Really great article. Thank you. And it’s noteworthy how linked brain health and reproductive health are. These systems are completely entangled (which makes sense). I thought of this article when reading. You may enjoy https://raypeat.com/articles/articles/estrogen-age-stress.shtml
Thank you, Amy! Absolutely agree, brain health is related to all aspects of human health. I noticed that some elderly people love listening to music that they used to listen where young. It looks like that music triggers some memory structures in their brain that help their organism to retune in a healthier, younger way remembered from those days.
Not just storing, but also excavating gold from the ground, destroying precious ecosystems in the process. In doing so, they exacerbate the very crisis they hope to escape with their gold savings, which will be worthless once nature can no longer nourish us. Siberian rivers are suffering, as gold mining turns some of the cleanest streams on Earth into filthy ditches, for someone to add another gold brick to their pile.
I do not think copying is the right terminology between modules as all processing is an interaction with past learning and accumulation of experience that maybe refining or enhancing the memory. the past maybe learnt but its application is also part of the copying of the memory. If stress is the biggest killer and we have been able to use our intelligence to limit the sensory response to stress, it does give us this advantage over other species but can leave us blind.
Interesting article as always, many thanks, It will leave me with many thoughts.
"I do not think copying is the right terminology between modules as all processing is an interaction with past learning and accumulation of experience that maybe refining or enhancing the memory." -- I basically agree. What the brain is doing with our memories, is not clear. It is well-known that if you recall an event many times, it fades and becomes less vivid. This suggests a strategy of being very cautious with your most beloved memories, not overexploiting them, their resource is finite.
Thank You, Anastassia. Those who depend upon their screens for everything, and don't work the problems themselves, are blithely walking into a punji pit, if I might put it that way.
You are an inspiration, Anastassia. I wonder what is your response to the work and arguments of Michael Levin at Tufts University. Among other things he posits that memory can be 'stored' outside the brain, in non-neuronal cells throughout the body. The work coming from his lab, for example with planaria (flatworms) indicates that memory may be encoded in bio-electric signals and other cellular mechanisms beyond traditional neural pathways.
Thank you for your kind words. I would need to take a more focused look at Dr. Levin’s work. It’s been a while since I was actively involved in research on life energetics and any related questions. As I mentioned in the post, yes, in theory, any cell can carry memory information until it divides.
What matters is that memory is not stored digitally like DNA, but rather as a specific configuration of cellular structures, which can only be copied in an analog way. Perhaps this is because memory information is intentionally designed to be short-lived, in contrast to the long-lived DNA information that remains meaningful over millions of years—the average lifespan of a species.
Humans have hijacked this design: we’ve learned to conceptualize (that is, partially digitize) memory information and pass it on to the next generation as a cultural code. This is why we are so culturally inert, struggling to recognize that the world has changed—while still carrying the legacy of past generations, who can no longer offer anything useful for the crisis they themselves helped create.
Thank you, Anastassia. I'm puzzled by your assertion that plants don't accumulate memory during individual life spans. Intuitively, that does not make sense as old plants, like fully grown trees, seem to exhibit better skill at dealing with their environmental conditions than young plants, presumably aided by memory of past stresses and how to deal with them.. And Monica Gagliano has demonstrated that Mimosa plants quickly become habituated to repeated stresses, recognizing them as non-threatening and therefore not reacting by closing up their leaves. She then found they retained the memory of this for up to 28 days . https://phys.org/news/2014-03-greenhouse-long-term-memory.html#:~:text=The%20researchers%20devised%20an%20apparatus,this%20out%20and%20adapt%20quickly.%22
Thank you Anastassia for this exhilarating information 🙏 and it goes to show how people like Sir David Attenborough, Sylvia Earle Anthony Hopkins live long meaningful lives. Wisdom creating memories
Thank you for your comment, yes, you are right, Dunbar's number is 150, but we are talking about proximity by an order of magnitude (I clarified this in the text). That is to say, the number of autonomous brain units seems to be not less than 10 or greater than 1000. Also, Dunbar's number is, to a certain degree, subjectively defined.
Really great article. Thank you. And it’s noteworthy how linked brain health and reproductive health are. These systems are completely entangled (which makes sense). I thought of this article when reading. You may enjoy https://raypeat.com/articles/articles/estrogen-age-stress.shtml
Thank you, Amy! Absolutely agree, brain health is related to all aspects of human health. I noticed that some elderly people love listening to music that they used to listen where young. It looks like that music triggers some memory structures in their brain that help their organism to retune in a healthier, younger way remembered from those days.
Thanks for the link!
Humans spend too much time storing Gold!
Not just storing, but also excavating gold from the ground, destroying precious ecosystems in the process. In doing so, they exacerbate the very crisis they hope to escape with their gold savings, which will be worthless once nature can no longer nourish us. Siberian rivers are suffering, as gold mining turns some of the cleanest streams on Earth into filthy ditches, for someone to add another gold brick to their pile.
I do not think copying is the right terminology between modules as all processing is an interaction with past learning and accumulation of experience that maybe refining or enhancing the memory. the past maybe learnt but its application is also part of the copying of the memory. If stress is the biggest killer and we have been able to use our intelligence to limit the sensory response to stress, it does give us this advantage over other species but can leave us blind.
Interesting article as always, many thanks, It will leave me with many thoughts.
"I do not think copying is the right terminology between modules as all processing is an interaction with past learning and accumulation of experience that maybe refining or enhancing the memory." -- I basically agree. What the brain is doing with our memories, is not clear. It is well-known that if you recall an event many times, it fades and becomes less vivid. This suggests a strategy of being very cautious with your most beloved memories, not overexploiting them, their resource is finite.
In any case, this "copying" is not digital.
Thank You, Anastassia. Those who depend upon their screens for everything, and don't work the problems themselves, are blithely walking into a punji pit, if I might put it that way.
Indeed, John. Myself I am dreaming of beginning to grow green food, love pictures from your garden.
I hope you realize your modest human dream, Anastassia.
>>Myself I am dreaming of beginning to grow green food<<
Check out Sepp Holzer (https://www.seppholzer.info/food-forest-design/), and/or Masanobu Fukuoka (https://f-masanobu.jp/en/). Also Geoff Lawton (https://living-earth.africa/2023/09/16/geoff-lawtons-greening-the-desert-permaculture-project/) and this: https://youtu.be/QxJ-dVeQMtk?si=_zgqSi7ItWeAlC1i - anything like that down your way? Best Wishes, Sid.
You are an inspiration, Anastassia. I wonder what is your response to the work and arguments of Michael Levin at Tufts University. Among other things he posits that memory can be 'stored' outside the brain, in non-neuronal cells throughout the body. The work coming from his lab, for example with planaria (flatworms) indicates that memory may be encoded in bio-electric signals and other cellular mechanisms beyond traditional neural pathways.
Thank you for your kind words. I would need to take a more focused look at Dr. Levin’s work. It’s been a while since I was actively involved in research on life energetics and any related questions. As I mentioned in the post, yes, in theory, any cell can carry memory information until it divides.
What matters is that memory is not stored digitally like DNA, but rather as a specific configuration of cellular structures, which can only be copied in an analog way. Perhaps this is because memory information is intentionally designed to be short-lived, in contrast to the long-lived DNA information that remains meaningful over millions of years—the average lifespan of a species.
Humans have hijacked this design: we’ve learned to conceptualize (that is, partially digitize) memory information and pass it on to the next generation as a cultural code. This is why we are so culturally inert, struggling to recognize that the world has changed—while still carrying the legacy of past generations, who can no longer offer anything useful for the crisis they themselves helped create.
Thank you, Anastassia. I'm puzzled by your assertion that plants don't accumulate memory during individual life spans. Intuitively, that does not make sense as old plants, like fully grown trees, seem to exhibit better skill at dealing with their environmental conditions than young plants, presumably aided by memory of past stresses and how to deal with them.. And Monica Gagliano has demonstrated that Mimosa plants quickly become habituated to repeated stresses, recognizing them as non-threatening and therefore not reacting by closing up their leaves. She then found they retained the memory of this for up to 28 days . https://phys.org/news/2014-03-greenhouse-long-term-memory.html#:~:text=The%20researchers%20devised%20an%20apparatus,this%20out%20and%20adapt%20quickly.%22
Thank you Anastasia.
What implications would this vision have for artificial intelligence: could an AI reproduce the human phenomenon if it had redundant “memory modules”?
Thank you Anastassia for this exhilarating information 🙏 and it goes to show how people like Sir David Attenborough, Sylvia Earle Anthony Hopkins live long meaningful lives. Wisdom creating memories
Is there a typo in Dumbar's number? I remember it being 150, but I might have misunderstood the sentence also.
Thank you for your comment, yes, you are right, Dunbar's number is 150, but we are talking about proximity by an order of magnitude (I clarified this in the text). That is to say, the number of autonomous brain units seems to be not less than 10 or greater than 1000. Also, Dunbar's number is, to a certain degree, subjectively defined.
As I thought, I missed something. Thank you!
Great stuff! Then there is the holographic theory of memory storage, not just in the brain but the whole body. Organ transplant memory (doi: 10.7759/cureus.59385) raises the possibility that organs hold some form of memory content. Further, there is real uncertainty as to where abouts memory itself is stored, either in non-neuronal cells (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-53922-x) or even in fields (https://medium.com/@clayton.dorcas/void-fields-and-dark-memory-how-the-universe-stores-coherence-after-death-5453468c9fd4). Then there is Rupert Sheldrake's interesting work on Morphogenic fields, and non-material 'memory', (https://www.sheldrake.org/research/morphic-resonance/introduction + https://www.sheldrake.org/essays/epigenetics-and-soviet-biology). This leads into the Orch/OR theory at quantum levels of reality (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.plrev.2013.08.002) et al , and the search for 'consciousness'; or 'who we really are'... Again, this points to being on the edge of a massive paradigm shift, one that may be greater than any previous ones.