Brain's Cache Memory Found 531
Shipud writes "Electrical activity in a single section of the brain has been linked to very short-term
working memory, as is
reported at Nature. Very short-term working memory capacity is thought to be related to intelligence. In the same way that a larger cache speeds processing time, people with a greater capacity for holding images in their heads are expected to have better reasoning and problem-solving skills. The localization of this ability is a surprising finding, as until now it was believed that STWM was diffused throughout the cortex, rather than localized."
Great (Score:5, Funny)
Employer: I'm sorry sir you don't have a big enough cache for our needs. We are going to have to let you go.
Employee: Man this blows i would be really upset but i forgot what you just said.
Re:Great (Score:5, Funny)
He's got the brain-cache of a Celeron!
or
I'm feeling pretty Celeroned after that party last night!
Obligatory Simpsons Quote: (Score:5, Funny)
Sgt. Friday: "Are you sure this is the woman you saw in the post office?"
Burns: "Absolutely! Who could forget such a monstrous visage? She has the sloping brow and cranial bumpage of the career criminal."
Smithers: "Uh, Sir? Phrenology was dismissed as quackery 160 years ago."
Burns: (measuring Smither's head) "Of course you'd say that... you have the brainpan of a stagecoach tilter!"
Re:Great (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Great (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Great (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Great (Score:3, Interesting)
Parent may have been in jest, but I think comment should be modded interesting: The brain of an infant is mostly spare parts (some of the brain is hardwired but most of it is just "extra" brain cells (plus we barely understand the brain compared to how much we understand the body.. b.i.d.)) therefore perhaps we really could develop a training regimen which would allow the "cache" to appropriate more "hardware" (neurons) to effectively "u
Re:Great (Score:5, Interesting)
However what I suspect is that while they have found the portion of the brain that helps with problem solving actual intelligence is linked to far more factors than one area
For example someone who has a small "cache" area and can't hold too many images at once may be able to work round this with a greater long term storage capacity which they can draw on.
It's all well and good to be able to cache images and information quickly. doesn't help you if you're outputting onto a 10 meg Hard drive.
Re:Great (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone knows that both the P4 and the Celeron share the same architecture ( Intelligence ? ), but vary only in their cache size. Now run a comparison using any application have you and see which one can do the task faster.
It is the size of the cache that determines intelligence in this case. The cache size just inhibited the ability of the intelligence to work as quick as it could.
no (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Great (Score:5, Funny)
Ok, people, brace for the "ENLARGE your cache by 3" in one month!!!" spam...
Re:Great (Score:5, Funny)
Upgrade Device Already Available (Score:3, Insightful)
Your modern child already carries around a brain-cache upgrade. He calls it a notebook.
The more advanced (creepy alphas, we don't hang around with them) carry PDAs.
Of course, an aid can become a crutch. I recall a story told me by a friend of mine. Her grandmother, an unlettered immigrant from Lithuania, has, perforce, a phenomenal memory, never n
Re:Great (Score:5, Interesting)
Short-term storage is a little more difficult to augment effectively because of the time factor. So maybe this discovery will actually drive the first brain mods. The evolutionary incentive is surely there.
Let's just hope Sony or Apple doesn't start off the race with some terribly marketed, proprietary, yet superior technology that will be forever relegated to the basement vault where they keep dinosaurs such as Betamax.
Re:Great (Score:3, Funny)
New Age Spam (Score:3, Funny)
If you're reading this, you know that men with small short term memory don't get ahead....
Re:YOUR INTERNET DEGREE HOLDS NO WEIGHT HERE! (Score:2, Interesting)
The peer review of this "OLD" psychological ability to "chunk" information for 7 +-2 episodic memories is not a problem solving based semantic thought process.
What about parallel distributed processing models of the brain, perhaps this irresponsible researcher had a case study that defied all statistics and the 35 years of PET scans, MRI data, and REAL SCIENTIFIC STUDY. Note too that the "chunking" ability is not a static number, and has been pr
Re:Great (Score:2, Funny)
A mind like that is to be envied.
Great? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Great (Score:5, Interesting)
That's actually an interesting thought. There are a lot of complaints about whether or not IQ tests are viable; IQ is even usually defined as the ability to do well on IQ tests. If the "performance bottleneck" of the human has been found, it may be possible to develop definitive, or at least useful, tests for actual intelligence.
Re:Great (Score:4, Funny)
Already Here. (Score:4, Interesting)
All of these are used to sort people, suposedly people with higher scores on these are somehow smarter, despite obvious instances of people who do not perform according to their 'score'.
Re:Already Here. (Score:5, Insightful)
suposedly people with higher scores on these are somehow smarter,
Not smarter, just better able to navigate the rote kinds of query and response that measure success in academic environments.
Hmmm. Sounds good. (Score:5, Funny)
What was I saying again?
W
Re:Hmmm. Sounds good. (Score:5, Funny)
More? Come on, 640k ought to be enough for anybody!
Stem Cells (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Stem Cells (Score:5, Interesting)
Simply injecting stem cells there wouldn't really do a lot
Increasing the size of that area would probably make some sort of difference to the STWM, so we'd need to approach it in a way that caused us to end up with not only more cells there, but more cells that actually perform the correct function there, and that tie in with the existing lot of cells. No use having a ball of cells of the right type there that just grow into a new mass. In fact, that's what we call a tumour. Never good in the middle of your head
Needless to say, that's not as easy as it sounds. You'd need to get some stem cells, and discover what is the exact stimulus that makes them, in the developing embryo, mature into 'STWM cells'. Since I think we can likely assume that your 'brain cache' doesn't grow in size throughout life (or you'd get progressively more logical and have an improved short term memory as you got older), we can also probably guess that this area is fully developed at birth and therefore the only place the correct environment for this differentiation would be likely to occur is in the developing foetus.
Which means that you'd have to take some developing foetuses apart to try and localise the correct chemical environment. And then you get into legal/ethical fluff. Currently, there's no way you'd get permission to take foetuses to bits to improve some adult's short term memory. Maybe in times to come, we'll be able to co-localise these factors and chemical environment electronically, or with some sort of prenatal scan. Until then, I'd think that stem cell therapy is unlikely to work correctly.
Re:Stem Cells (Score:3, Interesting)
There is a part of behaviorial science that says "you get better at solving the problems that appeal to you, and the better you are, the more appealing the problems become", of course most
On RTFAing, I have this feeling that the region of the brain under discussion is not the cache memory but rather the
cutting out cells could improve brain! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hmmm. Sounds good. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm. Sounds good. (Score:5, Interesting)
Think of one orange, now think of that orange in minute detail, focus on the pores, the cut stem, focus on that image, now while focusing on that image focus on the SMELL of that orange, then the feel of it...
the most important part is not getting stuck in 2 or 3 dimensional memory.. but 5 dimensions... you must exercize your memory with all your sensory inputs.
usualkly the people that have a better recall will recognize this trick...
think of a rose.
those of you that can not only see it and it's texture but smell it have the higher processor cache... those of you that can also feel the stem have the most processor cache.
Re:Lucid thinking (Score:3, Interesting)
It isn't in the greatest detail composited like that, but I do it all day long.
Inside my mind with no visual input, I can get really detailed - all senses, large landscapes. I've always attributed this to what I call my "concept driver", a piece of wetware that tells my visual cortex a tree
Re:Hmmm. Sounds good. (Score:3, Funny)
Sinclair 2k: "Not enough hmmmuh..."
Bender: "Memory?"
Sinclair 2k: "Oh great. Now I remember that word but I forgot my wife's face."
Nature /.ed? (Score:2, Funny)
I always thought prefrontemporal was short-term. Is this anything new?
Re:Nature /.ed? (Score:5, Insightful)
This seems to be quite questionable as far as any sorts of broad conclusions are concerned.
When people talk about "intelligence" they usually mean something like "being able to grasp two deep concepts and put them together"
Granted, I have seen a correlation between people who are capable of remembering 10 digit codes and intelligence
Maybe this is a red herring.
Re:Nature /.ed? (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed. Intelligent people would be those who are excellent at conceptual blending [wikipedia.org]. List of resources on this page [wikipedia.org].
Granted, I have seen a correlation between people who are capable of remembering 10 digit codes and intelligence
I'm currently reading Kandel & Squire's Memory [amazon.com].
Having a too-good memory is what you don't want. They relate the case of a hyperretentive memorist from Russia, who had almost supernatural retention skills, but was hopeless at appreciating metaphors, or pattern matching or generalizations. Which are the building blocks of analytical intelligence.
Re:Nature /.ed? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, one assumes a "hypertentive memorist" is dealing primarily with long-term memory. I interpret this article as dealing with the type of short term memory used in solving an equation, or writing a small code section. It's certainly possibly your HM was deficient in that area.
I think there's a valid point to be made about how much information someone can deal with in those contexts. The one caveat I'd make is whether the person is dealing with text or imagery - AFAIK there's quite a range there.
At any rate, I think it's clear that many intelligent people also have above average long-term memories.
images (Score:4, Funny)
good news for pr0n hounds.
too bad it's addicting
Isn't that (Score:2, Funny)
Then the cache gets written to the hard drive for permanent storage so after you turn yourself off (in bed), the data is there the next day.
Man vs machine (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Man vs machine (Score:5, Interesting)
Now a days, we explain it through digital computers. Before that was electrical systems. Before that mechcanical systems, I would imagine fluid systems, etc.
We seem to always use our most modern technology as an analogy for things that are still a little outside our grasp (such as the brain). In 20 years we may be describing the brain in terms of nano-tech.
Re:Man vs machine (Score:5, Informative)
Steam engines were mighty popular, Freud's psychoanalysis is partly based on the stream engine analogy (mental "pressure" a "governor", etc.) Today, quantum mechanics is popular with psychoanalists.
Re:Man vs machine (Score:4, Funny)
Comparing a field that noone understands to a field that noone understands?
Re:Man vs machine (Score:3, Interesting)
This is unethical (Score:2, Funny)
My brain is classified as AMD (Score:5, Funny)
Re:My brain is classified as AMD (Score:2, Funny)
Math students require cooling systems.
But these heatsinks can get so heavy sometimes.
Solution (Score:2)
Kjella
Re:My brain is classified as AMD (Score:5, Funny)
Like, dude. That's what the propeller beanie is for.
KFG
Re:My brain is classified as AMD (Score:5, Funny)
I gave up using fans years ago... Too inefective against the awesome power of my brain
Now I use Liquid cooling (you may know it as beer) which has the effect of not only cooling, but also negating the general awesomeness
I call it, improving standards by lowering expectations.
Looks like... (Score:4, Interesting)
Interestingly, both groups of researchers were working strictly with visual memory. I wonder whether the working memory used by programmers, mathematicians, etc. will be in the same place, or a different area altogether?
And what about the famous "magic number", 7 +/- 2? These people seem to be offering 4 +1/-2.
Re:Looks like... (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think all programmers approach the task using the same kind of intelligence.
I think it would be interesting to check different disciplines against each other, but programming is a bit too all-encompassing to be nailed down to just one kind of intelligence. It's partly language thinking, partly spatial thinking, partly mathematical thinking, a little bit of art, etc...
Re:Looks like... (Score:5, Interesting)
When I program, I hardly think visually at all. Then I've usually mapped a clear sequence 1. 2. 3. 4. that'll get me from A to B. Even if it doesn't work right, it's mostly just adding, subtracting or reorganizing the steps, in a purely linear fashion.
When I design, I primarily think in 3D. Or at least, more than 2D, I don't think in the form of trees and object hierarchies, but more like freeform 3D FPS. This objects connects to this and that and that and that, and I "see" how they interact around it.
I'm quite aware I got a fairly big "cache" to map out such problems in, I kinda doubt that works for everyone. I'm nothing like those people that manage to use long term memory to do insane math calculations, but well above average.
I remember I got it "wrong" on a math estimation test (i.e. not supposed to do any math on paper, no calculator) because I was too accurate. They suspected I was cheating, until I told them to give me a few bonus questions orally.
It's nice for doing wild tricks like:
Q:"What is the cube root of 53,582,633?"
A:
1. last digit = 3, from 7^3 = 343 (1-to-1 mapping) -> ends in 7
2. 3^3 = 27 begins with 3
3. a) 33 - 7^3 = 33 - 43 = 90 mod 100,
b) 3 * 7^2 * x = 9 mod 10
3 * 9 * x = 9 mod 10
7 * x = 9 mod 10
x = 7 -> middle is 7
A: "The answer is 377"
If you have the squares (1,2,4,16,25,36,49,64,81) and cubes (1,8,27,64,125,216,343,512,729) memorized you can do this in real-time, or at least I can. Trust me, it'll completely freak your friends out.
Kjella
Re:Looks like... (Score:4, Interesting)
HTML ate my math. 2. 3^3 = 27 less than 53 less than 4^3 = 64 -> begins with 3
Re:Looks like... (Score:3, Interesting)
don't know about you, but when I program, I *do* think visually about it. It's really hard to describe exactly how, but to me, writing in a programming language "feels" more akin to drawing a picture than writing an essay.
That's because you're nuts.
When I program, it's more like playing guitar than anything else. Complete with movements, climaxes, anticlimaxes, cigarette breaks, and all. Sometimes I just play the blues (php). Other times I like to break into hardcore metal (c++). But once I get going
Re:Looks like... (Score:4, Interesting)
Simply put, spatial reasoning isn't that strongly related to verbal reasoning, or mathematical reasoning. Creative ability also seems to be fairly independent of the above. Mechanical ability does seem to be related to creative ability.
STWM is related to most of the above--it seems to be one of the most important sections of memory/intelligence (that's why this finding is so important).
As some one who is very interested in intelligence testing, I would just like to say that from what I can remember, programming (in general), is most strongly correlated with mathematical ability, although some of the others that are mentioned above are important.
However, its important to remember that some people who are very successful programmers don't seem to have the ability to "visualize" things at all. We frequently assume that most people can do the "cube test", (where you are asked to visualize a white cube painted red. Then slice it into smaller cubes. You are then asked to state how many cubes there are, how many white faces, how many red faces, things like that. Also, how many cubes have 2 red faces.) but there are a few people who are very mechanically inclined who simply can't do this visually.
Like I said, intelligence is very complicated, and to see a lot of people here try to boil it down to a simple idea is somewhat painful (but even the pros like to do it, so what can I say).
Re:Looks like... (Score:5, Interesting)
It was found that the famous "5-9 digits" resulted from a bogus test. Rather than testing short-term memory, it was testing the "auditory loop" -- people weren't remembering the digits, they were mentally replaying the sound of someone speaking the digits.
When people are given the digits via non-auditory means, 3-5 digits seems to be the norm.
Re:Looks like... bragging (Score:4, Funny)
I can visualise the entire bits sequence of the resulting object whilst coding... I 'see' how the processor pointers will behave, even when programming in a high-level language like obfuscated Perl.
I can draw perfect circles by mentally calculating pi with a precision of 150 digits.
I can mentally render complex fractals, from the basic Mandelbrot set to a more complex Newton's Method in the Complex Plane.
And, yes, I can do crypto backwards. Triple-DES is very easy to do mentally. Doing it backwards is just a tiny bit harder.
Overclocking Anyone?? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Overclocking Anyone?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Overclocking Anyone?? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Overclocking Anyone?? (Score:5, Funny)
Hmmm, on second thought, scrap the above.
Re:Overclocking Anyone?? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Overclocking Anyone?? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Overclocking Anyone?? (Score:3, Interesting)
Most of your neurons certainly don't fire at a mean rate of 200 Hz. In fact, when you're actively concentration, your EEG readings show brain waves at 30+ Hz. In fact, trains of 200 Hz firings are called 'fast ripples'. That itself gives you a clue that 200 is not the norm.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Where does this lead us? (Score:5, Interesting)
Brain Cache (Score:2, Funny)
Which is why:
Imagine, if you will, a Beowul....
The magical number 7 (Score:5, Informative)
Did it not also depend on what kind of (was it) chunks you store (if this is at all what is stored in should it perhaps be ultra-) STM ?
Where it "started": [well.com]
The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information
by George A. Miller
originally published in The Psychological Review, 1956, vol. 63, pp. 81-97
CC.
What about Pinky? (Score:2, Funny)
Initial thoughts... (Score:2, Funny)
A coincidence (Score:4, Informative)
Wonderful book.
Anyway, this is just the "visuospatial sketchpad" as the authors call it. There's also the phonological loop dealing with meaningful sounds, among other types of working memory. So this isn't the be-all and end-all of even immediate memory.
it's not like a cache (Score:3, Interesting)
In fact, it seems likely that cause and effect are reversed: it seems likely that "higher intelligence" probably causes a larger STM rather than the other way around--the size of the STM would adapt to the needs of the rest of the brain rather than the other way around.
Brain Cache (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not too surprising that the brain's short-term visual cache would be closer to the visual cortex. What I would like to know is how closely the visual cache is related to intelligence. Does it need actual visual input, instead of just imagined, and if so... <facetious>do you become marginally dumber when you close your eyes?</facetious>
From reading Synaptic Self, the "general" cache and CPU area would seem to be the prefrontal cortex. It can activate memories to work on (the closer the current emotional state it was recorded in, the better), and hold a few things to work on. Perhaps there are many more specializations yet to be uncovered, but I'm struck at the sheer relative size of brain required to actively think and plan a next move. Considering that even a worm brain can get its owner around, you'd think our capacity for juggling thoughts would be encyclopaedic.
I'd be curious as to what connections this area has to the prefrontal cortex - I've heard of the spots tests before - I don't recall it being related to general intelligence.
Addressing the question of how cache gets spat out to hard drive, as it were, to keep thoughts in slightly longer-term storage, it looks like thoughts have to be put through the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex, where they will slowly get rewired (indexed?) over the course of about two weeks - about the length of memories you can lose under strong electroshock therapy.
So many small functional pieces of the brain; I'm struck by how independent the sections of the brain are, by and large. Large-scale coordination has to go through a secondary 'chemical drip' system, from neuromodulators released by non-connecting nerves throughout the brain. It's that level of coordination required to put your brain to sleep or wake it up, amongst other things.
I'm looking forward to more decoding of the brain's structures - narrowing down specific activities to a small area of the brain like they did is fantastic.
Re:Brain Cache (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Brain Cache (Score:5, Interesting)
Echolocation. (Score:3, Interesting)
Not completely surprising - since the human brain also does some echolocation (and other processing of sound redundancies and missing energy in particular bands into information about nearby objects).
Both systems involve
STWM Damage (Score:2, Interesting)
I must have a first generation Celeron brain (Score:3, Funny)
Cache or multiplexer or registers ? (Score:3, Interesting)
All the 3 systems have in common that there are build with memory cells, but there are different in terms of the way the memory are used and the associativity. Registers and caches hold encoded informations; multiplexer don't care of the encoding. registers don't have any associativity between a tag and tne information stored, only cache have that.
All tree systems generate heat and consum power that the brain camera see. Really, I see nothing that assert this is a cache.
Sound like the author want to use high-tech buzz word, without any prof.
Misleading Article (Score:5, Interesting)
All that the two articles *may* have found is the location of a part of VISUAL working memory. This would be the area that tracks objects through space and binds features that are processed seperately by the visual system (say color and form) into the same object. This is NOT the seat of all intelligence.
There are many different aspects to working memory: people have hypothesized that there is a phonological working memory, one involved in the spelling process, one involved in computing things like syntactic relations, etc. And yes, there is probably such a thing as a general-purpose working memory. All they may have found is the location of the visual-spatial component of working memory. This is a far cry from finding anything that limits one's intelligence, unless you define intelligence as "visual-spatial ability".
In fact, it is quite wrong to even suggest that the visual-spatial working memory is somehow related to intelligence. There are many instances of people with working memory deficits who are able to function quite normally in other domains.
For the sake of brevity I won't go into the finer about the studies themselves (one of the studies used the ERP recording technique, which is *awful* at localization) because the main point is that in and of themselves the studies are fine. It's this conclusion that they've somehow found "the RAM" or the thing that would limit intelligence that's exceedingly problematic.
Re:Misleading Article (Score:3, Insightful)
I suppose there is one thing here that people are not generally aware of: working memory (and long-term memory) is not distributed evenly throughout the brain, but is, rather, in the areas where the things you're remembering are processed.
Functional MRI: The New Phrenology.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Could anyone here shed any light on this?
Planned Motor Memory (Score:5, Interesting)
However, if at that point I just 'let my fingers go', they can usually type out the first 5 letters of whatever it was I was going to go to, even if they weren't in typing position.
This is extremely handy. Any idea what it's called?
I do that too! (Score:4, Interesting)
It usually goes something like this:
1. I think "oooh, I need to recompile that kernel module on host foo."
2. I turn on the computer monitor to find Slashdot or something else distracting already up on the screen.
3. I start a MP3 stream, read a couple of articles... get generally distracted.
4. I think "What was I going to do?". I then just relax and let myself do whatever comes naturally, and which point I launch my SSH client, log into the host and get about half way to the task when I remember where I was going with it and "consciously" continue from where I managed to get myself without thinking about it.
I know, that sounds a bit odd.. but I'm serious- that's how it happens! And it happens more and more as I get older. (I'm almost 30.)
I attribute it to "muscle memory"... It feels exactly the same as being able to play the first part of a song on piano or guitar before remembering what it is I'm playing, which I'm sure any musician can relate to.
I figure I started planning the familiar sequence of computer events in my head back when I thought "I need to...", so I'm able to just plow through that sequence naturally and observe it to get clues where it was I was going with that action. God that still sounds odd, but that's exactly how it happens.
Of course, I drive my car in the same fasion... once again more and more as I get older, and it drives my girlfriend CRAZY.
"Ooops... sorry... everywhere else I drive starts with that sequence of turns."
{sigh}
Depends very much on the task (Score:5, Interesting)
The task that you are given for a specified stimulus is going to very much influence your performance on later tasks. If you are presented a slide and asked to count the number of dots, then later asked whether or not the number of dots on a particular slide was even / odd, then you are likely to do fairly well. But what if you are presented a slide and asked if there was a blue dot on the slide or not, how is your performance going to be on the even / odd task later on? What kind of curve are you going to get for each task when you vary the number of dots and can you really then imply a limit to the theory of memory?
Obviously, you need more details than is presented in the shorter article. The last paragraph below is particularly interesting, since such generalizations don't seem to follow very well from the methods described.
I also would wish people would stop making analogies between the mind and the computer. It is a useful analogy for teaching undergrads and for articles in pop psych magazines, but is very restricting in terms of actual research directions.
Included below is additional text related to the story:
"Visual short-term memory is a key component of many perceptual and cognitive functions and is supported by a broad neural network, but it has a very limited storage capacity," Marois said. "Though we have the impression we are taking in a great deal of information from a visual scene, we are actually very poor at describing its contents in detail once it is gone from our sight."
Previous findings have determined that an extensive network of brain regions supports visual short-term memory. In their study, Todd and Marois showed that the severely limited storage capacity of visual short-term memory is primarily associated with just one of these regions, the posterior parietal cortex.
Todd and Marois used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a technique that reveals the brain regions active in a given mental task by registering changes in blood flow and oxygenation in these regions, to identify where the capacity limit of visual short-term memory occurs.
The brains of research participants were scanned with fMRI while they were shown scenes containing one to eight colored objects. After a delay of just over a second, the subjects were queried about the scene they had just viewed.
While the subjects were good at remembering all of the objects in scenes containing four or fewer objects, they frequently made mistakes describing displays containing a larger number of objects, indicating that the storage capacity of visual short-term memory is about four.
More SPAM Coming (Score:3, Funny)
Your girlfriend will say, "Are you hot? Or is that a gun in your brain?"
Intelligence is poorly defined anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
A more interesting implication (Score:4, Interesting)
than the others I've seen here is that, since it is localized instead of distributed, getting to the point of injecting signals into this cache and thus effecting one's view of immediate reality may be much easier than thought before. Say, 30-40 years away instead of over 100.
Actually though, I'm not sure why they would have thought this was spread about. Neural pathways are very slow in general. It seems like localization of highly related data such as the components of an image would be necessary due to that fact alone.
What bout the V5 area of the visual cortex? (Score:4, Interesting)
The entire area is a nest of feedback loops - with the visual information looping round in that area through several layers of neurons both above and below.
It could be that there are two caches: the visual cache is in the V5 layer, and the semantic cache is this one that they've found with the MRI.
Einsteins (Score:3, Interesting)
Corrections (Score:3, Interesting)
They also did not test the auditory portion of STWM, the "phonological loop". Nor did they test the functional control mechanism that operates these, the "central executive".
One particular application of STWM might appear this localized. There's no reason to expect a different application to be in the same place. In fact, it'd be ridiculous to expect it. It's far more likely that, given all the possible localizations that could be found for the various tasks STWM can tackle, the outcome would be exactly the opposite of what's stated: STWM *is* distributed around the cortex.
Human brains != CPUs (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyways, before everyone gets excited about the brain's "cache", it's important to remember that computer processors and neural networks like our brain process information in entirely different ways. You get similar results some of the time, but for different reasons. The key difference is that our brain processes information in parallel, on a massive scale.
People talk about the computer-brain analogy being useful on a general level, but it's actually entirely wrong on any level. When it comes to memory, this is especially important. Our brains work by sloshing around activity through enormous numbers of neurons across interconnected layers; basically, this leads to two types of memory: active memory (patterns of activity that are actively maintained across time) and weight-based memory (adjusting the connections between neurons to influence the future processing of activity.) Usually such "short term" memory as that is being discussed in the article is referring to active memory.
Anyhow, the important bit to take away from all of this is that active memory in the brain is something that requires a lot of upkeep. It's not like computer memory that holds specific information that can be erased or retrieved--rather, it biases current processing based on a pattern of activity that resulted from past processing. Without going into too much detail, in the case of remembering dots positioned on a screen, you can imagine that seeing the dots spreads activity through the cortex, including both the spatial processing areas and some "active maintainer" area that is able to lock in patterns of activity. In the context of the test, the representation of the dots in the spatial layer activates another pattern of activity in the "active maintainer," which sort of "locks on" to the activity in the maintainer that corresponds to the the represenation of the dots in the spatial layer. When recall time comes, the active maintainer sends activation to the dots representation in the spatial layer--you can then visualize what you just saw a moment ago (literally activating the same neurons). This depends on the quality of the represenation in the active maintainer, of course, and is really oversimplified, but you can sort of get an idea of the complexity involved.
Anyways, there's already a lot of evidence that the prefrontal cortex is heavily involved in actively maintaining a set pattern of activity in the face of distraction, but since prettymuch all distinctions in the brain are gradual and not absolute anyways, it wouldn't be too surprising to find that another part of cortex could be more specifically involved in maintaing representations in the spatial processing part of the brain.
As for cognition and intelligence, there's no question that active memory is important for intelligence--if you don't have it (if you are lobotomized, removing the entire prefrontal cortex), you can't direct your thoughts to reflect anything that came before, and you become a vegetable. But as to the contribution of this specific brain area, that's clearly going to be speculation at this point.
Re:So if your IQ is high (Score:2)
Re:Obligatory Bill Gates Quote (Score:2, Funny)
Re:improving short-term working memory (Score:5, Insightful)
Now do it with two books, maybe even on different but related subjects, while you keep an eye on
This is pure "cache" work. Don't try to memorize any of it. That's a different "brain muscle." Isolate what you're exercising. You're just trying to keep the different threads of thought all going without losing them.
Now, remember what I said about getting stressed? Don't. Really, the biggest killer of working short term memory is any sort of tension. Tension is an attention grabber, and you only have a limited amount of attention at any one time. Learn to relax. Let it flow of its own accord. If you pick it it will never heal.
It's one of those zen things, where you hit the target by not being aware that the target is even there. The arrow releases itself.
Oh, and here's the nasty part. Just like stressing muscles to build strength, it's a use it or lose it deal. Yes, you can improve your short term working memory, but when you stop using it, the improvment will fade.
I really hate that part.
KFG
Re:improving short-term working memory (Score:3, Insightful)
Nonesense, possibly on two scores. The first, reading other peoples's posts suggests to me that there are quite a number of Slashdotters who ride bikes and could keep up with me just fine.
But the second is the important one. If they can't bike more than a few miles without having a heart attack it's due to ignorance, not lack of fitness. I could teach nearly all of them how to do i
fuzzy logic (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know about you, but I'm a 'visual' thinker, and its all pretty much 3D images that come to mind. For example, reference to recent discussion invokes images of the actual conversation, not just the content. OK, human memory is pretty good at eliding details and interpolating from previous experience (analagous
Re:fuzzy logic (Score:3, Interesting)
You think? You see roughly the same images in that house every day, and what you do you've probably done a thousand times before. It's a compression algorithm's wet dream.
Re:Memory and Intelligence (Score:3, Informative)
The type of memory being considered here is distinct from short term memory. Working memory is used for things like holding a phone number in your head while you dial it, or recognising the difference between two phrases in a tune. We can hold a small amount of one type of thing in working memory at a time, a number, a sentence, an image and so on. As soon as a new piece of data enters working memory the previous piece of data is lost.
Working memory is used in problem solving, hence the link with intel