hi, John.
John wrote in message <932625091.978208 at server.australia.net.au>...
>>Ken Collins wrote in message ...
>>snip
>>>This is not what I meant, not at all. Okay, I'll try to roll the universe
>into a ball ... . Recently I reread "The Strange, The Familiar, and the
>Forgotten" Israel Rosenfield. I had to reread because after reading a
review
>of it I realised I didn't get it all. His stress on memory function is that
>it relates not so much to information but to meaning, and meaning
>specifically related to the state of the self.
in a way that i know of, he's correct. "memory" deficits are often
correlated with the sensory/motor sites of lesions. one case i recall is of
a fellow who couldn't recall the verbal symbol "wrench"... there was
cortical damage in the motor-hand "area". the idea is that he couldn't form
the memory of the verbal symbol for the hand tool be-cause the neural
activation "state" that "normally" "addressed" the "memory" was disrupted by
there being a "hole" in it... the "meaning" was clouded beyond recovery
be-cause the appropriately-correlated activation could not occur in
hand-motor cortex, which would "normally" be dominant when a "wrench" was
being used. yet, when tested on other aspects of the "same memory", the
fellow was successful.
this is an example of how "meaning" is "stored" and "retrieved" within the
brain.
do you see what i'm getting at [what i "mean"]?
no "memory" is "stored" in a precisely-localized way within the brain.
rather, the bits and pieces that comprise it occur as tiny modifications of
the nerual circuitry corresponding to various aspects of one's experience
with this or that... and everything is "mapped" with respect to either
sensory or motor activation, both experientially acquired.
the "meaning" or "wrench" was dependent upon the motor activation
underpinning the use of the tool within the fellow's experience.
>Another text I read on this
>lately White Gloves, John Kottre, plays in the same field.
>>The article suggest the patient has lost his time sense, as if his memory
>has been transported back 11 years. I don't accept this. I can't conceive
>how this can happen.
you're correct. what the fellow lost was in his brain's ability to
reconfigure itself in ways that'd allow more-recent "memories" to be
"retrieved"... to assemble all the necessary "pieces" into one, sequentially
unfolding "circuit".
>What I suspect has happened is that the patient has
>lost access to many if not most recent memories and upon awakening looking
>for action cues or whatever the brain retrieved what it could and came up
>with the mentioned memories.
no, that's not what happens... when there're "memory" deficits, it's
be-cause the brain cannot configure itself so that the formerly-acquired
"memories" can be "retrieved"... the whole cortexwould have to be removed,
and many subcortical circuits would have to be lesioned, before it could be
said that "all 'memory'" had been lost.
>So I would like to know of other cases
look up "blind sight" for some interesting correlates.
>and more
>particularly whether or not the personal importance of these first
recovered
>memories by which the individual seeks to find meaning in the life has been
>established. I would expect that these first recovered memories would have
a
>high personal significance.
>>Now you know why I need help with this.
no i don't :-)
[P. S. forgive me, if the rest of this is "irrelevant" to you, just ignore
it... i must make it clear, perhaps to others, that, except for the few
articles i've commented on online, i've not read in Neuroscience since about
11 years ago. i'd pushed myself so hard that further "time" in the
Neuroscience stacks makes me nauseus. since 11 years ago, i've been working
in Physics. i'm posting msgs in this NG only to try to "keep the fire
burning" under the work i did in Neuroscience, and because i'm either locked
out of Physics NGs, or, in other Physics NGs, my work in Physics is being so
rabidly plagerized that i can't overcome my sorrow to a degree that'd make
endurable discussing my work in Physics... so i just do it for Love of doing
it, and don't much discuss what i'm doing.
folks think i'm out here "whining" about how "i've been treated" with
respect to the work i did in Neuroscience, but that isn't it. i just know
the Neuroscience must be communicated, and i'm a man that takes such
obligation seriously.
with respect to what you've posted, i'm not "awakening". i am, in fact,
slowly dying, and it seems i've passed the point of caring with respect to
myself... it's just that i can't not care about those who suffer be-cause
i've not been able to win robust communication for the Neuroscience stuff.
so what folks see of me in this NG is just that part of me that's left,
trying to do the Honorable thing. KPC]
