Raymond Tallis - How Does Memory Work?

We all wish for better memories. But how are memories stored? For all our #neuroscience, we still do not know even the level in the brain where memories are stored—from inside neurons to long brain circuits. We do know that the synapses between neurons in the brain are critical, but how those chemical changes mean a specific #memory remains a mystery.



Raymond C. Tallis is a a retired physician and neuroscientist. His resume boasts titles like philosopher, poet, and novelist. He is also a member of the Academy of Medical Sciences, the Royal College of Physicians and Royal Society of Arts.


Closer to Truth presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[borderlands]

I recently recalled a particular scent I hadn't smelled for over 40 years. I didn't smell it, no other smell reminded me of it, it arrived fully formed in my mind. Having arrived it transported me to when I last experienced it, who I was with, the conversations of that moment, and the emotions associated with it. It was the first time in decades I'd thought about any of those things, yet they played out in my head in precise detail and more clearly than events that happened yesterday.

Where were they hiding, these vivid memories? In brain complexity? If so, what cobwebbed corridor of the synapses were they cast into, and what unlocked them so instantaneously, along with an entire dead world of the past to which they belonged? It seems most likely that those events are concurrent, somewhere, or at least in a library of events as perfectly preserved as when they happened.

[QuestionEverythingButWHY]

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self."
--Ernest Hemingway

[waerlogauk]

This is a simple "argument from incredulity" I don't see why anybody should be impressed.

[kasumiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin]

Honestly, I think Tallis does a way better job explaining his position in his "Elusiveness of Memory" article.

Basically, the standard materialist explanation of memory relies on circularity and an infinite regress - how would neurons recognize the correct memory unless they too "remember" what it is a memory of? Maybe neurons have their own neurons to help them remember as well... and so on and so on.

Dalla Barba's "Beyond the Memory-Trace Paradox" paper is another good read that also ties in with this.

[Joker]

For questioning all the fundamentals of modern physics, he's got not more to offer than "think again"? Not very convincing.

[clemsonalum]

If we live in a block universe what if memory is somehow looking at those moments in the past? Literally peering back in the block universe at “past events” happening now. Like looking down the street but instead of spacial, temporal.

[macavelli]

This is a great example of how industries are established based upon the everyday conversation of people discussion, can be taken and soup worded to complex a simple conversation into a specialized position.

[Paulus_Brent]

Why can't a memory of the past not be encoded in a physical representation? Of course it can...makes no sense to me...

[QuestionEverythingButWHY]

"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything."
--Mark Twain

[FormsInSpace]

we also have "muscle memory" in sports, instruments ect. all animals (including humans) have memory of where they live, where their food/water is ect. dogs, cats, have sense of their past time with their owners. and feels nostalgia every time the owner leaves. or they leave. also just saw this

[crashbox]

I'll watch this now before I forget about it.

[subhankarkarmakar]

Our memory contains everything about this whole universe. It just get activated at the time when we see something and try to understand the thing. You can't believe that we can also see the future. Very few people have this sense activated.
Before asking me any question you should analyse the words deeply that I have written here .

[JohnVKaravitis]

Deniers of physical materialism have never been able to provide a viable, rational alternative to what consciousness is. So, they can just be ignored.

[GuidetteExpert]

I think memories are both to help us do better for future and when old you can look back and see if you have done enough good before dying....Thats the reason for memories.

[arunshukla]

Memory is not physical but has physical presence in brain cells in addition to its presence in space. It's very much like mind and intellect which are for sure not physical. I have seen one case of rebirth. The kid amazingly remembered many things in great details. I, like my friends, was hardcore atheist then. We all put more than a hundred questions about his past birth because we knew the man whose rebirth he claimed himself to be. The deceased was a dreaded anti-social and really a bad man and was murdered by opposite gangsters. The kid had marks of knife injuries all over his body. A genuine rebirth case. Now, how he remembered so many things while his body was cremated nearly four years ago.

[bobblacka]

I believe the brain works similar to a computer connected to the Internet. A computer can function quite well without the Internet, but it may be lacking in some functions and may lack certain types of information that was input in the past and was stored in the cloud.
The brain appears to do the same thing. The physical brain can perform many local life-support functions like keeping the heart beating and maintaining the blood chemistry in the right proportions. But higher order functions like consciousness, pain, and love appear to need input from outside the physical brain.
Take the paramecium for example. This is a one-celled organism that displays relatively complex brain functions. It knows when to eat and what to eat. It knows what the optimum environment is and uses its cilia to propel it to a desired location. It reacts to pain and will move away. It knows when to reproduce and appears to enjoy sexual reproduction.
The question is: How can a one-celled organism do this without a brain? Where are the memories stored? Where is the consciousness generated? How does a paramecium feel pain and pleasure? This is a one-celled organism with no neurons. This basically proves that thoughts and desires are not of physical origin, but are stored outside the physical body.

[johnchristopherlayton]

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!

[Boogieplex]

Im assuming he’s alluding to the supernatural, wich we already know isnt how the laws of nature, or the universe for that matter, work.He has much more work to do to convince me.

[clemsonalum]

I’ve heard a lot of childhood memories are actually you remembering discussions about the event and not the event (you think you are remembering the event though).

[GrantCastillou]

According to the TNGS, memory is a process of dynamic recategorization. It is a system process, not identifiable with any particular group of neurons or area in the brain.

It's becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman's Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with primary consciousness will probably have to come first.

The thing I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990's and 2000's. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I've encountered is anywhere near as convincing.

I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there's lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order.