Hi Andrew and Christina
,
Rather than different parts of song being stored in different parts of the brain?
I would suggest that the rhythm, pitch arrangement are memonic devices, that initiate a ...? I was about to say a string of words?
But the brain works more in patterns? Rather than strings?
Where it initiates a retrieval of a 'pattern of words'?
So that it is perhaps the pattern/rhythm that is stored in our memory?
I noticed that John has just posted this today:
"on the news program children were being interviewed about taking part within a play, it was a musical play and they made the Comment, that once they heard the music, they were able to remember the words, I could find no better confirmation of my perception concerning music and rhythm within teaching."
Though rather than the music being stored in our memory, I would also suggest that it is a pattern that is an algorithm of pitch and rhythm?
In relation to this, I would mention a daily competition on local radio, where they play the first 2 seconds of song. Where callers then have to identify the song and recall the first 2 lines of the song.
Which suggests that a signature pattern can be established with a very small amount of information.
So perhaps it is patterns that are stored in our memory, as an interface between our long term memory and working memory?
Geoff.
G'day Geoff and Christina,
Has anyone ever asked Henry M what music that he may remember? I presume they would have. I wonder how he gets on.
Andrew
Pup018 Wrote:G'day Geoff and Christina,
Has anyone ever asked Henry M what music that he may remember? I presume they would have. I wonder how he gets on.
Andrew
Hi....Andrew
Saw your post regarding HM. Two weeks ago I met with a scientist that works with HM and he said that HM does not have in essences a declarative [explicit] memory of most everything....example...if you meet with him all day today and teach him at his level of prior learning [where ever that may be], he will not remember that tomorrow nor will he remember you. However his non declarative memory [procedural] is intact which is very important. He can still do those things such as ride a bike, swim etc. I specifically asked about swimming and they really did not know for sure but if he swam before the injury,he would still be able to carry out this procedural memory.
My guess is that the cannot remember the names of the music (declarative), but would still be able to sing a song based on his procedural memory which is operational to a point.
Be well,
Rob
May 18, 2006
Good Morning
Chronic stress affects the efficacy of the hippocampus thus reducing memory. The enclosed url was retrieved from the internet today.
Best,
Rob
URL: Chronic stress produces structural changes and neuronal damage especially in the hippocampus. Because neurotrophic factors affect neuron survival, we questioned whether they might be relevant to the heightened vulnerability of hippocampal neurons following stress. To begin investigating this possibility, we examined the effects of immobilization stress (2 hr/d) on the expression of neurotrophic factors in rat brains using in situ hybridization. We found that single or repeated immobilization markedly reduced brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) mRNA levels in the dentate gyrus and hippocampus.
June 12, 2006
Good Morning
Outstanding information regarding the famous case of HM. Everyone tends to use HM as an excellent example of memory. HM is a classic, historical case. Enjoy....retrieved from the internet today: URL:
http://www.dana.org/pdf/other/graymat_crossroads.pdf
Best,
Rob
June 21, 2006
Good Afternoon
As I have previously mentioned, the Dana Foundation's Brain in the News is an outstanding 8 page paper dealing with the brain and the subjects that we have been discussing. The May 2006 (Vol. 13, No. 5) issue is also excellent and has a really interesting article on
Addiction's Grip...Now Seen As " Extreme Memory'. You can subscribe to this newsette free of charge and it is probably some of the best readable and accurate materials on the brain published anywhere. URL:
http://www.dana.org/books/press/brainnew..._0506a.cfm
Be well,
Rob
July 9, 2006
Memory: IS VERY IMPORTANT !!!!!! Memory is a major portion of learning and especially being able to relate to other human beings. If we evolved as per Darwin's theory, then maybe, just maybe, the real human being is still a few hundreds of years in the future. Memory is what makes a human, a human. You cannot love and remember great times and events without a memory...so why do so many people abuse the memory by taking drugs et al. Many hard drugs shrink the hippocampus and make learning and memory a difficult task at best...taking drugs is not just a phase one goes through...it is a phase a parent goes through in not staying connected with his/her child. But the loss of memory with ultimate shrinkage of the hippocampus is real...and very stark..........Many things do not compute with us...why do we have war if we are the chosen species ....it seems like war should at least be anachronistic, but I know...we are not there yet....Memory and learning might indeed be biological....but evolution better watch out for creation since at the end of evolving .......is death.
We are living longer, and looking better as we age, but the research on neurodegenerative diseases [even though quite advanced] still would make a model patient mourn the loss of his/her life because of not remembering anything ....any longer...
Our students need us.... also please note: "The purpose of memory is not to let us recall the past, but to let us anticipate the future. Memory is a tool
for prediction."
- Alain Berthoz
Url retrieved 12-12-06 is quite good....url:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob...8f1f42fcbd
Hang in there....
Rob
Midazolam is a drug that can cause short-term anterograde amnesia, in which the ability to form new memories is inhibited, while leaving old memories unaffected. Midazolam can serve many positive functions, such as treating patients before traumatic procedures. However, could it be dangerous if it gets into the wrong hands?
Recent work studying the selective effects of Midazolam provides insights into memory formation:
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?St...1934-1577r
All the best,
Christina
Anticipating a gruesome or traumatic event makes it more vivid and deeply imprinted in memory:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/5313706.stm
It would be interesting to investigate how transferable these results are... Does this effect occur only for emotionally salient negative events? If not, should teachers provide the class with an outline of what they are going to learn before teaching?
Cheers,
Christina
By now most of the money is being bet that experiential learning and non declarative learning seem to share the same threshold..
The more we can build on anticipation of the hows and whys of
'what we desire to learn', the more we build neuronal networks. If we go back to the drawing board and focus on neurobiological growh we address prior learning ;the more we are actually causing a physical change in the brain; the construction of prior learning is physical...and we can see it through a high powered microscope or more sophisticated tools of our trade.
Ladies and gentlemen, the building of physical neuronal networks is a physical change in the brain and the means to building prior learning by anticipation and many other means is reason for pause. We have substrates; we have underpinnings and causation for a physical change in the brain[prior learning]; let us use it wisely.:tourist: Rob aka segarama
Connect to word retrieval by these hyperlinks:
http://www.wordfinding.com/
http://www.speech-language-therapy.com/w...ieval.html
http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/voice/landklfs.htm
Good Evening: We are familiar with declarative and non declarative memory and learning. What is meant by a 'working memory'? Please refer to this hyperling that will take you to it's respective URL.....
http://www.brainconnection.com/topics/?m...ng-memory2
Be well,
Rob aka segarama:tourist:
:pcprob:
here i am still working on memory establishment
for a four five or six year old learning arithmetic learning by simply carrying out a mechanical process on an abacus repeatedly, will build a visual memory identifiable in asian abacus users as a duel memory in research carried out looking for brain activity in maths processing differences in Asian and european voluntary guinea pigs under brain activity scanning,
chanting and nursery rhymes are established for a lifetime.
a vivid dramatic action remains a vivid dramatic memory for life.
my father was horse mad, he tied me on a saddle which slipped sideways when i was two years old sixty four years ago it is still a vivid memory
let us fit little cone hats on our children's fingers to establish the perfect ten
congratulations rob on a second ten thousand
:choc:
If we look closely at the amount of material that is being written about memory, and if we read it carefully, we will find that it should all come back to the a most profound book called MEMORY FROM MIND TO MOLECULES BY Larry R. Squire and Eric R. Kandel. This book you can take to the bank...it is "the word" by the two who really know what they are talking about.
This particular book is replete with causation and of course the underpinnings that make for good science.
I would urge all of us, to read and study this particular book before we go too far astray. If we are teaching about memory and we have not read this book, we should quite frankly get busy and read it.
Be well,
Rob aka segarama
------------------:hols:
THE IMAGEN READING METHOD
There is as significant a reason why I'm writing this on the 28th of August 2007August. The effective proof of a new three dimensional reading system has just been demonstrated to me by my five year and four months old Granddaughter Imogen.
This method of learning to read is due entirely to my granddaughter Imogen. Why is Imogen important to reading, probably because she is the most naturally gifted among my eight grandchildren but with the least inclination to read, she was able to speak at the earliest age, Imogen is one of three children her elder sister was seven years old on the 24th of August this year and the youngest of my grandchildren Charlie was one year old on Sunday the 26th of August.
Observations of my own grandchildren and the children of friends and relations has provided me with the experimental procedures and opportunities to process the necessary changes that I needed to evaluate my mathematical and reading developments and the ongoing design development necessary to produce, effective international low-cost resources, which will inevitably lead to the most effective and standardised procedure in establishing basic skills quickly and effectively in any healthy child.
It is now 12 years since I first discovered the effect the abacus can have on early education. [A TEN MINUTE REALISATION]
The Imagen Reading Method is something I have only just perfected. I describe it as three-dimensional reading, simply because it is activated by three dimensional objects, which of course every three and four-year-old child are simply aware of.
[A TEN YEAR REALISATION
Her grasp of the spatial layout of the six line alphabet came quickly
together, fixing the individual letters with the correct sound association after only six days doing it only once a day.
Imogens language ability became very clear between fourteen and fifteen months of age, she was quickly able to imitate language, which of course she did not fully understand at such an extremely early age, quite naturally her mother rejected everything that her own father had to say about education, refusing to utilise the abacus correctly at the right age on any of her three children. Limited utilisation of the abacus and a very good primary school have effectively brought Imogen's sister Phoebe to a good average standard, for a six-year-old by the time of her seventh birthday.
Imogen however, has steadfastly refused to learn to read her alphabet, in either alphabet sound, or the alternative phonetic sounds of the alphabet, as used in many schools.
Grosse irritation with my own daughters failure to follow fathers recommendations, in establishing the six line rhythmic sound of the alphabet as a starting point for Imogen, resulted in an extremely intelligent child, refusing to make any attempt to learn the alphabet whatsoever at five years of age.
My first three-dimensional object, was an oxo cube, clearly marked illustrating a cube and the word oxo which we used as a phonetic example of x, this demonstration worked so well, it was a simple matter to build twenty six physical demonstrations of practical objects and toys to place on the 26 letters of the alphabet, creating the instant ability to use a well recognised object, in order to associate the sound with the symbol of the sound, and so it has become a for an apple, and b for a ball, c for a model cat, d for a model dog, and e for a real egg with the word written on it.
So we have an immediately acceptable three-dimensional reading system created quite naturally by Imogen and her mother's inability to follow standard procedure.
I consider that this latest development has brought together everything necessary to initiate a massive demonstration on the joint ability of a child to develop both mathematical and reading ability at the earliest possible age, provided of course that they have the correct resources and the knowledge and will to utilise those resources correctly.
Effectively my research into Reading came about through the request of a concerned mother, who had quickly establish perfect arithmetic awareness in her own child through utilising the abacus correctly, asked if I had developed anything which would assist the child to learn to read as effectively.
After producing the original abacus one model I felt it would be necessary to develop something as simple and as usefull for teaching children to read.
I had in fact spent thousands of hours building a word wheel utilising three discs, this provided the beginning, the middle, and the ending of all the commonly used words and of course all the letters of the alphabet.
I had worked on this system, for years, it was only when I had developed a prototype, that I realised, I had not started at the beginning, and so it was that I then developed my system of steps within reading, first of all the realisation that rhythmic chanting quickly develops the ability to remember the sounds of the letters, then to fix the sounds with the lower case symbol of the letter as a permanent memory, then the realisation that the child must only be taught the simplest layout of the alphabet, and that they must only learn the lowercase letters in the appropriate alphabet sounds.
Repeating this until perfection is achieved.
By using a standard layout of the alphabet gradual realisation of letter layout builds understanding and the permanent memory of every symbol and sound combination.
Children mix up letters easily, the same visual format associated with sound fixes letter permanently in the childs mind, playing card size letters are used at first to overly a map of the rhythmic alphabet in standard layout.
A secondary similar layout is utilised for children to practise overwriting, in a format already familiar to the child which reinforces the symbol sound association.
Using three dimensional objects is a perfectly viable manner of introducing the alternative phonetic sounds of letter combinations,
in which the childs brain automatically develops subconscious awareness especially when differing objects are used, for example the combinations of the first two letters in salt as opposed to sugar.
-------:choc: --------------CONT
Moving on in reading can be helpful, but until all lowercase letters are full understood in low case symbol/sound combination fluent reading will be impossible.
My personal study of reading apart from observation and practical demonstration and trial and error links the early works of Doctor Orton and his disciples through modern American research to the synthetic Phonics programs used in schools today but without a near perfect understanding of the alphabet any child will struggle, perfection in understanding twenty six letters are as important in reading as ten letters and place value are in mathematics.
Perfecting both these two essential non automatically acquired
key links are the vital foundation to educational progress in any form.
My appreciation of the natural abilities that all humans possess to learn vast amounts of information quite naturally, has been enhanced to the point when I only consider that less than 1% of individual knowledge is vital within anyone's education, provided that those essential 36 symbols utilised with the English language is taught correctly, efficiently and at the right time within a child's life.
From a philosophical point of view, and the realisation that we are effectively tribal, which has in the past protected us, I now realise that only a unilateral effort within primary education, and the recognition that we are all of one species, quickly outgrowing our ability to sustain an adequate lifestyle, which we human beings with our superior communications systems require for individual fulfilment, of what we would consider to be, a worthwhile existence, there can be no alternative to a simplified and universal primary education.
Individual brain development, from four years of age, through the next four years of the child's life, requires perfect teaching, any child failing to read adequately by the eighth birthday, is in great danger of dropping behind the natural level of achievement which the majority of children will obtain.
My list of essential lessons during those first four years of every child's education, whether it be carried out within school, within the home, or given freely on a child to child basis, starts with mathematics and the abacus, a perfect understanding of the sounds of every letter and every letter combination, in order that the child can read quickly, allowing it the natural period of enchantment which those of us who were taught in this manner have all benefited from.
My research leads me to believe, that our individual brain development, is inadequate without certain physical abilities being developed during our early years, every child will benefit from learning a second language, every child benefits from playing chess, during those early years of education the game of chess needs to be included under the heading of mental development, as also would be playing the piano, learning to type formerly, the utilisation of art in all its many forms, all games and sports, starting quickly with table tennis which is effectively the most convenient form of brain and body ability that can be carried out within the home.
Concentration on rapid easily assimilated mathematics and reading ability is the combined responsibility of both the primary school and the parents, universal reading and mathematical ability will only be achieved when schools and parents are convinced that they must work together in order to enable our children to receive the start in life that comes from developing early ability to read and understand.
The investment in schools and universities which the Western world has developed is impossible for the greater part of the Third World at the present time, but with a universal system of reading and mathematics combining naturally with the advent of cheap computers and the Internet system, we are obviously in a position where ever child on earth can achieve its own individual intellectual capability at will.
Our world communities, need to recognise and develop the possibility that education brings in the manner of peaceful coexistence.
-----:pcprob: ------:pcprob: ---------:pcprob:
[SIZE="7"]THREE DIMENSIONAL TEACHING
Why am I using the term Three Dimensional Teaching?
Why am I writing this, three days after I conceived the term
Three Dimensional Reading?[/SIZE]
The answer to these two questions starts with an explanation.
My youngest child a girl called Hattie Elizabeth Nicholson, was four years old, when I discovered the power the abacus had to build a mental map of mathematics.
This mental map builds a spatial understanding of numbers, simply by regular use, even one days work with a five strand abacus, built an ability for my four year old daughter to read the setting of an unmarked abacus, which allowed her to set the number.
Five thousand five hundred and fifty five. 5,555
At four years of age, she could set any number on the abacus, that I either wrote for her, or verbally asked her to set, obviously she did not fully understand the meaning of the numbers but was easily able to understand the three dimensional aspect of the abacus, and manipulate it simply by counting from one to ten and grasping the verbal value name of each column.
TWELVE YEARS have passed by, how clear the memory of that day is still in my own mind, I had to write the value of each column on the frame for myself to grasp the principals of it, Hattie still as this abacus in her bedroom with my writing on the frame.
Hattie is now sixteen, her GSE results are excellent, she has rarely been out of the top maths set in her years in school, and achieved eleven good grades failing only French. Apart from abacus testing and trialling she has had no special training, or appeared extraordinarily diligent.
Thee dimensional reading, is pure Maria Montessori, my most highly regarded human being. Her work on education never ceased throughout her lifetime, understanding the Human Mind came naturally to Maria Montessori, through working with children in mental hospitals. She was able to repair years of mental abuse by practical three dimensional teaching, educational research needs to start where she stopped. There is no Montessori school anywhere without an abacus.
My own fascination with the human mind began with the Abacus, my redesigned Abacus One is suitable for a child of any age in any language, and also suitable for establishing verbal understanding as it is written in any other language.
The speed of the human mind is as of the speed of light, slowed to conceptual level for practical purposes, millions of years of evolution,
In mammalian terms (fifty thousand years for modern man at least) has finally resulted in our near perfect brains, we have no evolutionary help in reading or counting, but we have instant ability to understand instantly virtually anything we can see and do, many lessons (small vital pieces of an intellectual nature) can be learnt instantly.
Reading is a perfect example of human ability, our brain working at the speed of light converts words into images instantly, but it can only do this when we are perfectly able to understand the combinations of symbols we use to represent the sounds we use mentally, to create the images we need to communicate with.
Three dimensional reading uses knowledge we already have, to create the subconscious knowledge we need to assimilate before we are able to read.
Three dimensional reading from a common spatial pattern will ensure early reading in virtually every child on earth.
------------------:dazed:
Copyright : © 2007 Roudi and Latham. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
A Balanced Memory Network
Yasser Roudi* and Peter E Latham
Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, University College London, London, United Kingdom
Karl J Friston, Editor
University College London, United Kingdom
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail:
yasser@gatsby.ucl.ac.uk
Received August 11, 2006; Accepted June 5, 2007.
Abstract
A fundamental problem in neuroscience is understanding how working memory—the ability to store information at intermediate timescales, like tens of seconds—is implemented in realistic neuronal networks. The most likely candidate mechanism is the attractor network, and a great deal of effort has gone toward investigating it theoretically. Yet, despite almost a quarter century of intense work, attractor networks are not fully understood. In particular, there are still two unanswered questions. First, how is it that attractor networks exhibit irregular firing, as is observed experimentally during working memory tasks? And second, how many memories can be stored under biologically realistic conditions? Here we answer both questions by studying an attractor neural network in which inhibition and excitation balance each other. Using mean-field analysis, we derive a three-variable description of attractor networks. From this description it follows that irregular firing can exist only if the number of neurons involved in a memory is large. The same mean-field analysis also shows that the number of memories that can be stored in a network scales with the number of excitatory connections, a result that has been suggested for simple models but never shown for realistic ones. Both of these predictions are verified using simulations with large networks of spiking neurons.
Author Summary
A critical component of cognition is memory—the ability to store information, and to readily retrieve it on cue. Existing models postulate that recalled items are represented by self-sustained activity; that is, they are represented by activity that can exist in the absence of input. These models, however, are incomplete, in the sense that they do not explain two salient experimentally observed features of persistent activity: low firing rates and high neuronal variability. Here we propose a model that can explain both. The model makes two predictions: changes in synaptic weights during learning should be much smaller than the background weights, and the fraction of neurons selective for a memory should be above some threshold. Experimental confirmation of these predictions would provide strong support for the model, and constitute an important step toward a complete theory of memory storage and retrieval.
Introduction
A critical component of any cognitive system is working memory—a mechanism for storing information about past events, and for accessing that information at later times. Without such a mechanism, even simple tasks, such as deciding whether to wear a heavy jacket or a light sweater after hearing the weather report, would be impossible. Although it is not known exactly how storage and retrieval of information is implemented in neural systems, a very natural way is through attractor networks. In such networks, transient events in the world trigger stable patterns of activity in the brain, so by looking at the pattern of activity at the current time, other areas in the brain can know something about what happened in the past.
There is now considerable experimental evidence for attractor networks in areas such as inferior temporal cortex [1–3], prefrontal cortex [4–9], and hippocampus [10,11]. And from a theoretical standpoint, it is well understood how attractor networks could be implemented in neuronal networks, at least in principle. Essentially, all that is needed is an increase in the connection strength among subpopulations of neurons. If the increase is sufficiently large, then each subpopulation can be active without input, and thus “remember†events that happened in the past.
While the basic theory of attractor networks has been known for some time [12–14], moving past the “in principle†qualifier, and understanding how attractors could be implemented in realistic, spiking networks, has been difficult. This is because the original Hopfield model violated several important principles: neurons did not obey Dale's law; when a memory was activated, neurons fired near saturation, much higher than is observed experimentally in working memory tasks [1,15]; and there was no null background state—no state in which all neurons fired at low rates.
------------------------:hols: just learning easy
[SIZE="5"]WHY IS PERFECT COUNTING THE
FIRST VITAL STAGE IN READING
Simply because the recognition of numbers utilises the same neural pathways that identify the symbol/sound for letters.
Perfection in reading a number leads directly to perfection in reading a letter, when we read, we establish meaning with a sound signal as in speech (a mental signal) to give meaning.
The majority of our brain activities needed to read, are all ready in place within speech acquisition, we simply use our natural human abilities to learn the visual code of speech.
We should use a logical learning process to save time and effort.
Reading a number accurately, depends on perfection in understanding the arrangement of the number, a far easier process then the arrangement of letters within a word.
Today, and every day, we learn many new things quite naturally. Perfection in symbol recognition alongside good mathematic awareness, (relative to age) are vital in easily understanding the words and concepts needed to establish basic skills as soon as the child is able.
Why is mathematics so easy.
Because it is so visually simple.
A great deal of arithmetic is pattern perfect.
WE ONLY NEED THIRTY WORDS TO GIVE VALUE TO A MILLION MILLION
Only ten symbols are required to establish meaning.
Left to right our first nine fingers are identified by only one symbol, and the tenth finger draws on zero, which we use to complete any column without a countable number, it serves to work as our column position identification.
The abacus is an exact copy of the way we understand numerals in columns of ten, it preceded numerals, they were developed in order to utilise the concepts of columns and that simple arrangement of numerical meaning, where the column to the left is no more or less then ten times the value of its right hand neighbor.
I discovered the value of the abacus in importing spatial mathematics ability in ten minutes, it has taken twelve more years to develop a system of teaching any child to read, in a simple easy manner, a system I describe as
“Three Dimensional Reading,â€
it starts with rhythmic intelligence, learning to chant the alphabet, overlying printed low case letters, overwriting printed letters and finally using easily recognised three dimensional objects, fruit or small toys models easily recognised by any child, to cement the lowercase printed/written letter in every child's mind.
EVERY CHILD CAN REMEMBER THE SPATIAL PLACEMENT OF THREE DIMENSIONAL OBJECTS ON A RHYTHMIC MAP OF LOW CASE LETTERS.
[/SIZE]
-----------------------------------------:holiday: ------------:adder:
January 14, 2008
Memory is a very important part of learning. It is also a very important part of the brain. Initially memory was thought to include just the hippocampus, yet current research indicates even a more extensive area.
We know that non declarative memory...swimming, bike ridding, skiing etc are those activities that we learn experientially. Think about it...if we can emphasize experiential "hands on" learning...we can increase our use of memory and also facilitate better learning.
Be well,
Rob
We already have a thread that is so very profound and covers many of the most important parts of Memory, Experiential Learning, etc. The thread called "Tell me, I'll forget, show me, I'll remember, Involve me, I'll Understand" was posted a long time ago by Christina Hinton, OECD Consultant and doctoral student at Harvard University.
This particular thread shows up in experiential learning and memory by re-enforcing the non declarative portion of the memory and learning system...such as learnig to ride a bike, play the piano, skip rope, swim, drive a car, etc....that non-declarative portion of the memory system that is tantamount to experiential learning. As a manner of course, it is experiential learning.
Again, I recommend the book MEMORY:From Mind to Molecules by Larry Squire and Eric Kandel. You will not go wrong using this book with your high school students and all the way through graduate school in college or university.
If you are interesting in the correlation of this proverb with Memory, Experiential learning and other learning posts and threads, just take time to review what has been posted in these particular areas.
Be well,
Rob aka segarama