Theoretical Question - Memories Question 3

[galexcd 0]

So over the years I've thought of many strange questions related to math, science, and physics, and there are way too many and they all go way too much into depth to all be put into 1 thread so I shall make separate threads for them all when I think of them.

I haven't posted one of these in a while mainly because I haven't had the time to do it with midterms and other nasty school stuff constantly being shot at me. So right now I'm just sitting here with my laptop killing time and thinking. What a perfect environment to do a new theoretical question!

P.S. in my last theoretical question thread somebody mentioned that my thread was way too long for a very simple question. I assume he meant my "ultimate question" at the end. I just want to clarify that that is not really the whole point of the thread. I just add at the very end the question that inspired me to write the thread. Most of my ideas are put into the body so don't just skip to the end question and read that. The main content for the thread is in the body!

So without further ado...

 

 

MEMORIES- I am a computer scientist so I really have no medical background but does anybody really know how our memories work? How they are stored in our minds. The amazing part is that they are the only record we have of our past. I read somewhere that there is not a cell in your body that was there 7 years ago. Your body constantly makes new cells and gets rid of the old ones, but if that is true what links us to ourselves. Are our memories the only thing that makes myself me? Well sure I guess there is DNA but the only way we can see that is our appearance, which changes anyway. What if you somehow found out that what you remember was not what you actually did. What if your memories were a lie?

 

So this brings me to my ultimate question for this thread....

What if you were trapped in the same time lapse for your entire life but you didn't know it. What if your life is only a few hours long and after those hours are up then your mind was restored how it was two hours ago and then you relive the same two hours again without realizing it. And everything you remember from before those two hours never really happened, they are just false memories... I know its a stretch but I find myself thinking this a lot especially when I am really looking forward to something. I think "what if I never get to that point in time? What if I am constantly reliving the hours before it and never experience it?

Edited November 29, 2007 by alex7h3pr0gr4m3r (see edit history)

[truefusion 3]

What if you were trapped in the same time lapse for your entire life but you didn't know it. What if your life is only a few hours long and after those hours are up then your mind was restored how it was two hours ago and then you relive the same two hours again without realizing it. And everything you remember from before those two hours never really happened, they are just false memories... I know its a stretch but I find myself thinking this a lot especially when I am really looking forward to something. I think "what if I never get to that point in time? What if I am constantly reliving the hours before it and never experience it?

There are about three things i see here: (1) In order for this to be possible, you would have to have been placed on earth (or wherever) at a predestined age. For imagine if a child who is one hour old, of what would their mind be? They still exist, but their mind says otherwise. The child would die, for its body cannot survive with a "dead" mind. Therefore, it would have to be at an age where the person bears conscious of their own existence and is capable of maintaining themselves. (2) What if one person had a time-reset at 10:30 PM, that would mean they would have their memory reset to 8:30 PM. Now let's say another person existed and was living with that person, but this person's time-reset was at 9:30 PM. That would mean one is able to tell the other person that they did something that they don't remember an hour ago. I'm not entirely sure how to phrase that, however. But i think you can bear some insight on what i mean. (3) This one relates to number 2. It's more relative, however, to the person rather than a third party telling them what they did. Let's say someone writes notes of what they did, you know, a journal. Within this two hour time period, they took the time to write it in in a new page. After the time-reset, the person goes back to write in the journal. But wait. What's this? What they wanted to write is already written. Is someone playing a joke? But how is that possible? Is someone capable of reading my mind before i even think up something? ...Anyways, you get the idea. And think of the possibilities where this could lead to! People may be too confused to advance in anything.

 

And imagine hygiene.

 

Nice topic, btw.

[Galahad 0]

And, as always Alex has some great question for us :DFrom what I mannaged to dig up from the Web, it appears that long lasting memories we have, change our brain also in a physical way... So, your theory that people coul'd have a reset time after some period of time, is totaly plausible to me...And if we suppose this does happen, a person does "reset"... Well... What truefusion said about those 3 point, they all stand... It would be hard to be all alone when that reset time comes, and nobady to notice it... But, I guess the biggest problem would be with some written trace we leave behind us, be it a journal, some notes, or just thoughts... Heck, even posts on a forum can count... And then you read something you "allegedly" wrote, but you have no idea about that... That would be a mess... I believe people would start going out of their mind...Of course, there is a possibility that we all have the same reset time... We conviniently reset at the same hour, say, midnight, when we're all asleep... That would be freaky... Who would know what's happening? People would go insane reading what they wrote, looking at their own work, their own masterpieces of art, paintings, music, computer scientists at their programs...We do not know if there is some sort of redundancy in the brain... Is only one brain synapse storing individual memories, or is there some sort of a backup? We only use, what, 1% of the brain, 2%? What about the rest og it? Is it just a huge storage for our memories? If it is, and memories are indeed redunant, how to restore that backup of yours? Many, many questions, and so little answers...P.S.It sounds to me as a global conspiracy theory again

[galexcd 0]

WHAT? I didn't post this! Oh wait, did I? Was my mind reset? Haha just kidding...Well I'm glad that you guys enjoy my topic. When I was first thinking about it, it seemed like a great idea to post but while I was writing it, it started to sound really weird so I apologize. So first to address TrueFusion. You brought up a point I forgot to mention, because of course if everything was how it was before your memory was tampered with then you would realise that something was up, but I was thinking of everything just being reset when your memory was reset. Like you would never know you are reliving your past experiances over and over.

[midnightvamp 1]

Hmmm.... that's a very interesting question, and something that I've never really thought about before.@truefusion: I wasn't thinking about a person only getting to live the first couple hours over and over again.... that just adds a whole other dimension to this idea for me. But I don't really think it would be about the body not being able to survive because it wouldn't be aware of it's own consciousness, because I figure, a child at that age wouldn't be alone anyway... wouldn't it have to have the parents with it (in the real world, or in the repeating world) to survive? So if that's the case, I suppose the people caring for the child would also have to be repeating the same time frame as the child... and here I was thinking everyone would have to be in there own loop, but if that's the case, either it's all multi-dimensions where the same person can be repeating several stages of life, or everyone in the world would probably have to repeat the same two hour time slot, because of all the interactions. I'm confusing myself, so I'll stop there lol...@galahad: Interesting... and I wonder how written things would work in the equation, because if everything was being reset, wouldn't the written things be reset as well, so it was like it never really existed in the first place? Like Maybe I've been writing this forum post over and over again, and when the time resets, it's as if the post wasn't here, because I hadn't done the things yet? As for people's times being reset at different times so they have some of the memories, while the other person has lost them and because of their personal "reset", that would open up a whole other can of worms.Like what if person A was somewhere, then met up with person B who has their time reset, leaving person A mid conversation with a person that is no longer there. Because person B was reset and is now repeating what they were doing before the meeting, so they in essence "disappeared" for no good reason from person A's timeline. Unless there could be different people in each time so that one wouldn't disappear... and I'm really losing this train of thought, so I'm going to stop there for that one too lol... Now let me tell you my take on it all, if you can make any sense of my ramblings, because I tend to ramble on about things that are interesting, but baffle me just the same: Anyway, the first thing that came to mind for me was "now there's something that explains deja vu"... Not really sure if this is the case for reliving a single set of hours over and over again, cause then you'd probably feel deja vu more often or perhaps a much stronger feeling of it, but maybe it is possible that we do relive certain periods of time over again, and that could be why we feel that way.Well, now that I've got that out of my system lol...I would really hope that those last few hours that I'd be living over and over again would be something great. Even if it's the hours that lead into something great that is coming, that would still be decent to relive, cause even if you never make it to the actual even, it can be sometimes a lot of fun being excited for the upcoming events, just as much as the special day itself. I'm thinking about Christmas right now... like on Christmas eve, I get all excited over the fact that it's only one more sleep until it's Christmas day, and the joy that can bring to a person is great. You feel great, and things just seem to be happier during that time just before bed when you are waiting for Santa to arrive.So, a case like that, it wouldn't seem so bad to relive something like that over and over again... cause it's a joyful time and something that I'd be happy to unknowingly do time and time again.Now what would worry me, would be that I'd get stuck into a rut where my three hours that I get to repeat would be while I was doing something that I really dislike, or while I'm bored or even sleeping. That wouldn't seem to be a good way to go through life (if you can call it that, because it's not really going through it, other than that brief time period of it).But should I really be worried about being stuck inside a rut like that? Because if it were really happening, then it would mean that I'd be doing this same thing over and over again... therefore, I'd be on this forum, posting this same message hundreds of times (I must really be racking up the credits now, right?! But no... it's all reset again when I start the loop over lol. Anyway...) and feeling a bit tired and hungry all at the same time, because that's the way that I feel now.I wonder what it would be like to have those fake memories too... like we base the things we think about and feel on what we've done and felt in the past... so if all these things never really happened, and the memories were fake, I wonder if they could be changed each time that we started the loop again, so that we'd have a completely different past.Mind you, on second thought that doesn't really work either, because if I had a completely different past I probably wouldn't have been making websites, or found myself on this forum, and then I wouldn't be posting here either. So it wouldn't really be living the same couple hours over and over, but rather, the same couple of hours would always be completely different - not that you'd ever really know (because you wouldn't remember.)Anyway... My final thought on this whole crazy business (great topic by the way!) is I read somewhere a while back that you must forget something 7 times for it to enter into your long term memory. Perhaps then, all the things that are now in our long term memories are events that were significant enough in our lives that we've had to repeat them 7 times in the past?I guess now it's time for me to go and look up some informations on memories, because you've sparked my curiosity. It's an interesting fact to know though that your entire body has nothing in it from seven years ago though... so if every thing's been replaced, I wonder how your brain or cells or whatever it is passes along all the information to the "new" cells as the are changing over. Oh.. so many things to think about, so little time...

[dre 0]

What if your life is only a few hours long and after those hours are up then your mind was restored how it was two hours ago and then you relive the same two hours again without realizing it.

Explain the details of this "time lapse" a bit to me. Suppose you were running 3 miles right before the time lapse. Would you then clueless as to how your body is so darn tired or would your body be restored to an earlier state? Also, I'm wondering why your memories wouldn't carry on from one lapse to the next. For example, it would appear as elections are coming up and it would appear to continue so for 20 years, so perhaps you might think something peculiar is going on. If you would care to answer those questions then I can perhaps ask some better ones (I can't now, don't want to waste my time if I'm completely wrong). Thanks for your time.

[csp4.0 1]

I watched somewhere that he mind can store infinite amounts of data, just to give you a comparison. If every atom in the universe was turned into data, it would fit into a person's mind. Why we forget? We forget because the mind considers some data to be 'old' and just stores it and doesn't catalogue or index it, thats why we get the 'I was going to say something but now I forgot'. And why hypnosis can bring back old memories.People say that, if I can store infinite data into my brain, why can't I remember a book when I read it the first time?That is because it isn't how much data we can store, its how we store it!Storing data isn't just a matter of 'Compute, COMPUTE! COM-PUTE!!!!!' our minds can only process limited amounts of data at one time, and so thats why reading slower helps you to remember more than reading maybe 1500WPM?

[devin_love3 0]

What I want to know is, what is the scientific explanation for dejavu? Its a complete anomaly. I believe that some people have a vision of the future in their dreams and just dont remember until the event has already happened or is in the middle of happening.

[dre 0]

What I want to know is, what is the scientific explanation for dejavu?

Doing something and thinking to yourself "I've done this/been here before," ect. without actual prior experience. Personally I think it's just a bunch of crap or a poor memory, I've never experienced anything like that. I'm guessing the reason why the definition is so vague in the first place is that they don't know what it is themselves, making me believe it's a bunch of crap.

[devin_love3 0]

this sounds alot like the matrix or something. I have thought about this kind of thing, what if we are just hooked up to a machine that simulates life as we imagine it. It could be the year 8567 for all we know. We could be being tested on by some advanced race. Also, I sometimes remember things that have never happened. Then one day, it happens, like dejavu. It could either be that I lived a past life or that I have had a premontion or vision of the future.

[acratings 0]

Some people with special forms of mental retardation have the ability to remember everything that they have ever done. A while ago I was reading a story in National Geographic about this person who remembered everything that happened on any date in the past. If I remember correctly, this phenomenon happened after the person got a concussion, so it's possible that people have the potential to retain all of their memories, but the brain just filters out what's important.There are just so many strange things we don't know about the brain. I remember reading a story about someone ho had been learning English for about a year, and had very bad English, and got into a car accident and had slight brain injury. For a couple hours after the accident, the person was able to speak English perfectly to the EMTs, but after a while was back to normal.

[Okara KAmi 0]

Well I think the memory in itself is not something we can possibly understand. Because as you said 'Acratings' that we have a lot of untapped memories. The car accident one interested me the most as it seems he was able to somehow reach into underlying knowledge of the language he had gained from reading and all, and it came to use for the few moments that his mind was in limbo. This juts goes to prove that the power of our mind is far greater than anything we can possibly fathom. Galexcd I recommend not thinking that way. Why? Because this type of thinking is too much for small people like us to handle XD I know what you're saying, as if what is happening now, me typing this post is a chain of events that are recycled. My memory of the past is fabricated and any hope for the future is narrowed down to a restart of the few moments that I have now. Life could even be 1 second, where everything before it was just a memory, made up and the 1 second of life was reused over and over. But the way I see it, who cares? If it is, then so be it. If I am stuck in a loop, as long as I don't know about it, I'm fine. If I do find out my life is but the cycling of events and usage of a made up past, then I might think of a way to break the cycle. Then again what if:You were replaced by a clone with the exact same memories and features and everything as you.You were killed and that clone took your place in life. And the person who is reading my post right now is the clone and not the real you. The memories of this clone tell it that it is real but the real you may be lost forever. Wouldn't that be a bummer? XDMemories is what assures us. Memories give us aspirations, memories give us hope, memories teach us lessons. Without memories we would be vegetables, void of anything above instinct. Without them I doubt we could call ourselves human =) In loss of memory I don't mean amnesia, because even in that state, you remember how to speak, basic functions and fundamental life.---Want to know a scary possibility. A government, with the given resources, could change the memories of its population to produce a result. For example, maybe 9-11 never happened, maybe the memory of it was just fake and the monument in its place was built there from the start, rather than over the ruins of a fallen building. Maybe the motivation it gave us to fight the war against terrorism was purely surreal, created to draw out support. Of course though it may be a far fetched possibility, I'm just saying that it could be one example of how memory defines us.

[galexcd 0]

Okara KAmi completely understands everything I was trying to bring across in my post. Now I do understand that there isn't much us feeble minded humans can do but I'm just trying to bring up the fact that people rely on this "memory" so much, it defines everything about them. What kind of person they are and what they will do next, and if there is nothing but our memory to prove, or back up our memory, we really shouldn't rely on it as much as we do should we? But then again, you must remember it is all we have, so we have no choice. It is all a very odd thing to think about, and I wasn't really expecting any answers. This thread is functioning exactly how I wanted it to, to make people start thinking.

[Okara KAmi 0]

lol make people start thinking. Silly Galexcd, thinking is for people who can get past mirror-lines XD *points at Multiple Universe thread*Well if I ever had an idea of a social experiment, which I too often find myself in the abundance of, I would completely efface someone's memory, and put them in a bubble. Soon after, I would observe how they develop. Without memory, how would we exist? We grow up because our parents teach us, raise us or at least something does. This nourishes our memory with fuel to survive. Without that fuel, how would we exist? Coming to my point. Without memory, would we exist? We need our senses to record memory, like a book without pages, we use different pens to ink down facts, feelings and opinions. If we had no memory of anything, and if we were isolated in a realm with nothing in it to affect us and give us a memory to tap into... we wouldn't be. Like a spec of insignificance stranded in the void we would be... pointless? That then means that memory gives us existence. So altering it, would mean altering who we are. :)Yay more notes on how to become a better dictator.

[pedro-kun 0]

How are memories stored?

Well, memories are a still controversial matter, but we all think that their storage involves some pathways present in the brain (circuits). The flow of neurotransmitters and electrical impulses throughout these circuits help perpetuate memories (the more times they pass the circuit, the "stronger" they are). However, we still don't know the "substance" of which memories are made; we know the neurons and their synapses help a lot (lol) but we're still reasearching about the precise storing mechanism (is it categorical? or perhaps just a mess? there are several theories on this matter).

 

@galexcd:

There are indeed cells which are not renewed. For example, the nervous system's cells! That's why people with strokes have such a hard time. The ischemic are in the brain simply dies away and never gets "renewed".

There are however, a few theories of stem cells coming from the olfactory bulbs to make new neurons... but even so, that's a pretty long shot (i mean, it does happen, it's been proven, but the rate at which it happens doesn't allow for efficient regeneration).

 

@csp4.0:

It is quite impossible for the brain to store infinite amounts of data. It's not hard to imagine why, unless somehow we believe the brain is somekind of singularity. Also, we forget things because we don't "need" them. I know, many of us forget important things too, but that's because the brain deems them unnecessary, somehow. Oh, and they ARE forgot; they don't just get a label like "Old junk" - they do disappear. If memories weren't forgotten, the brain would overload, or something very close to that. I believe there are people with impaired forgetting abilities which die young because of brain damage

 

@devin_love3:

Dej? vu happens when there is an anomally in the conduction of stimuli through the brain. There are several explanations for this. One of them states that sometimes the brain stores short-term memories in the long-term memories' area. When that happens, you get the feeling that what you are experiencing already happened. However, it is just because the data went through the wrong pathway.

Another explanation is an accessory pathway to the visual and associative cortices in the brain. When you see something, that data is transmitted to the visual cortex and then processed for storage. Imagine if the data could somehow be processed and stored *before* it reached the visual cortex... that way, you would only see it *after* you stored it, and therefore would be able to "remember" it as well.

 

 

Cheers,

Pedro