From The Verge:
Most of us think “perfect” memory means never forgetting, but maybe forgetting actually helps us navigate a world that is random and ever-changing.
So say two neuroscientists in a review published today in the journal Neuron. The argument is that memory isn’t supposed to act like a video recorder, but instead like a list of useful rules that help us make better decisions, says study co-author Blake Richards, a University of Toronto professor who studies the theoretical links between artificial intelligence and neuroscience. So it makes sense that our brains would make us forget outdated, irrelevant information that might confuse us, or information that leads us astray.
We have yet to find the limits of what the human brain can store, and there’s more than enough room, so to speak, for us to remember everything. Still, the brain actually spends energy making us forget, by generating new neurons that “overwrite” the old ones, or by weakening the connections between neurons. But why does it do so if our brains aren’t running out of space?
Firstly, forgetting old information can make us more efficient.
. . . .
Forgetting old information can also keep us from generalizing too much from one piece of information. Here, there are many parallels with artificial intelligence and how these systems learn, according to Richards. If you teach a computer to recognize faces by making it memorize thousands of them, all it will do is learn the particulars of all the specific faces. Then, when you expose it to a new face, the model won’t actually know it’s a face because it never learned the general rules. Instead of learning that faces are usually oval and have two eyes, a nose, and a mouth, it learned that some of these pictures have blue eyes and some of them have brown eyes and some have thicker lips and so on.
Human brains could run into this problem, too. Richards compared this to “Funes the Memorious,” a story by Jorge Luis Borges in which a man is cursed with perfect memory. Funes remembers in exquisite detail, but “doesn’t understand because everything he experiences is its own individual snapshot moment.” To fix this program, AI researchers use a technique called “regularization,” where they force the system to forget some of the details until they’re left with the core information they’re interested in: what is a face, what is a dog versus a cat, and so on.
. . . .
Our brains tend to forget memories of things that happened (episodic memories) more quickly than general knowledge (semantic memories). In fact, episodic memories tend to fade fairly quickly anyway — knowing which shirt you wore six weeks ago is rarely helpful. Many different factors go into this: how novel the situation is, how much attention someone is paying, how much adrenaline is in the system. “The brain’s principle is to forget everything except those instances that were highly salient,” says Richards. Traumatic events like assault, for example, stick with us because the brain wants us to remember, and avoid, things that will help us survive.
Link to the rest at The Verge
PG says this item is related to books and writing, but he’s forgotten exactly how.
Here’s a literary connection. I was just recently listening to A Study in Scarlet, and Sherlock says basically this same thing. Watson tells him that the Earth revolves around the sun, and Sherlock says he’ll try to forget that fact as soon as possible because it has no relevance to him, then explains pretty much this same idea.
I haven’t considered this idea thoroughly myself, but I do think that it’s no coincidence that as my skills in writing began really developing through my late high school and college years (my interest in writing as a profession didn’t really come about until mid-high-school), my ability at math took a sharp downturn. I’m quite certain I was better at math as a 12-year-old than I was as a 20-year-old, and better still than I am now. It’s as if my brain went, “Nope, one or the other. If we want to be good with words, we’ll have to forget all that silly stuff we learned about numbers.”
Very sloppy writing: “Traumatic events like assault, for example, stick with us because the brain wants us to remember, and avoid, things that will help us survive.”
That sentence should read something like: “…things that might hurt or kill us.”
For those who may be interested, neuroscientist Eric Kandel’s book “In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind” is truly fascinating.
Someone help my brain come up with a better working definition of “useless”.
And yet, 374-8204 is the number of my childhood best friend and it seemingly will never leave my brain. Someone is not doing his duty (looking at YOU, Neuron Manager).
325-1289
Phone number of the home where I lived from age 6 to age 9 or 10. We had a Mickey Mouse phone our calls came in on, and I remember sneaking cough drops from the drawer of the desk the phone sat on whenever I wanted candy but couldn’t acquire any. I also remember most of that home’s address(everything except zip code). Mom made me memorize the phone # and address ’cause I was a latch key kid the last couple years we lived there.
No, I have no idea why we stored our cough drops, scattered, in the desk’s drawer.
Probably Smith’s cough drops. They tasted like candy. I loved them.
I’m most relieved to read this. The other day I couldn’t remember the name of a bike track in my city and I seriously worried about my fading memory.
Now I know I was forgetting useless information and that my brain is only getting more efficient. Phew!
For writing purposes, I recall (sorry) an episode of one of those true-forensic shows. Think Discovery channel vs. CSI:Nth Iteration.
In one, a woman had claimed that some masked person had charged into her house and knocked her out. While she was out cold, the masked man killed her baby girl.
The police detective talked to the medical examiner about the case, and it so happened that the ME had also studied neuroscience. She called shenanigans on the mother’s story on the grounds that if the story was true the mother wouldn’t remember the masked man.
It turns out that forming a memory is a process, and if something interrupts the process — for instance, a whack to the head — then not only won’t you remember getting whacked, you won’t remember the preceding moments, either.
My personal experience, what I remember of it, suggests this could be true. Anyway, something to tuck away for your gumshoes, or any amnesia storylines you might cook up.
Oh, and the ME was right, t’was the mother whodunit. Apparently she had used the exact same story before, with a previous baby daughter. She did let her son and husband live, though.
One of Einstein’s colleagues asked him for his telephone number one day. Einstein reached for a telephone directory and looked it up. “You don’t remember your own number?” the man asked, startled.” No,” Einstein answered. “Why should I memorize something I can so easily get from a book?”
“Traumatic events like assault, for example, stick with us because the brain wants us to remember, and avoid, things that will help us survive.”
I remember details of an assault that happened decades ago, but can’t remember how I was rescued. I remember opening my mouth to scream but no sound came out. That’s where my memory ends, then it picks up again the following day when all was well. Factually, I know someone came to my aid, but I don’t know who, nor do I know what happened to my attacker, how he was stopped, etc. Seems counter intuitive to me. I’d think I would want to forget the assault and remember the rescue.
When I was younger and friends wouldn’t play Trivial Pursuit or watch JEOPARDY with me, I thought of my mind as a giant library with little gnomes running around shelving and pulling out data and memories as fast as I thought them or needed them. (This was pre-computers.)
Now, I see the same image, but the gnomes are crazed lunatics who are busy shredding useful stuff and stuffing data in the wrong spots while leaving useless trivia on the shelves.
Ya gotta realize, the gnomes are getting senile, too. Sometimes they screw up and leave things intact.
Yeah, no one wanted to play Trivial Pursuit with me. 🙁 Or Scrabble. I knew tons and tons of words, and after a while anyone I could wrangle into playing stopped checking the dictionary. At least I still remember what a dictionary is. For now. 😉
There’s also the problem of our brains strongly remembering events with emotional impact. That’s a big issue with PTSD. It also has the unpleasant result of making me remember every stupid or embarrassing thing I ever said or did (at least, I hope I’ve remembered them all–heaven forbid there are more!).
This might help: http://jezebel.com/just-give-it-7-seconds-1795766407
The fact that I can remember both actors who played Darrin on Bewitched and can come up with OMAC’s real name without any problem yet can’t recall many of the names of my friends’ kids tells me something about how my brain prioritizes information.
Also, for more on whether or not it’s possible to fill up the human brain, there’s this interesting Radiolab segment: http://www.radiolab.org/story/91711-limits-of-the-mind/
Fortunately all my nieces, nephews, and young cousins are named “Hey You”. Makes things easy.
That’s like naming all your canine pets “Bad dog”.
I think George Foreman had the right idea.
Oops. Can’t remember what that was.
From Wikipedia: “Foreman has 12 children: five sons and seven daughters. His five sons are George Jr., George III (“Monk”), George IV (“Big Wheel”), George V (“Red”), and George VI (“Little Joey”).”
What’s the point of giving all your sons the same name if all you’re going to do is give ’em different nicknames anyway? 😛
That’s what I was wondering! I think it’s probably more of an ego thing, rather than not being able to remember names.
Funny story, my grandmother used to run through all of her daughter’s names (six of them) whenever any one called, until some clue told her she had the right one (or else they said “Momma, it’s X!”. This made my mother so mad, yet she does the same thing with her four daughters.
I have only vague, fading snapshots of most of my life, which is rather frightening considering I once had a perfect memory (visual and audio). People used to test me by asking me what song was playing before more than a note or two had played. I was always right.
Now? I’m lucky if I remember a few words to anything. I’m not even 60 yet, so I’m wondering how long I’ll be able to write, if I can’t remember anything. Yikes.
My ability to recall things related to books I’m writing has always been much stronger than my ability to recall things from real life.
Then again, before I actually started putting my stories down on paper, I played through multiple scenes (in order) of fanfiction stories to my favorite cartoons numerous times, sometimes acting them out with whatever toys I could get my hands on.
Unfortunately that doesn’t help me remember where I put my keys and sunglasses. ;P
Check your pockets and the top of your head. That’s how I always find mine.
Don’t be silly! Who puts their keys on top of their head?
I stand corrected.
Doesn’t matter how it’s related — it’s very interesting.