From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Tue Apr 27 1999 - 10:47:46 MDT
"david gobel" <dgobel@doubled.com> writes:
> I have been intrigued by this subject in the past and have intended to
> pursue analysis of Neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield's experiences with conscious
> subjects undergoing brain surgery...apparrently, while such individuals were
> undergoing surgery they experienced TOTAL recall of rather unremarkable
> events in their lives...such as "being in the kitchen washing the dishes
> while my husband is on the phone...he is saying "" (what follows is a
> verbatim repeat of the conversation about unimportant matters).
Yes, these were very striking experiments. Made me think everything
were stored perfectly in the brain when I read it as a young boy. But
the problem is, the recall was (if I can remember right :-) extremely
detailled and vivid, but not necessarily what really happened. Just
very good reconstructions of memory traces that would otherwise be
extremely hard to remember.
> Penfield was so shocked by this occurrence that he made it a subject of
> considerable investigation during his career. I think we might be getting
> close to a time when our brain scanning technology could take a renewed look
> at this phenomenon.
It still has far too limited resolution, individual cell assemblies
are too subtle to be viewed with foreseeable scanners. The overal
pattern of activation when remembering stuff has been studied, but
that is like saying "it involves typing on the keyboard, watching the
screen and drinking Coca Cola" as a description of programming - true,
but at a too high level.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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