methodology. The conclusion might still be true, but it cannot be concluded from the setup of this experiment. The "masking image" had a much smaller object in it, the process of animation or gluing together of subsequent images to create a movement, which is well documented and will start way before 42 ms at around 3ms under normal stress levels, would make a subject record an increase in size, leading to a logical conclusion of a closer object. So this could very well be and is more likely to be a case of priming, context and animation. The same experiment would have to be done with a bigger object in the masking image and if the results are then still conclusive, only then might we consider this to be an effect of background extension. It seems a perfectly reasonable hypothesis, but just not very well isolated in this particular experiment. Also, if the subsequent explanation were true the masking image wouldn´t need to have an object in it at all and that gets me wondering, why there even is an object (green smiley) there. The picture test can have an alternative explanation too. It might be, that being "stuck in the present" made them more attentive and therefore better artists, because what all the regular folk showing background extension missed is analysing the layout or composition of the picture of the four bananas and finding that the bananas touched the border of the picture on both sides, were horizontal and had the concave part up, forming a sort of cup but mostly horizontal bent line and then estimate the angle of the background´s incline, so as to estimate the decrease in apparant size of the stones in order to reproduce the overall effect. 15 seconds is ample time to do this with some training, which I´d argue they have had spontaneously, because of their condition. I had to teach loads of students not to draw what they knew, or thought they saw, but what they actually saw. Which means, you have to step out of your normal view of reality and look at it as if it is already on paper and then just trace it. This method increases drawing quality dramatically within hours and revealed to me that most people, without this training see the world symbolically in stead of actually around 90% of the time. Midieval artist got this training of composition and perspective by painting on a slab of glass, closing one eye and keeping their head really still. We still have pictures of devices to help them do just that. They discovered all kinds of principles like contrapunctive ordonance, layering and "coulissen", that would increase depth-perception of an image. Cues that would help imagining a scene. So, while I do believe background extension is something that exists, this to me isn´t very convincing proof. Maybe this is just because it is "dumbed down" a bit and very much is omited, but this is the Royal Institution and it seems a bit too speculative.

[@Ludifant]

Just saw that this is 2012 and a lot has happened in this last 10 years in our understanding of memory, consciousness and the sense of self. So in view of that, I think some in those time rather normal biases may be forgiven and mostly just points to how groundbreaking the research described was..

[@backtoemocovers]

Thanks for this knowledge

[@EdgarRoock]

43:58 I was assuming that the enlarged black and white "noise" image they placed between the two images played a crucial role in this test but apparently it didn't. Would have liked to hear an explanation for the odd choice of that frame.

[@hendrikhendrikson2941]

As always, a really amazing lecture. Thank you!

[@Ludifant]

@58:00 more recent research into the seat of the self did indeed point towards the hippocampus and more core structures of the brain leading into the spine and contests strongly the former placing of in the frontal cortex (with studies of patients who had no frontal cortex but still had a strong sense of self). So this remains an excellent question also since it is a bit of an ethical one. Like the researcher said, we can´t just stick electrodes in humans, but apparantly we can just stick them in rats. Understanding that rats may have a similar sense of self might open up the ethics of that practice again.

[@davidkevin7996]

i like these kind of lectures............. thank you very much

[@Eyrab]

Marvelous video....!

[@brendanwebb6029]

I feel bad for the guy in the right bottom corner hoping he gets picked for questions - 20 minutes and she only fielded one question from that side of the room

[@mihavatovec337]

Ha ha

[@granduniversal]

That's so funny. I noticed that too.

[@aakashmehta6050]

Came to the comments for this :)

[@kn9ioutom]

MEMORY IS WHAT I FORGET WITH !!!

[@durpdurper2768]

The first thing I took note of was the bananas were ripe, horizontal, sitting on rocks, took up the majority of the picture and there were four of them... in that order. Then I took note of the size of the rocks and ran out of time. (The other pictures were same same.) I then drew the picture as accurately as the in patients. Somehow I don't feel cheated.

[@neopholis]

At 34, I can remember up to individual orders for tables of 12 to 16 people and get a 92% accuracy. I continue to exercise this portion of my brain.

[@WinrichNaujoks]

How annoying if you get 8% of your orders wrongs. Diners won't be happy.

[@adhipmitra]

Excellent talk

[@thomassoliton1482]

Fascinating lecture Dr. Maguire. I first heard of HM in a lecture by Larry Squires while a student at UCSD. Subsequently I was a grad student in Joseph Altman’s lab at Purdue. Also your taxi driver study is featured in the Brain section of the Franklin Inst. in Philadelphia. The story reminds me of the title of the Firesign Theater album, “How can you be in two places at once when you’re not anywhere at all?” The hippocampus is the bridge between the past and present, able to recall elements of information about past events given current context to imagine or visualize some novel (future?) setting - fundamentallly, the basis for prediction. In the “super autobiographical” patients, a scene is not broken down into iconic elements - dogs, people, buildings, streets, etc. Instead it must be stored like a jigsaw puzzle stitched together only be temporal cues, and cannot be recalled on the basis of a given person, scenes with dogs, the London Wheel, etc. Such individuals do not decompose the world into “common” elements capable of being rearranged intependently of time of acquisition. I am only half-way through but I am willing to bet they have a deficit in REM sleep and dreaming - which relies on the hippocampus. Kudos!

[@vilnis-trash]

This video should be called "A Random Experiments Proving Hippocampuses Function". It's nothing more than that

[@danielc.freteval5685]

But it's a woman that do the talk!

[@Shady-Shane]

Excellent!

[@ravanarbabi140]

It may be that the majority did not fail but were more honest with their response! They said how they see the object on the screen and not what they should have seen. But the reason why the second image seems larger may be the effect of recognition that makes the image perceived more clearly and in more detail.

[@Troyster94806]

This was a great lecture. The bananas scene was definitely food for thought, yes I know, I made a funny. Anyway, I personally didn't have a problem remembering that the bananas took up most of the scene. It's not that I'm unable to imagine beyond that, I just remembered what the scene looked like. When comparing sizes of images, my eyes saw the second images as larger but my brain told me that they must be the same size or there would be no point to the demonstration. I think we see the second image bigger because of some kind of auto anticipation. Normally when something in the real world flashes at us, the object is coming toward us. To me it seemed to have something to do with that.

[@achatinaslak742]

I totally agree !

[@marcnormandin2877]

Fantastic!

[@davidcabrero8772]

amazing!! Thanks!!

[@oNtuobAwoH]

I find the drawing from memory demo somewhat lacking in that there is much to be said about people's drawing capabilities. By that I don't mean the lacking realism of the photos, I mean that most people will start with the bananas, but most people will also be poor judges of the room the finishes work will take, so in an effort to not extend the borders of the paper, they will tend to make them smaller. This is best seen with people who turned out to actually be somewhat proficient at drawing. They were closer to the right ratio, but they still saved some space on a reflex. Only when you're finished reserving the space for bananas do you realize how much more room is left, and it is only then that you start filling in the surplus room. Had they been given something more easily defined, such as a couple of geometrical bodies with clearly defined positional and size relations, I think the results would have been much more precise, even if said object were placed in similarly textured surroundings. What I'm trying to say is that I'm not sure this phenomenon could really be fully ascribed to boundary extension as easily as it has been.

[@snyggmikael]

Yea, kinda weird test. I would expect this to fail as a student experiment example in a uni class. It does not really prove anything clearly, there might be to many variables that can lead to errors in the conclusion.

[@MichaelHarrisIreland]

Yes, you're right. There are always other explanations. I believe there are no true equivalents so it more difficult to prove something than people think. It seems everything is separate so proof would have to be over many differing situations all pointing in one direction.

[@moxleyjb]

Loved it

[@widebandrecords902]

Powerful talk. Facts upon facts upon facts. I always have thought this thats why i agree with all this talker explained..

[@denniscat9395]

Liar

[@I.m_glad_you.re_here]

Dennis Cat, or joker...

[@HarryNicNicholas]

remembering smells is the most extraordinary thing.

[@Arbetrayer]

I have ADHD and immediately noticed there was no difference in the pictures, and I was rather confident in the fact before she posted the results. I wonder if there is any correlation. I dearly wished I would have drawn the Banana now before finishing the talk!!

[@tbbbtoolsbooksbladebones556]

Nevermind. You are dwindling on hope.

[@steveh3872]

Yes there is a good chance that you have an altered hippocampus function. I do not understand the response from Shivam Shandiliya. Sounds like a troll.

[@tbbbtoolsbooksbladebones556]

@@steveh3872 Took you long enough to descend

[@redneckwhitetrashbluecolla7721]

Same here . I noticed they were the same immediately and utterly confident in that . ADHD has been a blessing in some cases in my life .

[@XxxcloackndaggerxxX]

I have travelled the world for over 35 year's and I time travel all the time in seconds I can travel with ease to any country!

[@kevinmathewson4272]

6:42 has important implications for teaching. I wish more lecturers understood this. You need a christmas tree before you can hang ornaments.

[@Kennymac8251]

My god. Brilliant!

[@Darkanight]

Excellent presentation! I did draw bananas which took up as much space as in the picture, though! =(

[@TheRoyalInstitution]

Watch our latest Friday Evening Discourse 'The neuroscience of memory' with Eleanor Maguire now up on the Ri Channel and have a go at some of her experiments yourself. #science #video

[@WholeBrainPower]

Keep moving!

[@chriscraven9572]

If someone with Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (on day C) recalls a day (B) when they were recalling a previous day (A) do they recall what they recalled of day A or just the recollection of recollecting day A.

[@katiekat4457]

Chris Craven I have watched a lot of programs and yes they do. They gave someone a random date and the first thing that came out of his mouth was "I remember that I was happy because the night before we went to.." I forget where he had gone and then he went on to say what he did all day for the day that they asked him about. They remember what they ate at meals, what they did, what day it landed on, who they were with, things people said, what shows they watched and which episode, what was on the news, the weather. They remember everyday of their life. There are no gaps after the age they start remembering at. The ages at which it starts varied but it was from like 4-7 yrs old. It is absolutely insane. They just discovered them maybe 15-20 years ago because some lady was complaining about it. Then when they did a story about her, other people were like "remembering like this isn't normal?" They just thought they had good memories and other people had bad memories. They all love it but not the original lady that they found. She is miserable because she focuses on all the bad stuff that was said to her. It's really interesting.

[@thenorthpostmarketskiles8662]

*brain explodes

[@dannyslammy4379]

@@katiekat4457 And yet Borges wrote a short story about it 40 years ago: Funes the Memorious

[@rfvtgbzhn]

I find it kind of strange that these people can't control when they recall things. I mean I know quite well what I did and ate yesterday (of course not every detail, e.g. I don't remember all the web pages I visited yesterday), but I don't think a lot about that...

[@jeanettesdaughter]

Yes.

[@rodrigoperezdecastro2508]

I really Iove these kinds of lectures, but my only problem with Ri is with the sound. Couldn´t you try to pass the audio track into a "S" suppresser. The "ssss" are extremely annoying. Same thing with Tara Shears lecture on antimatter.

[@simpleandsuccess]

Yeah I agree. Filter this shiz. The sticky lips and sticky tongue to the roof of the mouth noise is infuriatingly annoying. Guaranteed that lots of people skip these videos because of that.

[@archangel4076]

Once I read this comment I couldn't stop hearing it

[@mohdyusuffsharif944]

Rodrigo Perez de Castro should focus on content....nobody perfect...trivial issues are forgiven.

[@norwegianzound]

I dunno. That lovely Irish accent makes it very bearable.

[@TheTotalhunk]

Like Arch Angel, I was unaware until I read the nit-pickers. I guess I just assumed she had loose dentures or had just eaten a peanut butter sandwich.

[@beuxjmusic]

When quoting Alice in Wonderland within the context of Science or Mathematics, I think it is important to inform the listener that the writer of the Alice Saga was not an author, but a Mathematician, and that the entire Wonderland adventure is likely just an allegorical expression of our mathematical reality, written by someone who, despite being renowned for their greatness, was likely yet greater.

[@soulreaperichig0]

1:56 Memories are the glue that holds society together

[@prabeeshnair9174]

And the blades that tear them apart

[@dmtang01]

I didn't understand the test, so when that image for a millisecond or the displayed image

[@thomassoliton1482]

Interesting question about rat place-cells. (1) Even if the place cells were identical in 2 rats (unlikely), it is most unlikely you could record from the “same” one in 2 different rats. (2) Space is relative, so the place-cells presumably fire in a spatial pattern relative to some fixed cue - position of a food reward or visual cue for example. So, what if you have a rat that on 4 successive days shows the same pattern of place cell firing when always fed at some point (e.g. 12:00 on the arena) and then change the reward location to 5:00 for 4 days. Would the place-cell firing re-orient also? (Of course all other possible orientation cues would have to be controlled for or masked).

[@thermotronica]

nice presentation

[@anotherdoseyt]

33:03 Are these patient able to form usual dreams?

[@williambryant6817]

Is there any research that examines the effect surprise has on memory? Particularly, when the emotion of surprise is strong, does the memory from that particular experience have more strength than others?

[@marilynblum7324]

What is the learning memory type of persons in the audience? Some people are visual learners. Being able to give the correct answer because they are visual thinkers ?Age and speed of processing ability of the person could make the difference? Before or after TBI or brain surgery including IQ with and without learning disability? What are the details of the theory used for researchers related to each patient before and after cognitive changes?Recall? History of convergent vs divergent thinking? How we are taught to learn and how we can ?

[@sands7779]

Interesting talk on hippocampus by Eleanor Maguire. She is a very good speaker and used case studies and experiments to illustrate concepts.

[@2814252A]

I'm wondering if there is a maximum size the posterior hippocampus could become in London cab drivers. Does anyone know?

[@alkapone147]

Brilliant

[@Boomproof]

I've got a question, as I have followed this Presentation as being part of it: Referring to the perspective test with the Bananas, I drawed them proportional to the picture, and also added the almost unseen 4th banana and the elevation caused by the possible 5th one in the background. I also saw both pictures (the one with the shovel and the one with the sewing thread + needle) as being exactly the same. I also occur not to suffer any kind of dementia nor amnseia. A possibly important information is that I have consumed THC prior to the video. Given the case I weren't using any kind of neurostimulant, just for the sake of the question, what would this say about my Hypocampus and it's functionality? And in the case of prior consumption?

[@moy2010]

I'm sorry if my reply to your question bothers you, but I hope that it'll be useful for you. What I learned from this lecture is that the people who draw the bananas scene almost perfectly, pretty much have a damage in their hippocampi. This damage can be caused either by the use of drugs such as THC, alcohol, depression, physical damage, etc.

[@Boomproof]

Interesting! to some extent I'm sure that can be correct, yet posterior to this video I've been informing myself about perception, and how different types of people put more value to deterministic information, rather then context information (analytical view vs practical view, "What describes a scene, and what's useful information about said scene"). This could be the case in most Introverted people, as this ones (to wich I count myself) tend not to value smalltalk and trivial themes, as opposed to philosophical or ideological discussions. In short form: Introverted people (Or the psychology of the Introverted mind) try to achieve maximum comprehension about that what interests them, and in this case, the tests subdued to the watchers were, in this case, the focus of my attention. My guess still is that premises like the one showed in this video are still on the very surface about our knowledge about ourselves and our brain functionalities. There are just too many factors not taken into consideration that to some extent, the results are vague, maybe just hinting with little leads facing to a bigger, more influential factor about the "personalities" of human beings.

[@moy2010]

Yep, it's really interesting :D. In my current point of view, those who put more value to deterministic information, or consider that the output of that specific situation cannot be altered, are those whose amygdala has damaged their hyppocampi, affecting both the encoding of new memories (by difficulting LTP, impossibiliting further process of the situation by the prefrontal cortex, etc.) and the memory retrieval process (as seen in this lecture). Otherwise, those who put more effort or time analyzing the context of the situation (making more assumptions, retrieving more correlated facts or memories, etc.) are those whose prefrontal context silences their amygdala, thereby taking control of the situation. Therefore, those who have a more amygdala-shifted processing have simplier personalities and faster, yet simplier decission making skills. Because this damage doesn't extent only to the "personalities" of individuals, but also to their capacity to handle more difficulty situations, their learning capacity, etc., is why it's so important to use this knowledge to make adjustments in our educational policies, our judgement of empathic situations, and so much more. Pretty much, our vision of the world and human interaction.

[@Boomproof]

What about the possibility of a natural occurring "unbalance" in brain activity? Similar to the ones observed in gifted children, to whom I consider myself one; We tend to have totally normal social skills, yet we tend to prefer working alone. Empathy problems aren't usual either, yet our brain activity is above normal when concentrating. Detail perfection is something that I can but don't want to dodge. It's also true that social connectivity might drain our energy, in the means of wanting "a moment of peace", referring to a short period of time in which we enjoy being "left alone" (not to be confused with being "alone"). Could it be that a lack of logical errors happening in perceptions of non-normal brains are described as failures in brain activity? If so, we should learn to differentiate between an "error" and a "malicious/benign mutation", as for the existence of geniuses is factual, and their brain activity abnormal (compared to a "normal" person).

[@moy2010]

Well, AFAIK what you mention is a common misconception. The so called "gifted kids" do not have brain activity above normal when concentrating. In fact, it's exactly the opposite. This is due to the fact that it's easier for them to process the information. Another fact is that an above normal brain activity is really exhausting, thus making it easier to stress the individual and stop the concentration or analysis. The processing of emotions is done equally regardless of your IQ or your gift. The distinction would be somewhere in between the emotions and the feelings (Antonio Damasio is a great reference on this subject). Why gifted kids tend to be alone? I would rather blame the society, since their social interactions are rather difficult and they tend to become even harder as they grow up.

[@Nitephall]

So memory is about reconstructing the past based on present experiences. That still doesn't get at the core issue of how we have a sense of a past at all. What exactly gets stored in the brain, if anything?

[@stanleyklein524]

Don't ask don't tell -- the motto of contemporary neuroscience and psychology (not because they actually know).

[@moiquiregardevideo]

As far as I can remember from 5 years old to 50+, I never been able to imagine anything in the sense of bringing any type of picture. No scene, no single object, no color, no shape. I am not blind. I can look at a map and navigate thru streets, I read and write text, and electronic schematics. I even learned to read Chinese. After 5 years, I knew about 2000 out of 6500 characters that are known by most people in China. I was using many different brain area for memorizing these characters. The hand motion of drawing on paper and drawing with the tip of the finger, the auditory memory was involved when counting the number of strokes and the meaning of each radicals elements that form a Chinese character. My auditory memory is normal or maybe superior compared to normal people. I can replay in my head a music that I heard for the first time on radio. It is possible that I don't really catch all the details, such as some faint musical instruments. It is quite distinct to "feel that we know" and the reality of really knowing. Beside the basic emotions such as "happy", "sad", "disappointment", etc there is many more basic feeling that the study of brain structure will reveal such as "I saw that person before", "I never saw that" and "I am not sure".,

[@nespith]

Same here. I have no auditory memory either though.

[@prosodiclearning]

Your audtory memory (of prosody) holds your working memory as well as your ability to imagine (image)

[@nespith]

@@prosodiclearning I generally just know what I'm thinking without words. I can't play songs back in my head or hear conversations. I can choose to use inner speech if I want to but I generally don't outside of reading/writing. This article describes it www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810008000524

[@prosodiclearning]

@frostek I came upon the remediation inadvertently I thought she was dyslexic...until we both realised it was about image ,not working mory

[@prosodiclearning]

m so sad that these pitifully easy to understand and fix (aphantasia /dyslexia); seeing them labelled with having a "condition" that needs a "cure" is the language of snake-oil salesman..

[@youremom5463]

Memory is the meaning of life, it's our purpose

[@seriouskaraoke879]

I have a persistent childhood memory of having just discovered the concept of "photographic memory" which was relayed to me in the raw on the playground from one of the many know-it-all sixth graders who had the obligation to educate the lower grades on how the world really worked. I was completely enamored with this concept and shared it with as many kids as would listen to me and not one of them seemed to get it as I did. "So? Big deal." What I needed was to bounce this off an adult to explore this concept further and that adult turned out to be my dullard father. He was a helluva good story teller but he wasn't much of a thinker. Without hesitation he pulled a reply out of his ass and informed me that would be a very bad thing to have. I asked why but inside I was thinking this is going to be a whole other level of stupid. "Because your brain can only hold so much and if you remembered everything it would fill up and you would die." Yep, I was right.

[@kartikmessner2868]

Hahaha.good story.: )

[@arabiccompprograming5161]

hello, I am 45 years old, I have recently tried to memorize many Algorithm cases for solving 3x3 rubiks cube, each algorithm tackles a partial solving state that targets a particular position on the cube. Exampe of 1 case: [(y') U2 R2' U2 R U R' U R2] then I move on to the next partial solve. and so forth, I have managed to know such algorithms from my memory and can find them and even write them down, but what troubles me is the practical side of implementing these tasks. they are memorized but not memorized enough to be practically used. What other attributes/additionals of long term memory can be useful to me.

[@billyohara239]

Very interesting i have suffered on my life from a very bad short-term memory i often wonder why would causes it

[@joshuanell4634]

I thought it was already decided that the job of the temporal lobes were to traffic past and present events so that you can know what happened in the passed in relation to the present and make a judgment based on what past experiences you might have off of the present circumstances.

[@rfvtgbzhn]

I know someone who remembers every football match of Rapid Vienna that he has seen (probably at least 1000) in detail (he remembers every goal including the minute and the player and how it was shot and everything else of great importance that happened in this match) but he seems to live a normal life. Does he have Highly superior autobiographical memory or is there a difference explanation? I would like to remember every football match of Rapid Vienna in detail, but I actually have problems remembering results that where just a few months ago.

[@krisztianvribek2179]

I think that must be an assymetric feautre of his/her brain. So if it excels on a field like that, then must have be some other where it discfunctions or just perform poorly. All of our features are characterised by normal distribution, if something is sticking out, then we might expect some malfunctions in some point of the system.

[@LashZhvania-Movies-MMA-Science]

How it comes that i have perfect autobiographical Memory but i cant remember texts from the 📚 readers?! i would love to exchange those types of memory for my success

[@TheMax200g]

Hyperthymesia sounds amazing especially if everyone has it. How would society be different?

[@InfiniteUniverse88]

The flashing image doesn't really test memory. Rather, it demonstrates that the brain takes more than a quarter of a second to comprehend what is being seen.

[@darkpandemic5802]

i guess you didnt watch to the end :-)

[@mojophe1617]

I wonder if stimulation or lack of stimulation in early years development impact their mental image construction in later years. I really enjoyed the lecture. Thank you.

[@olivierelbougnadere4117]

Verry good.

[@buckrogers5331]

I wonder if the play cells are linked to relevance. You know, data you think might be useful and kept for future reference. Probably why we experience deja vu?

[@gonderage]

The idea of memory being about the future instead of the past reminds me of Stanislas Dehaene's perception of human brains as squishy Bayesian predictors in his book How We Learn. Very familiar idea!

[@moy2010]

I thought that the hippocampus was related only to the encoding process of memory, and it's amazing to realize that it also plays a role in the retrieval process. Is it safe to say that the memory retrieval role of the hippocampus resides on the posterior portion of it?

[@stanleyklein524]

No.

[@anthonytindle5758]

This is true about memory I know that as I had a burst aneurism near my right epycampus which obviosly needed repair before the blood pressure around my brain stopped functioning and I would officially have deceased as a consequence my memory is caput and because of no short term memory cannot visualize a future so she is correct with living life in the here and now

[@kwanarchive]

The last slide shows some images from a paper "Hassabis et al., 2009". That is Demis Hassabis, the founder of DeepMind who created AlphaGo.

[@stanleyklein524]

A real deep thinker (LOL).

[@nicholasxee9597]

Nice video

[@antikertech157]

Bien, esta información sirve para la tecnología que estoy creando ! :)

[@obsessedmalou]

Should I be getting a neurological evaluation? I didn't make any of the errors she mentioned were normal.

[@logicalhumanism]

HM was an awakened individual!

[@jefferybrown1409]

The actress Marilu Henner has superior autobiographical memory. Forgive me if someone has already mentioned this, I have not had a chance to watch the lecture, nor read the comments. I will soon, however!

[@tommytime4u]

how do you assess the MRI while person is using driving game? in 23:18 min???????

[@blacbillionaire]

Love rat Q & A at the end of this dissertation.

[@ElroyMunson]

I did the 'Spatial Space Test ' and had Less space in the background... not more... My head must be mush

[@tjmarx]

I find it interesting that every time a text is displayed and read aloud Eleanor adds words to that text on her own which are not in reality present in that text. The first "memory" experiment given to the audience didn't rely on memory at all. It's about saccades. Most people were unable to see enough information in the initial image to make a memory or comparison. It's a cheat and has nothing to do with boundary extension.