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The brain is truly a marvel. A seemingly endless library, whose shelves house our most precious memories as well as our lifetime’s knowledge. But is there a point where it reaches capacity? In other words, can the brain be “full”?
The answer is a resounding no, because, well, brains are more sophisticated than that. A study published in Nature Neuroscience earlier this year shows that instead of just crowding in, old information is sometimes pushed out of the brain for new memories to form.
Previous behavioural studies [PDF] have shown that learning new information can lead to forgetting. But in this study, researchers used new neuroimaging techniques to demonstrate for the first time how this effect occurs in the brain.
http://theconversation.com/health-check-can-your-brain-be-full-40844
Original Submission
(Score: 4, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Thursday June 04 2015, @01:21PM
From the theconversation article:
However, with the description given in the article, It seems to me that the prefrontal cortex does the job of the search engine, while the hippocampus does the job of the web servers. After all, the main task of a search engine, the one that makes it useful, is that it gives a rank to the pages found, so you don't generally have to wade through thousands of pages until you've found what you need. And if some page drops from the first page of Google searches, it is effectively "forgotten" in the web, although the information is technically still there.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 04 2015, @01:35PM
The best evidence that we understand the brain will be when no one is left making analogies to the most prominent tech in their lives. I dunno how these can still be taken seriously after so many generations of the same but different thing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 04 2015, @03:14PM
The cognitive architecture of the brain is somewhat understood : http://act-r.psy.cmu.edu/ [cmu.edu]
However, how the physical implementation map to the architecture is only beginning to be understood.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 04 2015, @03:31PM
That looks interesting and worth doing but I am going to have to remain skeptical that it is correct. They should have the successful a priori predictions of their theory front and center.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2015, @04:00AM
Less wrong is probably more accurate than correct, however massives undertakings like that are necessary to integrated the fragments of datum scattered around a multitude of isolated fields into a cohesive body of knowledge about the brain and cognition.
Another notable yet less ambitious attempt at unifying those fields is the The Handbook of Brain Theory and Neural Networks... I wish for a third edition
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 04 2015, @03:45PM
Another thing after scanning the 'An integrated theory of the mind' document is they appear to be incorporating the 'power law of practice'. I am fairly certain this 'law' is an artifact of averaging blocks of trials and then averaging individuals into a group. This may or may not be important to the theory.
http://act-r.psy.cmu.edu/?post_type=publications&p=13623 [cmu.edu]
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Thursday June 04 2015, @03:53PM
Yeah, I agree.
While we know more every day how the brain works, we are still at 'Galileo's level in Astrophysics', as a comparison,IMO.
Also IMO, neuroscience is the next frontier we need to conquer. I think we are at the stage of tech and knowledge, that we can start making real progress and discoveries.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 04 2015, @04:03PM
I like to think of Tycho Brahe rather than Galileo. We simply lack the data required to figure things out, in fact much of the current data may be misleading and unreliable. Part of this is of course developing tools, ie telescopes. Like anything, you need to learn the skills to build the tools to do your job.
(Score: 1) by BananaPhone on Thursday June 04 2015, @03:21PM
Seems like the info in the brain is all there.
The indexing system, however, is limited.
In 40 years, google will come up with a brain implant to index those "forgotten" memories.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday June 04 2015, @03:38PM
I don't think it will take 40 years. A functional memory enhancing implant for mice already exists.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek