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posted by n1 on Saturday June 24 2017, @03:04AM   Printer-friendly
from the i-forget-which dept.

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

The inability to remember has long been considered a failure of the brain, but a new study has found that our brains are actively working to forget memories in order to retain the truly important information.

In fact, the study’s researchers believe the brain is not designed to keep memories intact, but its actual purpose is to only hold onto valuable information to optimize intelligent decision making overtime.

"It's important that the brain forgets irrelevant details and instead focuses on the stuff that's going to help make decisions in the real world," says Blake Richards, author of the study and associate fellow in the Learning in Machines and Brains program.

The new University of Toronto paper was published Wednesday in the Neuron journal. Paul Frankland, a senior fellow at CIFAR's Child & Brain Development program, who was also involved in the study, says,"We find plenty of evidence from recent research that there are mechanisms that promote memory loss, and that these are distinct from those involved in storing information."

Source: RT


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  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday June 25 2017, @05:00AM (6 children)

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Sunday June 25 2017, @05:00AM (#530788) Journal

    Getting smarter due to drinking too much alcohol is real and called dropout?

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 25 2017, @06:02AM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 25 2017, @06:02AM (#530803)

    You added "too much" on your own. Just play with any relatively complex NN and you will see that it is a real phenomenon.

    • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday June 25 2017, @06:08AM (4 children)

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Sunday June 25 2017, @06:08AM (#530806) Journal

      I have no idea what an NN is.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 25 2017, @12:28PM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 25 2017, @12:28PM (#530855)

        A neural network... I assumed you would search "dropout" and be able to make the connection, this is the top hit: https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~hinton/absps/JMLRdropout.pdf [toronto.edu]

        • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday June 25 2017, @07:22PM (2 children)

          by maxwell demon (1608) on Sunday June 25 2017, @07:22PM (#530935) Journal

          I'm pretty sure neural network simulations don't generally simulate the effect of alcohol consumption. And I don't see how that dropout stuff you linked to is related to that.

          Oh, and BTW, if you are forgetting things because of your alcohol consumption, it definitely means drinking too much alcohol.

          --
          The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @11:33PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @11:33PM (#531639)

            The neural networks perform better if they randomly forget things they have learned during training. Try it while learning to play a song, etc. If you just keep playing the same thing over and over you will perform worse later. If instead you mix in other stuff and forget the exact movements, and relearn them, you will perform better. The same goes for studying. People remember almost nothing when they cram for one night for a single test.

            • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday June 27 2017, @04:24AM

              by maxwell demon (1608) on Tuesday June 27 2017, @04:24AM (#531749) Journal

              Thank you for confirming that you didn't get my original post. It's not that what you write is wrong, it's that is is completely unrelated to the joke in my post.

              --
              The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.