From: Patrick Wilken (patrickw@cs.monash.edu.au)
Date: Fri Sep 03 1999 - 21:10:06 MDT
>Philip Witham wrote:
>
>This is amazing. How could it be that nature didn't select for this?
Persumably there is some advantages to forgetting. Interesting that one of
the tests done on these mice showed that they remembered the pain
associated with a hot plate much better than your standard mouse. Perhaps
negative situations would be stored too well and lead to greater avoidance
of risky behaviour.
Supermouse: "I smelt a Persian cat in the kitchen last week no way I'm
going out there today no matter how much food there is!" Starves to
death....
Normal Mouse 1: "What's a cat? Need food..." Promply gets eaten...
Normal Mouse 2: "What's a cat? Need food..." Promply gets eaten...
Normal Mouse 3: "What's a cat? Need food..." Gets food and produces big
litter...
A.R. Luria wrote an fascinating book (Mind of a Mnemonist, 1968, Basic
Books) on a case study of 'S' a person with what appeared to be perfect
memory (able to recall a random set of figures shown to him by Luria
perfectly 17 years latter without any prior warning!), but who was
basically a failure in life. Unable to hold down a job. Frustrated by
memories an unhappy childhood he could not forget etc. Worth checking out
to see how bad an extremely good memory can be. Pity we don't have any DNA
from 'S' it would be interesting if he suffered something akin to the
Doggie mouse mutation.
best, patrick
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Patrick Wilken
Editor: PSYCHE: An International Journal of Research on Consciousness
Board Member: The Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness
http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/ http://www.assc.caltech.edu/
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