Internal playback

[emjay]

That makes no sense whatsoever.

Well.. could have been an April fool's fake news story... or just a standard Onion one... o not... too long ago for me to remember properly.

One thing that could possibly explain it is due to the fact that the brain has a lot of feedback loops, eg take neurons A-E:

A>>B>>C>>D>>E
^    ^     ^    ^    V
^    ^     ^    ^    V
<<<<<<<<<<<<

And also it's already known that when you imagine something it activates exactly the same neurons as would be activated by external stimuli but just to a much lesser degree.

That makes me think that these backward connections may be part of the mechanism that allows us imagine things in the first place. And that the level of detail in the imagination is dependent on how much you can activate these neurons in the absence of external input. With so much interconnection between neurons, backward and forward, in the brain they can form self-supporting pockets of activation that don't need external input to maintain them. One well-placed internal kickstart (i.e. thought) could set off a cascade of neural activity that settles into such a stable pocket of activation. And after that, additional well-placed thoughts can further support or expand that pocket and that's what I think imagination/memory is.


And with memory I think it's all about the order in which things are activated. Whilst a memory is still in your 'mindscape' (which may be very long term - I think your mindscape is what you still consider useful in life) you have learnt how to initially trigger that cascade and the order of additional thoughts required to boost it step-by-step and it all happens relatively automatically without much conscious intervention. But once you've forgotten how to trigger that cascade, say with a long lost childhood memory, the only way you could trigger it again in all its vividness would be to find or stumble upon those all-important triggers. In other words your memories are not erased, you just forget how to trigger them. The memories may change a little over time because they are all part of a vast interconnected network that is always subtly changing, but essentially they'll be the same.

[robvalue]

Wow, that's very interesting. Thanks!

It is so frustrating when I know damn well that I have the information I need in my brain, but I can't find it. I can't do a search function. I can't really do anything, except stop thinking about it. That seems to get me there the quickest. When I become aware I am thinking, I get kind of self conscious and the process starts seeming ridiculous.

[emjay]

Wow, that's very interesting. Thanks!

It is so frustrating when I know damn well that I have the information I need in my brain, but I can't find it. I can't do a search function. I can't really do anything, except stop thinking about it. That seems to get me there the quickest. When I become aware I am thinking, I get kind of self conscious and the process starts seeming ridiculous.

Happens to me all the time too  

Once you've forgotten the triggers then finding them again is not going to be easy and would take a lot of detective work. The only way I think is with a process of deduction. I would try to think about what would be most likely to 'progress the state' from a neural network point of view. 

One thought is to look for something that would be common to many aspects of the memory, i.e. if it's interconnected it will share its activation with the other related aspects and 'prime' them making them easier to activate. But that's not all there is to it because that may not be the initial step: it may share with everything but it might not get them above the firing threshold.

The other assumption I would take for granted and I think would be helpful is that a neural network doesn't treat every input equally - they are weighted. So you could have a whole hierarchy of strongly activated neurons feeding into a what I'll call 'apex' neuron(s) but if that neuron has a small weight in its connection with the next neuron, it probably won't activate it. In other words in this case, of trying to activate a long lost memory, it could be a red herring because although there's a lot of activity it's not considered essential to the memory you're trying to trigger.

I don't know yet how to do it - how to find the most relevant aspects. That's a work in progress but I'm convinced that the answer's there somewhere in neural network mechanisms but just have to find it 

[John V]

We have the strange ability to "replay" both sounds and images in our head, hearing and seeing them in a different way to what is coming through our ears and eyes. At least, this is how it seems to me. It's like I have a second smaller screen and sound system in my head. I can play things back seemingly at will.

I'm interested in what this experience is like for other people. Would you describe it in the same way?

What is the quality of your playback like? I find my images are very poor, giving only a very blurry outline of things. I can't properly see detail in faces. However, my sound playback is amazing quality, pretty much indistinguishable from the real thing. It seems to come through at more or less a set volume, which I can't alter much.

Thanks for indulging me

I'd say I'm similar. Me and a friend at work try to stump each other with song lyrics. Typically, I read the lyric, let it percolate for awhile, and eventually my mind matches it with the music. Then once I have the snippet of music, I can hear the rest of the song and I have it. For him, it doesn't work that way. Images, I;m n ot so good at.

I'm also intrigued by the way people search visually for objects. My wife is much better at it than me. Over the years I've figured out the difference in our methods:

- I get a picture of the object in my mind, and scan quickly for that precise image. If the object is in view and matches the image, I'll find it very quickly. But, if it's there but doesn't match the image, I'll skim right over it. For example, if I'm looking for a book and picture it's front cover, but it's on a shelf upside-down, I might pass right over it and then move on to a new search location.

- My wife looks at each object in the location and identifies it before passing over it. Her method takes a little longer, but she's much less likely to pass over the correct object. Her method gives better results over all.

I've tried to switch, but it's difficult, and she's usually around to help out anyway...

[downbeatplumb]

We have the strange ability to "replay" both sounds and images in our head, hearing and seeing them in a different way to what is coming through our ears and eyes. At least, this is how it seems to me. It's like I have a second smaller screen and sound system in my head. I can play things back seemingly at will.

I'm interested in what this experience is like for other people. Would you describe it in the same way?

What is the quality of your playback like? I find my images are very poor, giving only a very blurry outline of things. I can't properly see detail in faces. However, my sound playback is amazing quality, pretty much indistinguishable from the real thing. It seems to come through at more or less a set volume, which I can't alter much.

Thanks for indulging me

Is there writing as well?
Just trying to work out if you are a terminator.

[robvalue]

If I don't get enough sleep, there is writing