Things that you remember are what make up your life

Nice concept in this article about how our brains manipulate our perception of time.

NY Mag: How Your Brain Controls the Speed of Time

The article explains that your brain doesn't actually speed up in moments of danger. This is how it does it:

What this tells us is that our brains don’t speed up when we’re in danger. Instead, the rush of fear hormones causes the brain to retain richer memories of what’s happening. This is related to the “flashbulb effect” that enables us to remember every color, sound, and smell of an emotionally powerful event. This is obviously useful from an evolutionary perspective: If you survive a life-or-death encounter, it could prove useful someday to remember exactly how you did it.

I really liked the way the author closes the article:

There’s an important big-picture upshot to all of this. If you want to live a long time, you should stick to a hard-and-fast regimen of regular exercise and healthy food. Your sleep schedule should run like a Swiss railroad. But if you want your life to seem like it’s lasting a long time, pack it with surprises. Experience intense emotions in unfamiliar environments. Connect with strangers and eat weird things. Scream, laugh, cry. These are the things you remember — and the things you remember are what make up your life.

A search engine for your memories

There is a wide gap between the things I can remember and the things that I can't. Last summer, I got together with high school friends for an impromptu reunion and they started reminiscing about our experience from decades ago. I laughed and smiled, but I couldn't remember what they were talking about. No doubt, it was somewhere in the hidden recesses of my mind, but I had long ago lost the road markers that would lead me there.

When I was a little boy, I used to laugh at my mother all the time. She was constantly mixing up the names of my friends. Unfortunately, it seems that I find myself doing that now and the thought is a bit unsettling.

This article discusses one way to deal with this.

“Human memory is not the same as computer memory,” said James Kozloski, an inventor at IBM who focuses on computational and applied neuroscience. “We don’t have pointers. We don’t have addresses where we can just look up the data we need.”

Kozloski wants to change that. He recently filed a patent for technology that, in the simplest terms, will help finish your sentences for you. Like autocomplete for your voice, the system is a model of human memory that could be embedded in a device and offer prompts when necessary. It would use a combination of surveillance, machine learning, and Bayesian inference—a kind of predictive modeling—to recognize when a person has forgotten something, then provide the missing information.

“The idea is quite simple,” Kozloski told me. “You monitor an individual's context, whether it’s what they’re saying or what they’re doing ... and you predict what comes next.”

Kozloski has a specific use case in mind:

If you can get past the creepiness factor, a cognitive interface like the one Kozloski envisions could theoretically be useful for anyone, but he sees specific applications for people as they get older—and especially for those who suffer from diseases like Alzheimer’s. “The loss of ability to access memory in the moment is the beginning of the breakdown of normal cognitive function: the ability of individuals to interact with others, take care of themselves, clothe themselves, cook meals,” he said.

.....

Imagine for example, if your cognitive assistant knew that when you dial a certain person’s phone number—your niece, let's say—it should also remind you of the name of her husband. The system might also know that, because of the time of day when you’re calling, the husband is more likely to pick up the phone. Or that, by checking a calendar, it happens to be his birthday.

“All of that context becomes the basis for inference as to what name should be spoken when they pick up the phone,” Kozloski said.

That information—Paige’s husband’s name is Teddy. And it’s his birthday!— could come through an earpiece or mobile device. Or it could be part of a larger—and, frankly, more Hal 9000-esque—home integration. “It could be just the speakers in your house that are primed and ready to advise, literally waiting in the wings to assist,” Kozloski said.

To me, the idea is at once brilliant and creepy. Who knows what actually lurks in our minds and would you really want perfect recall of all your memories? There may be some things best left forgotten. Of course, maybe it could also bring back some of those brilliant ideas that I had in dreams that just as quickly vanished when I woke up....

I suppose it would be nice to have something that would never mix up (or forget) someone's name!

Here is the link to the full article:  The Cognitive Assistant That's Like Google for Your Brain - The Atlantic

Study smarter

Original post:  Feb 26, 2015

No matter how accomplished we may be, there are always things we need to learn. For many of us, this process can be quite painful. Fortunately, science is helping us understand the difference between effective methods and those that simply appear to be effective.

To me, the most surprising finding was that re-reading your notes is a highly inefficient way to study! While it was the most common method cited by most students, here is what the researchers actually found:

"On your first reading of something, you extract a lot of understanding. But when you do the second reading, you read with a sense of 'I know this, I know this.' So basically, you're not processing it deeply, or picking more out of it. Often, the re-reading is cursory — and it's insidious, because this gives you the illusion that you know the material very well, when in fact there are gaps."

The research found that it was much more effective to ask yourself questions or to link the information to other knowledge that you might have. Even flashcards were found to be more effective than re-reading notes.

Here is a link to the full article detailing ways to improve your studies:  Re-reading is inefficient. Here are 8 tips for studying smarter. - Vox

By any other name

Original post:  Aug 19, 2014

I work with departments all across the company. In the course of regular business, I find myself meeting new faces all the time. It gets especially hard in large meetings with lots of people or at receptions where there is a large crowd with lots of people mingling about. Unfortunately, my ability to remember names is not as strong as my ability to recognize faces. I know that I am not alone in this.

It seems that most of us will run into situations where we find it difficult to recall someone's name. While there are tricks that you can learn, it seems that the most critical thing you can do is to pay attention when you first meet someone. If you are like me, it's easy to get distracted with a thousand thoughts racing through your mind. It seems that remembering names is actually quite taxing mentally.

It doesn't just take a good brain to memorize names. It takes time and attention, neither of which you have in that situation. As each person is listed, we are waiting for the next person's name. This provokes what's known as the next-in-line effect.

The next-in-line effect happens when someone is waiting for their turn to speak during an organized event. Researchers tested it by having people in small, circular groups take turns giving out information, then testing them to see which snippets of information they remembered. Each participant's memory was just fine, right up until they got to the information imparted by the person who talked just before they themselves were "up." Suddenly, they remembered nothing. Yes, they were listening when the person before them was talking. They just weren't paying attention. Their mind was already on the next task.

When we see a group of people coming towards us with their hands out for handshakes, we're in a situation in which we know we'll have to take in a cascade of information, and we try to prepare for it. This is exactly the wrong thing to do. We try to simultaneously greet the person in front of us, and get ready for the next person in line. As it turns out, we can either take in and store information, or get ready for the next grouping of information. Since we try to do two things at once, we fail at both.

Another possible explanation is that we are trying to remember more details about a person. While we may believe the sound of our own name is magical to us, in reality it may not stand out in another person's mind. It may be far easier to remember exotic details about someone than it might be to remember their name.

The second article ends on a witty note:

So the next time you'd like to excuse yourself for forgetting someone's name without offending the person, just say something like, "Oh sorry, I was just overly concerned with telling you my own name to remember yours. But to be fair, your name isn't actually that interesting to me, and besides, it's inconsequential in the grand scheme of things."

Here is a link to the article on the next-in-line effect:  The Psychological Effect That Explains Why You Suck at Parties

Here is a link to the end quote:  Why Names Are So Easy to Forget - The Atlantic

Another reason to challenge yourself mentally

Original post:  Jul 9, 2014

After the shocking result yesterday in the World Cup semifinals, I'm sure that there are some people who will want to forget the recent past. I did not get a chance to watch and I could not believe it at first when I learned that Germany had beaten Brazil 7-1.

Most of us will be in the opposite situation. We're going to be searching for ways to help us retain our mental sharpness. As we age, that will be especially important. Recent research is starting to show the value of learning new and different things all through your life.

Challenging the mind early with education and stimulating work and later in life with reading, socializing and computer use may help keep it thinking clearly into old age, according to new research. A lifetime engaging in intellectually stimulating pursuits may significantly lower your risk for dementia in your golden years. Even people with relatively low educational and professional achievements can gain protection against late life dementia if they adopt a mentally stimulating lifestyle, reading and playing music and games.

A new study by the Mayo Clinic was recently published on this very topic. It found that high levels of intellectual engagement could help delay the onset of cognitive impairment by about nine years!

The researchers found that higher scores that gauged education and occupation as well as higher levels of mid/late-life cognitive activity (e.g., reading books, participating in social activities and doing computer activities at least three times per week) were linked to better cognition in older patients.

If you ever needed a solid reason to keep learning, this might be it!

Here is the link to the full article:  Being Intellectual, Studying and Learning Lifelong Might Prevent From Dementia

Lost amid the clutter

Original post:  Feb 6, 2014

As the years go by, I find that I have learned many new things. I feel as if I have an amazing storehouse of information. At the same time, I am also noticing that it is getting harder to maintain peak performance.

It's not in every situation nor all the time. There are times when I feel as if I am working better than I ever have. Then there are other times when I have trouble remembering the name of someone I've known for years but haven't seen in a while. I am on my way to do something and I get distracted and completely forget what I was supposed to do. It's these little oversights and omissions that make me wonder if I'm just getting old.

New research indicates that there may be a scientific reason for these developments. There is some good news on this front. While it is generally accepted that memory and recall performance declines starting at age 25, more recent research seems to indicate that the drop-off is not as steep as it was commonly perceived to be.

Dr. Carstensen and others have found, too, that with age people become biased in their memory toward words and associations that have a positive connotation — the “age-related positivity effect,” as it’s known. This bias very likely applies when older people perform so-called paired-associate tests, a common measure that involves memorizing random word pairs, like ostrich and house.

“Given that most cognitive research asks participants to engage with neutral (and in emotion studies, negative) stimuli, the traditional research paradigm may put older people at a disadvantage,” Dr. Carstensen said by email.

The new data-mining analysis also raises questions about many of the measures scientists use. Dr. Ramscar and his colleagues applied leading learning models to an estimated pool of words and phrases that an educated 70-year-old would have seen, and another pool suitable for an educated 20-year-old. Their model accounted for more than 75 percent of the difference in scores between older and younger adults on items in a paired-associate test, he said.

That is to say, the larger the library you have in your head, the longer it usually takes to find a particular word (or pair).

In other words, it seems that as you get older, it's just harder to find what you are looking for in the attic of your mind!

Here is the link to the full article:  http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/27/the-older-mind-may-just-be-a-fuller-mind/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

Disappearing in a flash

Original post:  Feb. 20, 2012

No matter how exquisitely we construct any single post, it is bound to be consumed in a brief moment. The work of hours or days may sometimes last only a few minutes. I think about that when I read some of the bloggers that I follow. They relentlessly add new information. Yet as quickly as they can post it, I voraciously consume it. The tortured output that might have required a year of labors is old news in a few minutes.

At the end of every movie, the credits roll by. I find that very few people will stay through the credits. They have little to no interest in the endless scroll of names. Yet if you turned that around, there is undoubtedly a long trail of tears that led each of those individuals to sacrifice in the hopes of enjoying some brief moment of fame. Even if it is only a flash of a second in nearly unreadable type rushing past at a hundred miles of hour, it is still an achievement that most will never enjoy. It represents that singular ability to point to a real achievement. Even if it is nearly invisible to the masses, it is a way to be a part of something much larger than an individual effort. Every single movie is the collective work of hundreds of people. For some, it may be the only movie they ever work on. It will be the only time they can ever truly refer to something more tangible than the blink of an eye.

While the overwhelming majority of co-workers will never read a single word of this collection, I will still write. Maybe it is simply ignoring the larger fates. Be that as it may, it is mine. It represents a small piece of the overall effort I bring to my projects daily. All too soon, it will also be but a distant memory.