by Zeev Nitsan
Retrieval clues are more efficient in memory retrieval when they are linked to content. The configurational features of memory usually provide retrieval clues such as color and the like, whose hinting intensity is lower.
Enhanced associative networking is a familiar retrieval assistant. A multitude of associative links increases the availability of experience impressions to our consciousness at the desirable time.
Nicknames also serve as a familiar assistant to recollection, and it seems that this is the reason children tend to invent nicknames for each other. It seems that it is related to the emotional charge linked to nicknames.
In Homer’s epos, which were memorized by heart, all the heroes’ names contain adjectives, which make them easier to remember.
Sometimes, linking a body movement to an informative item helps in remembering it and producing an appropriate behavior pattern.
It is illustrated in the following case, which I happened to witness personally. A woman who had a malignant brain tumor was operated on and underwent radiation and chemotherapy treatments. She became totally mute, but when the cellular phone rang and was given to her, she took it in her hand, put it to her ear and said, “Hello, this is…” and nothing else. This repeated itself numerous times; beyond that, all attempts to encourage her failed.
The Art of Retrieval
The recollection test—i.e., the availability of information to consciousness at a desirable moment—is the important test for our memory.
Retrieving memory recordings often seems like the weakest link in the chain that is being tested, routinely, in everyday life.
The stopwatch of recollection changes according to the retrieved information and the identity of the person retrieving it. Thus, for example, ten seconds are what we need on average in order to retrieve an autobiographic memory.
Young subjects “pull out” words much faster than older subjects. It was reported that old subjects are slower in retrieving a memory following a word that describes emotions (eleven seconds on average) compared to retrieving a memory following a word that describes an object (seven seconds on average).
As in the Wild West, it is the speed of retrieving information from memory (and the precondition is the existence of retrieval) that sometimes makes all the difference. “The fastest gunner in the West” is sometimes the winner who takes it all.
Memories that are concealed from the eye of consciousness at a given moment make us fear that they might fade away, but, in fact, they might be kept in a layer that is concealed from the ordinary retrieval mechanism and pop up in front of the eye of consciousness at another time. The delay in the availability of information, however, might lead to a condition termed “staircase wit.” It refers to delayed recollection of information that, at the time we needed it, was not available to our consciousness but pops up later, when it is no longer needed. Retrieval clues might assist in preceding the thought of “too late.”
Means of Improving Recollection of Information
Mountains and valleys, as in a topographic map (and, metaphorically speaking, weak and strong points), exist in the scenery of our personal memory; some of us are good at remembering names but do not remember faces well, and vice versa. Some remember jokes but have difficulties with spatial memory, etc. Each person has weaknesses and strengths in terms of his memory abilities related to different types of information. Self-mapping, or mapping assisted by external sources of the profile map of personal memory abilities, will expand the boundaries of meta-memory—the ability to navigate between various memory sites across the vast memory map. Thus, we might be able to come up with an improvement plan for dealing with the valleys we encounter in the map of our memory.
promotions that make the information more catchy, such as editing information in an aphorismic pattern, triggers emotions, amusing, clear, and organized—lengthen the shadow of memory.
Using the maximal number of senses for the sake of recalling an experience enables us to encode it in an auto associative manner, which is easier to remember.
The film The Jazz Singer, which was premiered in 1927, contained, for the first time, a soundtrack of speech and singing and heralded the transition from the era of silent films to speaking films and, thus, contributed to an enhanced experience. Similarly, encoding of an experience while registering its impression on the various senses deepens the traces of memory.
It seems that the synthesis gives an advantage to certain recollection abilities due to the multiple-sensory conceptualization inherent in them. One can practice synthesis conceptualization through conscious encoding of the projections of an experience on various senses, and not only on those senses on which the projections of the experience are projected in an intuitive pattern.
Paying attention and granting meaning to information makes it rememberable.
Focusing on the unique components of the experience improves its recollection.
When we remember an experience as unique, we mark it. In other words, we encode its unique characteristics on the background of ordinary routine experiences. Memories that lack uniqueness tend to be forgotten.
Improvement of old techniques might enhance memory performance—using, for example, the “Roman Room” method, in which pieces of information we wish to remember are mentally linked to items that are stored in our memory and are highly available to it, such as pieces of furniture in our living room. (Shereshevskii, the magnificent mnemonist discussed earlier, used a similar method). An imaginary tour in a familiar room according to a certain sequence helps resurrect matching pieces of information, which are linked to the objects in the room. While using the principle of mental linkage, one can convert the imaginary tour to a tour through the words of a familiar song. The words of the song will serve as the anchor, or the hook on which the new pieces of information we wish to remember will be hanged.
Our brain tends to arrange short audio input items in a pattern called “phonological loop.” This pattern preserves the representation of the sounds of information in our working memory.
In preliterate societies (in which reading and writing were not yet used), oral texts accompanied by music were used—a preferred method to bequeath memes (ideas that pass from one brain to another) to the young brains.
A familiar song can serve as a “memory trick”—in different languages there are children songs that present the sequence of the alphabet in a memorable fashion, accompanied by catchy melody, which facilitates assimilation of the alphabet in children’s memory when they learn to read. Music also has a role in terms of assisting recollection among adults. Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, for instance, had rhyming and rhythm, which made them singable and, thus, facilitated memorization.
Chapter 8: Thoughts About Thoughts: Climbing The Mountain of Thoughts
Thoughts and Thermodynamics
Some think that our brain is a thermodynamic system (in the sense of a system that contains energy and undergoes transformation from a certain energy manifestation to another) that aspires to the balance point, which is manifested in rather low entropy (disorder, in energy terms).
As a clarifying analogy, which is far from being perfect, one may say that our brain is an open thermodynamic system, which means that energy and substances from the environment enter it and leave it. Our brain operates out of a (permanent?) gap in the thermodynamic balance that exists in its environment. This is the environment with which it has constant exchange relations in terms of substance and energy. The brain’s operation is characterized by relative stability due to the “low entropy condition,” which it preserves through energy exchange with its environment.
In an attempt to preserve the low entropy condition, the brain’s systems have constant energetic dialogue with their environment. Our brain has exchange relations of import/export of energy with its environment, as is dictated by the circumstances.
The metaphor of the thermodynamic balance point of our brain usually refers to a condition in which the brain is in a state
of an activity profile whose final purpose is inducing satisfaction and relaxation on its owner. It is still so even when the means to achieve this goal go through adventures and novelties.
Chemical medications and physical means of treatment, such as electroconvulsive therapy, magnetic stimulation, light stimulation, barometric medicine, and the hyperbaric chamber, are intended to divert the balance pendulum toward a more balanced point.
The condition of the brain pendulum may be of increased entropy or decreased entropy. In both conditions, the aspiration is to divert it toward a more balanced point—entropy that is on the spectrum of desirable values in terms of the function of the system—as it was “programmed” to be.
The dopamine oscillator is a central entropy generator in our brain, and it is probably a central regulator of the pendulum movement toward the balance point and from it.
The daily dose of escapism is almost a necessity, since rest is needed after the (tumultuous) tango most of us dance with reality. In this spirit, one may say that the secret of watching an action film is the escapism experience it provides. At this time, our brain is not required to make immediate decisions, and the amygdala practices emotional accompaniment of information that does not have a direct or immediate effect on us. While we are under the shelter of an escapist experience, our thoughts are less reality diverted.
Maximal assimilation in the present, detached from past scars and concerns about the future, is an effective escapism approach. Children have a natural ability to experience the present with their entire being—when they are immersed in play, for example. They are thus sometimes referred to as the “masters of the moment.” The devotion of the being to this moment, focusing on the here and now, total dissolution in the river of the present that is flowing right now, reduces concerns and temporarily eases the burden of reality we carry on our shoulders.
The Theory of Relativity at the Sunflower Field
The philosopher Arthur Koestler[30] raised the question, Is Einstein’s universe closer to reality than van Gogh’s sky? Is the value on which the dial of reality-compatibility points at a higher place on the scale with reference to Einstein’s surprising universe or van Gogh’s starry sky?
In the first surreal manifesto, which was written in 1924 by Andre Breton, surrealism was defined as follows: “Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express…the actual functioning of thought…in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.”
Some might define such a way of thinking as thinking at the intermediate level, between the upper course and the lower course. Others might see it as fetal, raw thinking, mostly amygdala driven, and which mostly derives from a subconscious source.
Among patients who suffer psychotic episodes, it seems that their thoughts do not obey the gravity of reality but, rather, float in the weightless universe of their hallucinations.
The attempt to conceptualize “humanity consciousness,” in the sense of consciousness of the entire humanity, is a theoretical thinking exercise that has numerous philosophical aspects. If we could merge the consciousness of living humans on Earth into a single, inclusive consciousness, what would it look like? Would citizens of poor states pour a more pessimistic worldview into the collective consciousness due to their dire straits?
And if we merge the consciousness of all living creatures (humans and animals) into a collective consciousness, what would that consciousness look like (“the consciousness of biosphere”)?
Features of a Thought
Basic Thinking Characteristics—Managing Abstract Symbols and Conceptualizing Them as Mental Symbols.
Some refer to thinking as a symbolic activity whose aim is personal structuring of information. In other words, thinking is organizing and creating meaning and, in a broader sense, can be seen as an activity that is directed in the opposite direction of the thermodynamic fall of increasing entropy, since it involves ordering and creation of meaning in raw pieces of information in which order is not built in.
Vectorial thinking—i.e., thought directionality—is important if we aspire to process focused information, since in the absence of guidance, our thoughts tend to spread out and mingle one with the other and, as a result, to lose their uniqueness. Often an energetic deprivation (the “material fatigue” in the brain version) is responsible for distracting the directionality of thought and for spreading out its beam.
The big questions in life, such as the essence of relationships with people, the various aspects of love, various aspects of human existence, the end of our universe, and the like—topics from which telenovelas are made—are regular visitors in the lounge of our thoughts while the birds of thinking freely fly within our skull.
The Thinker and Rodin—as a Single Entity
We sculpt and are being sculpted at the same time. We create thought, and it creates us. A new insight born in our brain mutually changes (in a pattern of mutual influence) its wiring due to the new contexts it weaves.
Thought in Do and Re—A Hidden Magic that Turns Substance into Spirit
Among those who support the view that the entity called thought will forever avoid the grip of actual-facts science, there are some that compare thought to a musical piece. We can decode and name the notes, we can view each sound as a musical entity (such as the typical air vibration frequency created by the pitch), but the musical content of the piece that appears in our consciousness cannot be dismantled, because, as other consciousness manifestations, it cannot be externally, directly observed. It is perceived in our consciousness as a subjective experience rather than an entity that can be measured objectively.
Sometimes a high ladder is required in order to go down the depths of thought or, alternately, climb to the top floors of the thinking tower.
The fist of our perception finds it hard to grip the evasive entity of thought and what seems to be its Janus faces—its material appearance, on the one hand, and spiritual appearance on the other hand. Its material appearance, which is formed in the neuron-wiring pattern and the bioelectric signals patterns that flicker among them, follows the rules of physics, but is the spiritual aspect of thought an obedient citizen in the familiar land of physics? Let us consider the possibility of superposition: the existence of two bodies at the same spot in space is not possible with regard to substance. But can thoughts that are the daughters of the spirit employ the same spot in the space of our brain?
Ceaseless Thoughts
Galileo Galilei dared, at a young age, to challenge a scientific axiom that had been dominant from the days of Aristotle, according to which the speed of a falling object is directly related to its weight. In a series of experiments, courtesy of the Pisa Tower and gravity, he threw a light weight and a heavy one and found out that, contrary to common belief, both reach the ground at the same time. Thus, in his twilight days, following numerous hardships and in the shadow of a great loss he experienced—the death of his beloved daughter, Maria Celeste—he was quoted as saying, “My troubled brain will never cease grinding.” In the spirit of his words, he never ceased to explore and search for new knowledge until his last day.
There is a famous old saying, according to which man needs to know a lot in order to realize he knows so little. Indeed, although we are required to look as deep as possible in search for the secrets of our world, the knowledge that the horizon and the depth seen by our thoughts are limited and partial should be built in into our consciousness, including our thoughts about our thoughts.
The Complicated Creation of Thought
We tend to see various mental functions as a single conceptual category when they are, in fact, a varied group of skills. This partially derives from language limitations, which weaves the threads of information into a uniform conceptual layout. Thus, for example, sometimes subconscious insights and those interwoven with conscious insights are included in the same conceptual category.
Many researchers of thinking processes have adapted
a graded model of thinking processes, on the bottom of which there is a low-graded thinking skill that is based on raw information as is. An example of this type of information is the retrieval of a raw piece of information from our memory, or memorization of information in a simplistic manner. On the other end of the spectrum of thinking complexity, there is high-graded thinking, in which complex processing of information takes place, which brings new information that is added to the existing database.
Conscious and unconscious layers are woven into the complicated creation of thinking.
Numerous cognitive activities are based on a mix of unconscious and conscious thinking. Thinking processes at the unconscious layer, which usually consume a smaller amount of mental energy, allow for simultaneous channeling of brain energy resources to processes of conscious thinking.
The Geology of Thinking
Some compare the earth’s crust, which is exposed to sunlight, to conscious thinking processes and the inner part of Earth, which sizzles and storms below the surface, to unconscious thinking processes. The crust is as thick as our consciousness, and it is thinner than the depth layers that represent the depths of unconscious. The lava flows, which sometime split the thin crust, might be suitable to represent “behavioral slips”—situations in which we act automatically, in a manner that is uncontrolled by conscious filtering mechanisms.
Acknowledging the importance of unconscious thinking processes, acquiring communication skills between conscious and unconscious thinking layers, and creating a constant interface between them might reinforce our cognitive ability.