I'm posting it here in case it helps someone now or in the
future - Google archives everything - and also for my own future
retrieval of these ideas, which seem selfish to print out and
keep locked away in some private folder somewhere, to die.
A letter I wrote to *this
guy*
https://www.princeton.edu/neuroscience/people/display_person.xml?netid=dwtank&display=Faculty
whose idea about feedback loops *might* help me in my
understanding of how you get memories or ideas from long term
memory back into short term memory. He came up when I searched
for:feedback loops balance circuits brain 'cause I wanted to
know if there was an electrical explanation for feedback loops.
(I don't think electricity explains it all - a neat idea called
''Soliton model'' in neuroscience ''feels'' closer to true-
helps explain how anthestitics work, which is a mystery right
now otherwise) It is close to ''music'' and harmonic oscillators
/ how gravity works and, wow, I'm sounding like a kook so I'll
stop there and just share.
Hello David,
My name is Kenneth Udut. I am quite excited writing to you and I
hope, perhaps you can help or at least give me a ''thumbs up and
good luck to you, stranger''.
I am a layman, not studied in the brain, but I am introspective
and think deeply about things.
PAST:
I have been baffled about why it is so hard to capture thoughts
before they go away. This question has been puzzling me since I
was at least 11 years old and invented my first ''Thought
Collector'' (a roll of calculator paper on a wooden board with a
tear-off strip of metal at the bottom). Thoughts, musical ideas
are difficult to capture in the presence of continual
distraction that life brings us. So, on and off through the
decades (I am 41 now), I would return to this idea of the
''Thought Collector'', devising different methods with varying
degrees of success.
NEAR PRESENT:
A month ago, I decided to tackle this once and for all, and
either find or come up with a completely scientifically based
methodology for thought collection that incorporates the stream
of inputs through the sensory memory, the introspective
retrieval of long term memory into short term memory, the limbic
system and managing the push and pull of chemistry and, in
short, come up with a working model of the system of memory
along with simple, practical, easy to learn methods for never
losing another idea again.
Nothing I'm doing is new - but in the process of trying to
understand the systems, things like ''the doorway phenomenon'' /
retracing your steps / the Peg system / Roman room and various
tricks for encoding memory from the sensory to the short term to
the working to the long term and back again (and I could write
pages on this but don't know enough yet to be fully accurate) -
I was terribly dissatisfied with the current models of the
brain.
Then I came across the Soliton Model of Neuroscience article in
Wikipedia, which led me to reading about ''how anesthesia
works?'', and then reading up on harmonic oscillations in
physics which led me to wondering, ''How the heck does the
electrical model of the brain explain feedback loops?''
I'm not an electrical engineer - the details are all way over my
head ...
More ''circuits'' are dedicated to feedback loops than to input
or output - the brain is constantly talking to itself., within
itself..
So, I did a search for the terms and you came up:
feedback loops balance circuits brain
And I was blown away where you say,''The memory is actually the
dynamic state of the circuit''...
which resonates with my way of thinking...
NOW:
It's all about the balance of the system as a whole.
It would explain how memories are always retrievable - even
after decades of not being recalled. Even if there are little
peptides that seem to keep it alive, I think it is the what is
OUTSIDE of the electrical components of the system that is as
important as what is happening INSIDE.
The ''freezing/melting'' hypothesis of Thomas Heimburg and
Andrew D. Jackson sparked me in this direction.
Even if that's not true.. the idea jives with me. The current
ideas seem to describe a garden hose by its water, which can
never explain a kink in the hose, because the hose isn't part of
the consideration.
It also leads to the tantalizing possibility - which I believe
is true but I haven't investigated if anybody checked it out yet
- that memories are permanent and forever, it's just that levels
of cortisol block the retrival from long term back into short
term memory and it requries relaxation - Nitric Oxide perhaps -
to free up the paths for the memories to automatically flow back
into conscious memory. The harder you try to remember something,
the more difficult it is to remember it. Relax and ''it will
come back to you''. Nitric Oxide is tantalizing because of its
relationship as well to erectile Idysfunction - the more you
think about it, the less it works. But when you relax 'it works'
(Nitric Oxide relaxes, it allows blood to flow easily into the
penis) - AND into the heart (with nitroglycerin for congestive
heart failure patients - AND into the brain when forming new
memories).....
FUTURE:
It's hard to fully explain where I'm trying to go with this. I'm
a long way from completion. But I have hundreds of index cards
full of notes. I have come up with several working systems for
thought collectors as I investigate thought collection.
(trusting external systems for memory, as the capacity of the
short term memory is too darned short to be useful by itself -
and the presence of distractions makes it impossible to rely on
alone, hence, writing/music/art/talking (getting it into oher
people's heads for them to help you retrieve it later).. A
little concentration helps - but a lot makes it hard (too much
cortisol I guess) yet if you can enter a state of Flow -
allowing procedural/implicit memory to engage - everything
happens automatically and efortlessly....
This is train-of-thought, no editing except adding ''PAST
PRESENT FUTURE'' when I realized I was basically following Time.
I'm entering into complexity to eventually return back to
simplicity, hopefully with a New Idea that will be so blindingly
obvious to anyone who reads it, they will feel as if they have
already known it their entire lives, recoloring all that they
ever heard on the subject in light of this as ''obvious'' and
''of course that's true'' - rather how tectonic plates are
obvious now, but not before they were discovered. ''Thinking a
thought is very hard until you thought it.'' so to speak. I'd
much prefer to find someone else who put this together as its a
lot of work, but if not, I'll just have to do it.
If you have a free moment to shed any light on anything, I'd
like to know. I sound like a kook now, but mostly I'd like to
know if I seem on the right track or not. I need brains with
higher amounts of knowledge at their disposal than my own for
some kind of validation/repudiation (?) and what you are
investigating in your field *seems* to be in a similar vein.
David, thank you for your time.
Ken
