70 lines
3.6 KiB
Plaintext
70 lines
3.6 KiB
Plaintext
PUMPING NEURONS
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By M.L. Verb
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Brain researchers say they're making a little progress--but not much--in
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understanding memory. They know there are no easy answers to how the brain
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remembers things, but at least they've found a few ways in which the brain
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seems to transfer information.
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Beyond that they're pretty much in the dark.
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Here's what a University of California researcher said recently: "We are still
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at a primitive stage in our understanding of how memory works."
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I'm convinced memory research is futile. In my experience memory--unlike other
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bodily functions--operates completely on whim. And it won't surprise me if
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countless researchers eventually drive their brains bonkers trying to make
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sense of memory.
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I even have a vision that some day a researcher will bellow, "Eureka! I've
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figured out how memory works!" But by the time he remembers where he left his
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pencil and paper to write it down he'll have forgotten the secret.
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Scientists studying memory in the face of such inevitable frustration have
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concluded, at least tentatively (which is as committed as good scientists ever
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get about their findings), that many areas of the brain work together to code
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and store information. And scientists are reported to be paying special
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attention to single brain cells called neurons because they think the whole
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memory process is somehow tied to neuron activity.
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It may be true that when our brains actually do remember something (as often as
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not something useless), neurons are at work. But the real mystery about memory
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is not which cells do what but why the whole process seems so married to--and,
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thus, marred by--randomness.
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For instance, there is absolutely no good reason why I remember a few, but not
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all, of the home phone numbers I've owned over the years, beginning with 893.
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No, 893 isn't one of the years (no matter what my kids tell you). It was my
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childhood phone number.
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And there's no sensible reason for me to remember Ernie Banks' 1953 batting
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average but to be unable to dredge from my memory what I'm doing this weekend.
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I can recall the exact day and date on which a colleague died almost 10 years
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ago but have trouble remembering the birthday of one of my sisters or the two
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things my wife sent me to the store for.
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I remember who caught the final pop-foul out of the 1954 World Series but I
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can't remember the name of someone to whom I was introduced 10 minutes ago. I
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always can picture the face of a clergyman I've known casually for more than 10
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years but I inevitably have to struggle to come up with his name.
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Over the years people have dreamed up ways to improve memory--and some people
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even claim a few of them work. But for my money these schemes are ultimately
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doomed to fail because they try to impose order on chaos.
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I am often awed by the order in the universe, by the natural laws and the
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intricate systems created o keep things humming along predictably. But I
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confess I am baffled by how unglued and unreliable memory seems to be.
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It's sad to me to see scientists devote their lives to the pursuit of something
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so ultimately fruitless as explaining the mysteries of memory. I don't
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understand why they are so driven and so uncomfortable with mystery.
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Do they deceive themselves into thinking that if only they understand which
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cells activate memory they somehow will be able to tame its wildness and
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control its vagueries? Think of the countless books full of explicit pictures
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that show us in microscopic detail which glands react when women and men fall
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in love. Has all that knowledge made love any more logical? No, thank
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goodness; nor will it memory.
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