memory

Application vs. Memorization

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The next generation of the human race is currently enrolled in a 7-hours-per-day, 5-days-a-week program: school. In a single year, students spend about 1,200 hours in school alone. Since students spend much of their time in this educational program, schools need to make sure they are teaching most effectively during this period of time. The normal schooling methods used since 1837, way back when traditional schooling was first thought of, has always favored the use of memorization over application, but this has led to systematic harm of many futures for nearly 180 years. The methods of teaching need to take a turn towards application and understanding if the futures of young minds is in our best interest.

To truly understand this change, you must understand what the starting point, memorization, truly is. Memorization is the process that one follows to preserve knowledge to later on recall it. Memorization plays a large role in modern and past techniques of learning. The use of memorization in classes ranges from memorizing formulas to memorizing the parts of a cell. Although it’s sometimes easy to remember small bits, it’s also very common to forget them. According to an article related to memory, medically reviewed by Daniel B. Block, MD, one reason humans forget is motivated forgetting. This means if a student isn’t given a true reason to know something besides “It will be on the test,” they won’t see why they need to remember something for the future. For example, if one P.E. teacher tells their student to remember the bicep muscles in the arms because they are important, the student won’t know why it’s important. That “Why” component is their motivation to remember.

As there are two sides to this change, we also need to understand application. Application/Understanding is split into multiple parts: Explain, Interpret, Apply, and Have Perspective. Explain means students should be able to explain each step in their solutions and why that step was there. Interpret means students should be able to interpret others’ solutions as well. Apply means students not only memorize the formulas and figurative language techniques, but they can use them in their solutions and writings. Lastly, Have Perspective means students can weigh in or give their opinion on a topic or problem related to the lesson. This explanation of application/understanding is hefty, but in simple terms, it means students have that “Why?” factor they were missing in memorization. They have that motivation to learn with application/understanding.

Although both skills, memorization and application, are important in student development, which of the two is truly more important in the future? When students grow up, their jobs won’t be to label the parts of a cell (memorization); their jobs will be to explore and innovate for the future using the knowledge they already know (application). For many adults, while in school, they weren’t given the opportunity to be creative with their knowledge. If children are able to start applying themselves at an early age, the change to adulthood will be a smoother transition. In addition to this, application allows students to make connections to the real world. Memorization will allow students to know the theme of a story, but application takes it one step further; instead of only identifying the theme, the student will be able to use the theme in their own lives to better themselves. The future needs those who can create and enhance over those who can identify and label.

For a while now, I have been talking about many hypothetical futures, so this time, let’s see where exactly application is necessary over memorization. The first and most explicit example is driving. There are two portions to earning your license: a written and actual driving test. The written portion is the memorization side. For the written test, you have to memorize signs, distances, rules, etc. For the actual driving test, the proctor grades the driver on how well they follow the rules and drive in general. Now I have a question for you: Would you feel more safe driving next to someone who knows the rules but hasn’t actually driven, or would you feel more safe driving next to someone who knows the rules and can follow them safely? Drivers who can apply their knowledge and skills are better off on the road than those who only know the rules. This is why there is an application side to earning a license.

Application is already being used in public schools as higher-level thinking technique, but they haven’t highlighted this section enough. Many class assessments and standardized tests choose word problems as higher-level thinking questions. From an article written by John Marsh, an education counselor,

Solving math word problem[s] [are] challenging task[s]: it teaches students to use logic and creative thinking which is combined in executing the task.

Students are able to understand much more by using logic and creativity in real-world scenarios than they ever could by simply memorizing knowledge. This is because word problems force students to use creativity, accept challenges, use logical analysis, and prepare them for the upcoming years. School Districts need to minimize the role of memorization and vastly increase the roles of understanding and applying while testing their students. Alternating assessments is the first step into a much deeper and meaningful future.

The adaptation to applicative learning is a step-by-step process which will take some time and effort from both students and educators. The change necessary is not only on assessments, but the ways of teaching as well. Teachers need to start explaining and providing reasons for each lesson so students begin to slowly replicate these actions. This is important because if students can start understanding what they are doing and why they are doing it from a young age, their minds will be more open to learning. The second technical change would be from the students’ perspective. Students will be asked to explain why each step is there so they understand and do not just memorize. The third change is obviously how assessments are graded and what the students are tested on. Currently, memorization plays a large role in assessments. With applicative learning, students will be tested on real-life situations that relate to the lesson. For levels one and two, the students will be asked to explain and interpret. For levels three and four, however, the students will be asked to apply their knowledge to word problems. The whole test will be modified for realistic situations. For example, instead of asking the students to find the area of a square, the student will be asked to find the area of a garden. These minuscule adaptations will leave their positive mark on each student.

A few schools have already begun the transformation to applicative learning, but one stands way ahead. Elon Musk — yes, that Elon Musk — has built a school, Ad Astra, for highly gifted children. This school is much different than any school you have ever seen. Ad Astra has taken application over memorization to a whole new level. At this school, there are no grades; this may seem bizarre, but Elon’s focus is on the students’ development. According to Business Insider, Peter Diamandis, chairman of the X Prize Foundation, toured the school and was approving of its ethos.

One element that is persistent in that small school of 31 kids is the conversation about ethics and morals, a conversation manifested by debating real-world scenarios that our kids may one day face,

said Peter. Ad Astra zeroes in on real-world scenarios every day. Elon himself explained the main struggle with current education: students are being asked to memorize information without knowing why those pieces are important. Elon and Ad Astra have reached new heights in applicative learning, but if public schools take it step-by-step, their students will benefit immensely. 

Change is a word that brings fear to those who do not have an open mind. The methods of teaching for the past 180 years have gone on far too long; change is a necessity. The young minds are our future, and our future is our interest. Thus, students need to be taught in a way that encourages creativity, logical analysis, and accepting challenges. The young minds of today will soon be the minds of tomorrow, but right now they need applicative learning much more than memorization.

MIT Scientists Incept Mice With False Memories

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Director Christopher Nolan’s (of Batman and Inception) fame has a distinct fascination for memory, a theme he frequently explores in his films. In 2000’s Memento, protagonist Leonard Shelby suffers from a real (but extremely rare) condition that disallows him from making new memories. He remembers his childhood and his past but exists solely in a short-term memory present tense that fades after a minute or two, only to be erased and replaced again and again. In the film his wife is brutally raped and murdered. Unable to experience the tempering effects of time and psychologically incapable of moving on, he lives with a constant and fevered desire to catch her killer.

He frequently burns possessions of her in an attempt to gain some sense of closure, but these memories he tries to create never stick. He dispiritedly utters one of my favorite lines of the film:

“I can’t remember to forget you.”

Recently scientists at MIT may have found a way to replace memories or to erase them altogether.

Publishing in Science, a team of researchers claim to have created false memories in mice. The team was able to condition mice to behave fearfully in an environment that was different than the one in which they had actually been exposed to electric shocks.  The study, performed by Steve Ramirez, Xu Liu, et. al., could fundamentally alter our understanding of the physical, neuronal aspects of memory function. The team also speculates that this research could be used to literally turn memories on or off, a revolutionary idea that many people likely find liberating and terrifying in equal measure.

To train the mice, the researchers first had to locate a specific memory in their brains. In this Ted Talk, Liu and Ramirez detail how they were able to identify the specific cells responsible for a memory. When a mouse was put into a new environment, its brain would light up with neuronal activity. Liu explains that when these cells are activated, they leave behind a “footprint” that makes it possible to track their activity and put a sort of neuronal bookmark on them. Using a technique called optogenetics, the team was able to install an artificial “switch” that lets them literally turn these brain cells on or off by shooting them with laser pulses.

To summarize the complicated and detailed experiment: Individual mice were put into a new environment, a blue box. The neurons responsible for creating the memory of the blue box were traced and made to activate in response to pulses of light. The mouse was then put into a different new environment, a red box. While in the red box, the researchers administered mild electric shocks to the mouse while activating the cells responsible for remembering the blue box. The mouse was, in effect, being reminded of the blue box while being shocked in the red box. Then, the mouse was put back into the blue box, where it fearfully responded as if that were the environment it was conditioned to fear, despite the fact that the mouse had no historical reason to be afraid of the blue box.

Conditioning

The scientists very literally Incepted a mouse with a false memory that made it afraid of an environment it had no reason to fear.

In addition to being able to turn a memory on, Liu and Ramirez maintain that they can also turn it off, and even believe it will be possible to customize and edit memories in the future. These alterations can be viewed as a controlled version of the way our minds naturally distort our recollections, which is one reason why eyewitness testimony is so fundamentally flawed—our brains are famously prone to misremembering. This groundbreaking technology could change one of the most important aspects of being human: the obviously profound relationship we all have with our past.

The possibility of erasing bad breakups or the sources of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, to creating new versions of our old selves, can be both an invigorating horizon of opportunity as well as the introduction to an Orwellian nightmare, depending on both the individual involved and what memories are being tinkered with.

One of my fundamental beliefs is that every human being fully owns themselves and may do anything to their body they wish, with the important caveat that they alone are responsible for their actions. The idea of a third-party deleting or installing memories is of the utmost abhorrence. However, for better or for worse, I believe that individuals should be allowed to selectively modify their own past as they see fit, despite all the inherent troubles of getting the rest of the world to go along with the story you’ve created. (Imagine having to tell everyone to never bring up an ex before you get your memory of him/her erased…and how that totally wouldn’t work.)

I like to focus on this research as being a way for mankind to better understand memory and the neuronal processes in the brain. However, the idea of erasing or manipulating memories is interesting and does create a fundamental paradox. If I change my own recollections, my perception of the past that created my personality and worldview will have been altered by a person that I no longer fully recognize or accept as truly being “me.” The person who altered their memories would in a very real psychological sense no longer be the person that had the memories changed in the first place.

So who would you truly be? The Before or the After?

On a humorous note that I simply couldn’t pass up, writing about this story has brought up one of my favorite moments from Seinfeld. In the show, Jerry Seinfeld is dating a cop and is nervous about taking a lie detector test. Jerry asks George Costanza, the consummate and ubiquitous teller-of-fibs, for advice. George, absolutely deadpan, gives his counsel:

“It’s not a lie….if you believe it.”

Indeed.

 

Sources:

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6144/387

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23447600

http://tedxboston.org/speaker/ramirez

 

 

Neocortex: How Human Memory Works and How We Learn

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I have been reading a book on how the brain functions, particularly the neocortex which we know as the two pinkish greyish hemispheres. It is a seriously technical and boring read, but that is why I bring the main points into this first post on explaining how our memory works. If you start to feel that this is tedious, just glance over the bold parts.

How the Neocortex and Human Memory Works

Sequential Patterns

Our memory works sequentially and in a hierarchy. We remember linear sequential patterns. A sequence is the basic building block of our memory, how we learn, and how we function as humans. A popular sequence, for example, is the alphabet. We can recite the alphabet from A to Z with very little effort because we memorized the sequence from the beginning to the end.

Related Article: Become a God for 79 Cents

But what if you were asked to recite the alphabet from Z to A? Computers have no problem doing this as they can process the alphabet backwards in a thousandth of a second.  But we humans would struggle, computing it sequentially. First, we would start to recite the alphabet until we get to, say, the last two or three letters, X Y Z. We would then be able to recite those backwards. Then we start from the beginning again and get to the next two or three in the list, U V W, then recite those backwards. Each time we are going through the sequential pattern in order to recite the alphabet backwards.

Neocortex Sequential Patterns

Neocortex Sequential Patterns

Pattern Hierarchy in the Neocortex

As for the hierarchical nature of memory, there are lower level patterns and higher level patterns which our neurons process instantaneously, without us even noticing. Take a sentence for example. At the very high end of the pattern hierarchy you will be able to judge whether the writer intended the statement to portray sarcasm, to be a comical remark, or whether the statement was meant to be rhetorical. You will be able to attach your personal feelings to the sentence based on what is written.

You go down the hierarchical ladder and you see grammatical patterns. You understand the colloquial nature of the text and your brain processes this so quickly that you don’t even have to stop and think.

Related Article: Photographic Memory (Phase 2: Holy Shit)

We go even further down the hierarchical ladder and your neocortex is able to guess what word you are reading without even finishing it completely. You just glance over the text and recognize the pattern of the letters. The word “letter” starts with a tall character and has two more tall t’s. It is short enough for your brain to guess that the most plausible word fitting the character pattern is the word “letter”. Your brain also looks for patterns in the text itself, such as contextual patterns.

Way at the bottom of the hierarchy the neocortex recognizes the letters themselves. This is a very rudimentary level and therefore we can say that, with the preconception that you are an American and you know the English alphabet, your neo-cortex recognizes individual letters at the speed of light, metaphorically. If you pass through a letter that has two slants like / and \, /\, your neocortex will almost instantly recognize it as the letter A, since there are no other candidates and enough of a pattern is present for the brain to guess.

In the same way, when you see someone writing like a douche, using $ for “S” and ! for “I”, like $H!T!, we can immediately see that the person intended to use “SHIT!”. This is called auto association, the ability to associate a pattern with a part of itself. We can recognize a pattern even if the entire pattern is not present.

A hierarchical pattern is basically a sequence of sequences of sequences etc…

Hierarchical Patterns = Recursion & Iteration (Where are the programmer geeks?)

In a 2002 paper that Noam Chomsky coauthored called “The Faculty of Language: What Is It, Who Has It, and How Did It Evolve?” he cited the attribute of “recursion” as accounting for the unique language faculty of the human species. Recursion, according to Chomsky, is the ability to put together small parts into a larger chunk, and then to use that chunk as a part in yet another structure, and to continue this process interactively. In this way we are able to build the elaborate structures of sentences and paragraphs from a limited set of words. This essentially describes what the neocortex does.

Related Article: Memory, a Torch Pass

Two excerpts from “How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed” that have a lot to do with how we experience learning and memorizing follows below:

The neocortex is, therefore, predicting what it expects to encounter. Envisaging the future is one of the primary reasons we have a neocortex. At the highest conceptual level, we are continually making predictions – who is going to walk through the door next, what someone is likely to say next, what we expect to see when we turn the corner, the likely results of our own actions, and so on. These predictions are constantly occurring at every level of the neocortex hierarchy. We often misrecognize people and things and words because our threshold for confirming an expected pattern is too low. (p59)

I believe I could pick out a picture of the woman with the baby carriage whom I saw earlier today from among a group of pictures of other women, despite the fact that I am unable to actually visualize her and cannot describe her much specifically. In this case my memory of her is a list of certain high-level features. These features do not have language or image labels attached to them, and they are not pixel images, so while I am able to think about her, I am unable to describe her. However, if I am presented with a picture of her, I can process the image, which results in the recognition of the same high-level features that were recognized the first time I saw her. I would be able to thereby determine that the features match and thus confidently pick out her picture.  (p66)

Here are some key points to draw from the top two paragraphs. The first paragraph reiterates the fact that our neocortex constantly guesses at blazing speeds what we are looking at or processing by using all of our five senses. The second paragraph basically states, HUMANS DO NOT HAVE PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY. DIGITAL CAMERAS DO. The closest to photographic memory that only some rare few humans get to is called eidetic imagery. It also points out that there is a difference between recognizing and recalling something. When you can’t recall a woman’s face from memory by drawing it out, but you can recognize it among a few pictures, that is called autoassociation, or being able to pull out a memory via some visual cue.

Last Point I Swear! Redundancy

Redundancy is the key to enforcing our pattern building, recognition, and recall. Let me also point out that humans have five senses and that we gather “data” from all five of them which allow our neocortex to build numerous patterns that point to the same reference. Take for example french fries. Your brain gathers data from the visual aspect, the crunching, the texture from the touch, the smell, and the amazing taste. The experience itself also enforces your pattern building to keep the fries in your memory.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoassociative_memory

http://www.amazon.com/How-Create-Mind-Thought-Revealed/dp/0670025291

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/298/5598/1569.short

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200603/the-truth-about-photographic-memory

Wondergressive: Experiments in Photographic Memory

More Related Articles:

Wondergressive: Erase Memories Because… Why Not?

Wondergressive: Cannabis Cures Cancer and Everything Else: A History and Review of the Evidence

Wondergressive: Controlling Dreams and Implanting Memories

Wondergressive: Computers Improve and Sustain Mind and Memory of the Elderly

Become a God for 79 Cents

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In 1934, a product was created that has yet to be trumped in its incredible power, not by 3D printing, bionic hands, or even self slicing bread. One man had the revolutionary idea to take blank pieces of paper and bind them together with a spiral of twisting metal. Thanks to this pioneer of liberal thinking, today, if you have 79 cents, you can become a god.

I grow impatient of your incessant rambling, Qwizx. Just tell me this amazing thing already!

Alright, jeez, Fictional Naysayer, I gotta rope you in and build the suspense a little, ok? Cool your ADHD jets…

Buy a notebook, and you can have superpowers… literally.

Of course, there is the obvious, “hey kids, unleash the power of your imagination,” (as though Wondergressive would ever become some PBS special or episode of SpongeBob). Or the spot-on philosophy of sci-fi grandmaster Robert A. Heinlein, World as Myth. Or, like we’ve already shown, creativity is the meaning of existence. No, this is much much much cooler than all that.

So a friend mentions how he found this method of tripling your energy in the morning, and you placatingly nod and think, “Cool, I’ll add it to the pile of things I’ll blow off until I die, right along side lose 50lb, quit masturbating, and develop a photographic memory.” Except, do you actually have that pile? No? Then make one…

Get yourself a pad of paper and a pencil, those ancient technologies, to keep in your pocket at all times, and jot down any passing thought, even just a one or two word “note-to-self.”

Don’t be afraid to take it to serial-killer levels of obsessive compulsion:

But, why?

Short-term memory is super limited, so it’s easy to get overwhelmed if, say, more than two things are happening at once. But your brain is a tremendously powerful biological supercomputer capable of… frankly we have no idea, because we are constantly pushing the boundaries of what we are capable of. What the notebook does is very simple; it allows you to set your subconscious to its own devices and create miracles on par with walking on water.

So, this time, a buddy mentions something about eating more spinach, and we try something new; instead of “yeah yeah, I’ll get to it eventually” we simply jot it down in our handy dandy notebook… and that’s it. Don’t think about it again. Set it and forget it.

Bullshit!

Always the skeptic, Mr. Naysayer. Good, don’t ever change.

Ok, think of it this way: Yes, short-term memory is limited. Long-term memory, however, has no limits. None. (Well, not quite none. It’s only capable of storing the entire Milky Way galaxy jam packed with terabyte hard drives) and it thinks half a million times faster than you. Putting your subconscious to a task is like wondering what to make for diner and having the entire population of Luxemburg stop what they’re doing to exclusively weigh the pros and cons of mac-n-cheese vs. Chinese takeout. Assigning a job to the subconscious is really easy, too…

When we half-heartedly think “Yeah yeah, I’ll get to it when I get to it” what we’re saying is “Hey Luxemburg, just sit around. We’re not doing shit today”

There is a general taboo on Magic, here in the age of science, but “magic” is just a word. The mind is so magnificently powerful that it’s incomprehensible to our thinking consciousness. Perhaps the first grimoire was just this concept; a young lady wrote down her inner thoughts and crazy “coincidences” started happening. (Shit, better burn her.)

Whatever. I have a journal and don’t own my own planet yet.

Touché.

First, go back right now and read your old journals. You’ll be astonished at how much of what you’d written has happened. You’ll be far more astonished at how much of what came true you totally forgot about and then put no conscious effort whatsoever into achieving, but it happened anyway.

Second, take a special look at your language. Our thoughts are noise, and even the smartest among us are complete morons. That’s a good thing. When you wrote, “Brian is so cute, but there’s no way he’d like me,” Luxemburg took that and created exactly what you wanted. They got together and filtered what they would show you (like how he’s talking to Hillary and hasn’t noticed your low-cut top, asshole) hiding anything non-affirming (see how he can’t make eye-contact and keeps shifting his feet when you’re around. That’s a good thing). You will see whatever you already expect to see. That’s why Brian’s an asshole.

Instead, even if you don’t believe it, jot down “I think Brian might be into me,” and Luxemburg will start to show you little bits of proof that you’re right.

Got any examples?

Sure do. In ’95, Neal Donald Walsch was a broken man. Razor in hand, ready to open his wrists in desperation, he played one last-ditch wild card that he never expected to work. He pulled out a spiral notebook and started frantically scrawling a passionate hate letter to God, demanding answers to not just his own turmoils, but to the big existential things; why is there so much suffering? What happens when we die? Bad things to good people, all that.

A devout atheist, eventually, in his passion, something happened. He started expecting an answer. In that moment, he got one. His hand started moving of its own accord, and the revelations revealed were nothing less than divine. These madman scribblings have gone on to become a series of spiritual texts lauded the world over. God? Brain? It doesn’t matter.

Another. Are you reading this on a Mac? So you’ve heard of Steve Jobs? His biography flies off the shelves and one of the most beautiful things in it is his constant demanding of the impossible. All throughout the book are moments where a chief-engineer would come to him with bad news, “Steve, we can’t do it. I know what you’re saying; it’s just that what you need us to do doesn’t exist. It’s impossible.”

Top engineers for Apple or Pixar are kind of smart, so if they say something isn’t just hard, but utterly impossible, then, yeah, it can’t be done. Steve, charismatic manager that he was, would simply say, “Fucking do it, or you’re fired.”  And it got done. Every time. (Screw you, reality)

Get your own spiral notebook without leaving your house!

Is that really all there is to it?

Yep. When you write it down it gives your brain permission to do what it does best, solve problems.

Don’t think big. Think huge. Don’t think huge. Think cosmic. Just decide and don’t worry about the how. Your private fleet of subatomic-physicists, genetic-engineers, economists, composers, and dreamers can work out the details.

 

 

Sources:

First Spiral Notebook (Sep, 1934)

Reanimated Kidneys, 3-D Printing, and (Icky?) Organ Markets

Bionic Hand That Can Feel

World as Myth

The Almighty Escapism: Creating Distraction

Engineering the Perfect Morning in 8 Easy Steps

The Amazing Bacon, Beer, and Edible Underwear Diet

Quit Cumming: Save MANkind

Photographic Memory (Phase 2: Holy Shit)

How Handwriting Trains the Brain

Obese? Got a Fatty Liver? No Problem. Spinach and Nuts Have You Covered

Neural Pathway Development

Conscious Vs. Subconscious Processing Power

Science Says, “Smart People Are Idiots”

How Do Brains Filter Data?

“Party Chat” Brain Filter Discovered

Brain “Irrelevance Filter” Found

Preserving Integrity in the Face of Performance Threat

cwg.org

Conversations With God, an Uncommon Dialogue

Steve Jobs

24 Inspirational Steve Jobs Quotes That Help You Suck Less

Will Smith: Wisdom, Motivation, Inspiration

 

 

Smelling Calmness: Aromatherapy and Essential Oils

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These days, the nose is getting a lot of attention. Well, more than noses have typically gotten in the past. Nasal irrigation is a thing, for example.

The more we study the nose and our olfactory senses, the more we find that links them to memories. There are several theories floating around the science community about why smells elicit such strong emotional responses. Jonah Lehrer of ScienceBlogs postulates in his article, “Smell and Memory”:

One possibility, which is supported by this recent experiment, is that the olfactory cortex has a direct neural link to the hippocampus. In contrast, all of our other senses (sight, touch and hearing) are first processed somewhere else – they go to the thalamus – and only then make their way to our memory center.

Aromatherapy is an alternative medicine that has been gaining popularity in the margins. Bear in mind that just because it’s categorized under something labeled “medicine” doesn’t mean it’s going to cure something. In fact, aromatherapy is most used to aid relaxation and center the mind and body, usually through essential oils.

Essential oils are “A natural oil typically obtained by distillation and having the characteristic fragrance of the plant or other source from which it is extracted” (Google Dictionary).

Lavendar is probably the best-known essential oil. It tops Self.com’s list of 6 Essential Oils and What They Do Pro Tip, ladies: according to Dr. Alan Hirsch, founder and neurological director of the Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago:

Studies reveal that the number one odor that enhances male sexual arousal is a combination of lavender and … pumpkin pie!

Different essential oils have different properties. Here’s a list of many along with their properites.

A few important things to remember when experimenting with essential oils is that they are NOT to be used straight. They should be diluted with a carrier oil (olive, coconut and jojoba oils are a few examples) or diffused in a diffuser. Cinnamon oil would burn if it made direct contact with skin because it is one of those that is very potent.

Also, fragrance oils and essential oils are NOT the same thing. Fragrance oils have a larger range of scents because they are synthetically produced. These do not have the healing/centering/aromatherapeutic properties that true, 100% pure essential oils do. When purchasing oils for therapeutic and medicinal reasons make sure they are 100% pure. Amazon is a good place to test the waters with a sampler kit.

References
SinuCleanse Demonstration on Oprah

Smell and Memory

Google Dictionary: essential oils

6 Essential Oils and What They Do

Essential Oils Directory

Photographic Memory (Phase 2: Holy Shit)

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A few weeks ago, we posted a potentially paradigm altering question: Can the human mind be trained into photographic recollection? (This is a follow up, so maybe check out the link before reading on) Two sentences are more than enough build up. The results are in folks, and…

The short answer is “yes”.

The slightly longer answer is “FUCK YEAH!!!! WHEW!!!! (6 back-flips)”

For the last month, I’ve been religiously following this protocol, and it has worked. I have a photographic memory. No joke. After the power-lust erection and adrenaline jitters subsided, after a few hours of daydreaming plots to use this new ability for super-villainy, after a day of gazing at perfect recollections of stolen glances at cleavage, I feel I’ve calmed down enough to share with you eager readers the wonderful news… and you can totally have this too.

It’s incredibly easy. Do it. That’s really all you need to know. Do it now… but for the more curious, like I know you are, just a few things:

What’s happening in the brain that makes this work?

Well, there are 2 theories of how color vision works. Trichromatic theory says, essentially, that there are 3 types of cones (receptors) in the eye that sense specific pairs of colors; the occipital lobe then translates this information into what we call vision.

More interestingly, though, and what we’ll be looking at in detail, is the opponent-process theory of colored vision. With the opponent-process theory, whenever it suddenly shifts to dark, a perfect photo-negative image of whatever was just in the visual field gets transposed onto the retina. That’s the mechanism at work for the well-known illusion on the right (stare for ten seconds, then look away and blink fast) (or maybe it’s God talking to you. I don’t know). That negative image is what we utilize for super memory…

As long as the eyes are open, these negative images are constantly being processed and filtered by the brain. See, way too much is happening at once, though. Your eyes take in trillions and trillions of bits of visual information every instant, and almost none of it matters. So the occipital lobe, hard-worker that he is, weeds out what it doesn’t think is necessary. While you “see” everything around you, you only actually perceive an infinitesimal amount, the things that pertain to your safety/survival or what you’re focusing on in the moment. For example:

So, how does the occipital lobe know what’s important? Easy, you tell it. You do this all the time and don’t even think about it. A new parent will notice the “Diapers: Half Price” sign that the rest of us glazed over like it had neon lights, just like Alex Jones fans tend to see the chemtrails and “all-seeing eyes,” as though reality had been hit by a highlighter. Watch: right now, take a quick moment, without moving your eyes; notice all the things around you that are the color black…

Easy, of course, but did you notice that while you were doing that, everything else just sort of faded away? You could still see it, but it just wasn’t in focus, sort of. This is the process we hack…

The mind is plastic, flexible to our will, and if we know how it operates, we can train it to do just about anything. To develop a photographic memory; we need only develop a simple habit, so, real quick, let’s understand how habits work. It’s 30 days. That simple. If we do something every day, after 30 days, it no longer takes effort. The mind is retrained and the process is automatic (remember this for anything you want to do, because it’s universal, not just for memory training).

So with the dark-room process, we read words etched into our retinas, right. These negative images are always there and, usually, disregarded as irrelevant. What we’re doing is stepping into this process and saying, “Hey, don’t throw that out just yet. Let me take a look at that.” (You control your brain; your brain doesn’t control you, and never let anyone tell you otherwise), so the brain says “Oh, ok. Here it is. I didn’t realize you wanted that.” Your brain, however, is in the habit of tossing these negatives, so every day for a month we step in and say, “let me see that for a second.” after 30 days, the brain gets the point and will automatically save these images for you to look at whenever you want. Welcome to the club; you now have a photographically perfect memory.

Additional tips (in retrospect)

1.) Don’t read a book. The absolute best thing to attempt to read is not a book. What works much better is black background with bright and blocky white lettering. Far far easier to try to read.

2.) Wink. Part of the frustration you’ll come across with attempting to read your hindsight is overexposure. If you flash the lights before the image is totally dissolved, there is this overlap effect, like double exposed film (I’m not too ancient for remembering what film is, am I?). The solution: wink. Do it with one eye at a time; it has no effect on the process and allows one eye to recover as the other works. Doing this, my overall exercise got to as little as 3 minutes.

3.) Ask. Who knows how many little gimmicks and tricks I figured out? Feel free to write me at qwizx@wondergressive.com. I’ll get back to you as quick as my busy life will let me, and if there’re enough of the same questions, later, I’ll add an FAQ to the bottom here.

Finally, and most importantly, did I mention “fuck yeah” and “cleavage?”

 

 

Sources:

Experiments in Photographic Memory (Phase 1: Guinea Pig) (wondergressive.com)

What is the Trichromatic Theory of Color Vision (about.com)

What is the Opponent-Process Theory of Color Vision (about.com)

Awareness Test – Basketball Passes (youtube.com)

Why Habits Aren’t Always Formed in 21 Days (lifehacker.com)

Memory, A Torch Pass: How the Brain Gathers and Encodes Information

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Human Brain information

Information and memory spans the human mind. http://www.warrelatedillness.va.gov/

Despite the vast amount of information that we know, there is a surprising lack of information regarding the brain and how it works. At the very least we can agree that it is widely accepted  knowledge that the brain is the only organ to have named itself. That being said, we still have a very long way to go before we completely understand our think tanks. The study of memory is one of those intricacies of the brain which I expect we will all learn much more about in the very near future.

Memory is what humans use to hold on to information from the past. Important dates, ideas, and the number of surrounding cars around you while driving are all stored in either long, short, sensory or-as some are now saying-middle term memory.

Sensory memory is immediate.

This lasts for only a couple seconds at the most. Sensory memory acts a buffer between all information input from the senses. After making an impression the sensory information is carried to the short term memory for processing.

Short term (active) memory

The idea of short term memory simply means that you are retaining information for a short period of time without creating the neural mechanisms for later recall (e.g., obtaining and using a phone number from Directory Assistance.)

These memories are quick in and quick out. The brain decides whether or not remembering Jerry’s yellow bow tie is important information. If it isn’t important, it quickly forgets because the short term memory doesn’t really have a lot of room for holding information. If the brain decides “hey I like Jerry’s bow tie, I should take a second to remember that for later use,” then the brain’s long term memory will encode and store the memory.

Most adults can store between 5 and 9 items in their short-term memory.  This idea was put forward by Miller (1956) and he called it the magic number 7. He though that short term memory could hold 7 (plus or minus 2 items) because it only had a certain number of “slots” in which items could be stored.

Short term memory is the ground floor for remembering any type of information. Another, more specific name for short term memory is ‘working memory.’ This puts more emphasis on its importance. Working memory does a lot more work than we are accustomed to giving it credit for. Here’s a nifty chart:

Working Memory information

Working memory handles a surprising amount of information processing.

The phonological loop is assumed to be responsible for the manipulation of speech based information, whereas the visuo–spatial sketchpad is assumed to by responsible for manipulating visual images.

In this model, the working memory is expanded to an active process which prioritizes information storage and retrieval. The central executive acts as the President of your memory. While you’re piloting your jet plane and having a conversation with your copilot about after-flight dinning plans, the central executive is prepared to switch your focus when turbulence rears its not-yet-existent face.

The central executive function works with the long term memory to encode and retrieve important memories. The long term memory can be broken down into three specific types of memory.

Episodic Memory

As its name suggests, this aspect of memory organizes information around episodes in our lives. When we try to recall the information, we attempt to reconstruct these episodes by picturing the events in our minds. Episodic memory enables us to recall not only events, but also information related to those events.

Think episodes of information. Remember that one time when you and your siblings…, the other time when one of your parents was chasing a…, or, my favorite, when your first grade teacher gave you a compliment on your haircut but you thought it was on your sweet Power Rangers sweater and you were mildly offended at her lack of taste which resulted in you never learning how to avoid a run-on sentence because, of course, that was what you were learning in class one day (deep breath).. Remember?!

Episodic memory stores information about images and events for later recall. These are the stories that you remember and can see in your mind.

Semantic Network Model

While episodic memory stores information as images, semantic memory stores information in networks or schemata. Information is most easily stored in semantic memory when it is meaningful – that is, easily related to existing, well-established schemata.

Semantic memory and episodic memory feed off of each other. You learn everything through experience so it would be silly to say that the two are independent. The primary difference between the two modes of information remembrance is that while episodic memory remembers the picture of events, semantic memory remembers the facts.

Semantic memory is a web of related memories. Try this: Think of a color. What do you immediately associate with that color?

I chose green. My immediate associations were: leaves, trees, grass, money, banks, pants, corporations, jail, and the presidential office. How these things are connected is the result of a lifetimes worth of associating different ideas with other different ideas. It really is a procedural sort of thing.

Procedural Memory

Procedural memory (“knowing how”) is the unconscious memory of skills and how to do things, particularly the use of objects or movements of the body, such as playing a guitar or riding a bike. It is composed of automatic sensorimotor behaviours that are so deeply embedded that we are no longer aware of them, and, once learned, these “body memories” allow us to carry out ordinary motor actions automatically.

Whether or not american children believe in the one true god, they-myself included- have been trained to know the pledge of allegiance. We have such a working knowledge of saying the pledge of allegiance that we could drone it in our sleep.

This is exactly what procedural memory is. It’s “muscle memory.” You do something so many times that you don’t think that you’re thinking about doing it anymore. (Try that one out, Bilbo).

How Sleep plays a role:

Sleep is vital to the process of storing memories. When you sleep, the amount of sensory input decreases dramatically. This decrease allows both your brain and your body to do a bit of house keeping. Memory, specifically, uses this time to protect and store as much information as possible.

We still understand very little of the brain’s inner workings. Entire philosophies, religions, cults, and other communities are designed in various ways to figure out and improve how the tock clicks- Maybe it’s the other way.

As this is a constantly developing field of research, this information will probably act as a stepping stone to further understanding how memory storage works.

If you have any links or information related to this post, we informationaholics at Wondergressive would love to read about it. You can comment, email, write a letter to your congress person, or even send a message in a bottle telling us what you know! Oh, and, without looking, can you remember what color the bow tie was?

 

Sources:

Short Term Memory

Lecture slides from Anoka Ramsey Community college

Working Memory

Long Term Memory

Other Wondergressive Links:

Erase Memories, Because… “Why Not?”

Experiments in Photographic Memory (Phase 1: Guinea Pig)

Erase Memories, Because… “Why Not?”

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Ripped directly from the headlines of tomorrow comes the announcement that men in black are indeed here now. Never fear though. A bit of future technology, now well into the experimental phase, has effectively been used on test subjects to wipe selective memories.

According to an article in sciencemag.org,

We have shown previously that lateral amygdala (LA) neurons with increased cyclic adenosine monophosphate response element–binding protein (CREB) are preferentially activated by fear memory expression, which suggests that they are selectively recruited into the memory trace. We used an inducible diphtheria-toxin strategy to specifically ablate these neurons.

…Or in lay-speak, “See that bit of brain there? When I scooped it out, he didn’t remember anymore. Cool, huh?”

Wow, how’s that work?

Because memories are found in specific collections of neurons, haphazardly zig-zagging the brain, and digging around in the brain is kind of hard (it’s brain surgery, not simple rocket science), finding the particular cells that carry a memory is like finding a needle in an active volcano.

This new development, however, uses a CREB protein as a marker, dropping the difficulty to finding a needle in a hive of fire-ants. This highlights the role of a particular neuron bundle in a memory (snip, easy as circumcision), and suddenly Uncle Rick is no longer lobbing coffee cups at Thanksgiving dinner when the electric carver reminds him of Charlie back in ‘Nam.

Now, when it comes to memory, we’ve seen how to fix it in the elderly, implant fake memories for entertaining the kids, and even develop photographic recollection, but now: Eternal Sunshine, Total Recall, Memento; take your pick. On Monday, how bout Jason Bourne-ing” the shit out of your parents and when they start to suspect they’re super-soldiers, leap out with an “April Fools, you’re actually a middle-class suburbanite!!!” Get’s ’em every time.

Joking aside, obviously the ramifications of this new procedure are staggering, and the potential for… wait… What was I talking about?

Fun side-note:

Anyway. Almost totally unrelated (segways are for chumps), something you won’t want to forget: kick-start you day being serenaded in Portuguese by a dimply Brazilian girl. Easier to greet the world with a smile…

Sources:

Selective Erasure of a Fear Memory (sciencemag.org)

Erasing a Memory Reveals the Neurons that Encode it (discovermagazine.com)

Computers Sustain and Improve Mind and Memory of the Elderly (wondergressive.com)

Controlling Dreams and Implanting Memories (wondergressive.com)

Experiments in Photographic Memory (Phase 1: Guinea Pig) (wondergressive.com)

Felicidade – Marcelo Jeneci (youtube.com)

Experiments in Photographic Memory (Phase 1: Guinea Pig)

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photographic memory stephon city

The results of a powerful photographic memory. http://www.stephenwiltshire.co.uk/art_gallery.aspx?Id=5935

Oh, you’ve heard of photographic memory before? Than perhaps you’ve already heard of Stephen Wiltshire, a.k.a’ed as “the Human Camera.” He is the artist responsible for the picture above, aptly titled “Monte Carlo.” I’m no art critic, but the tremendous accomplishment in this work is almost unparalleled in human history, not because the painting is especially brilliant in form or technique, but because the image depicted is photographically perfect to what you would see in a helicopter ride over Monte Carlo. For only a brief few minutes, a helicopter ride is just what Stephen went on; then he went on to paint this work entirely from memory.

Stephen is an autistic savant who sketches perfect skylines, down to the minutest of details, directly from his briefly-glimpsed photographic memories. Much has been said about this incredible young man already, and a full length documentary can be seen here, but this article is not about Stephen. It is about you. It is about you and your ability to do the exact same thing: develop a photographic memory.

The Photographic Memory

photographic memory camera

Photographic memory, yeah, just like that. darozz.tumblr.com

Lauded across civilization as one of the ultimate powers of mankind, the photographic memory has long resided in the realms of mythos, ambiguously skating the lines between reality and legend. The possibilities of attaining such a superhero ability, being nearly limitless, fill one’s mind with a power-high from just imagining it. Yet, as it currently stands, our general understandings widely boil down to hearsay and urban legend, dismissed the way of alchemy, until now…

On ehow.com, there is a tutorial on how to develop a photographic memory using only household appliances, within the span of a mere 30 days. Outrageous! Wild claims are nothing new to the internet and bullshit alarms should sound pretty quick. This method, however, seems to keep showing up over and over and over all across the internet like a foul rumor that just won’t die. While repetition hardly grants the premise credence, it does bring to light an intriguing question. Why can’t we find anyone who’s actually done it?

For such a simple training program with such amazing benefits, it seems no one is willing to put in the effort, or if they are, they are unwilling to share their newfound photographic memory with the world. So this is where we come in…

As of the publication of this article, I am 7 days into my own regimen, and I can tell you I’ve glimpsed victory (more on that shortly). This is, though, the 4th attempt I’ve made in the last 6 months, for reasons we’ll look at in a moment. Our focus here is to validate or discredit this idea by self experimentation, posting results, and looking for feedback/others interested in training their brains to be more.

The Photographic Memory Method (basic)

Instructions

  • 1. This system will take 1 month for you to develop a photographic memory, you must take 15 minutes every day and dedicate it to this training. For the first month, your eyes will take about 5 minutes time to adjust to daylight reading.
  • 2. Find a dark room in your house, free of distractions for 15 minutes. I use the bathroom. The room must have a bright lamp or ceiling lamp.
  • 3. Sit down next to the light switch with your book and paper that has a rectangular hole cut out of it the size of a paragraph.
  • 4. Cover the page, exposing only one paragraph and hold the book out in front of you. Close your eyes and open, adjust distance so that your eyes focus instantly with ease on the writing.
  • 5. Turn off light. You will see an after glow as your eyes adjust to the dark. Flip light on for a split second and then off again.
  • 6. You will have a visual imprint in your eyes of the material that was in front of you. When this imprint fades, flip the light on again for a split second, again staring at the material.
  • 7. Repeat this process until you can recall every word in the paragraph in order. You will be able to actually see the paragraph and read it from the imprint in your mind.

Tips & Warnings

  •  Do not get discouraged, it will work. It has been working for the military for 70 years.
  •  You will be developing this technique to a point where you will be able to execute this during the day, all day.
  •  Rate this article with the stars by my screen name.
  •  Omitting even one day, can prolong training by as much as a week.

 

As I’ve said, I’ve tried and failed 4 times now, but I’ve learned a few secrets along the way that I’d like to share, because I have seen this work.

But why did you fail the last 4 times?

Well, it’s pretty simple actually. It’s boring. Actually putting in the effort to get a photographic memory is boring and tedious but mostly there was no feedback or reassurance because no one else (as far as we know) has done this yet. So, sitting in a dark bathroom every morning, frankly, I felt like a lunatic and quit. Congratulations to you, then. I’m here at your disposal (qwizx@wondergressive.com) and with enough traffic, we’ll be starting a forum as well, so you have just gotten past the biggest obstacle of attaining a photographic memory, no support, and haven’t even done anything yet. All that said, let’s break this down step by step, so you can know what to expect.

photographic memory big bang

Photographic memoy, or eidetic memoryhttp://www.tumblr.com/tagged/eidetic%20memory

1.   This system will take 1 month for you to develop. You must take 15 minutes every day and dedicate it to this training. For the first month, your eyes will take about 5 minute’s time to adjust to daylight reading.

The first few days are really interesting, because the sensations are just spectacular.  You’ll literally be able to see into the past through peripheral images burned into your retina. As for 15 minutes, this isn’t quite right. For the first several days, it will be more like 30-45; then you’ll develop a system and be able to pull back to 15. When it says “5 minutes to adjust,” this means don’t start the process until you’ve been in the dark for at least 5 minutes. After the novelty wears off, this routine will get tedious, so I highly recommend using this few minutes wisely: turn on some music for a reference to how much time has passed and brush your teeth or any other bits of your morning routine that don’t require light. I go so far as to take a waterproof flashlight into my cold shower (you can get flash images of individual droplets hovering in midair).

2.    Find a dark room in your house, free of distractions for 15 minutes. I use the bathroom. The room must have a bright lamp or ceiling lamp.

The bathroom works well, but it must be pitch black. Be sure to shove a towel under the crack in the door and unplug any appliances with even a tiny light. “Dark” just won’t cut it; it needs to be complete blackness. Also, if you’re using a bathroom (closet works great too), be sure to let anyone living with you know you’ll be in there for a while, cause it’s really frustrating to be 12 minutes in and get an “I gotta pee” knock, only to have to start all over.

3.   Sit down next to the light switch with a book and a paper that has a rectangular hole cut out of it the size of a paragraph.

Light switch is great, but flashlight is better so you won’t have to stand uncomfortably the whole time. The type of bulb is important as well; it can’t be one that emits residual light, cooling down gradually, as it needs to be a quick flash and nothing more or the effect is ruined. LED is excellent. As far as the book goes, forget it for the first few days. Just play around with the process until you can see a fair amount of detail in various objects in the room. After a few days, incorporate a book, but a child’s book with very large print (or print off anything you’d like, but with at least 20 sized font). Don’t be discouraged, because on the first day you won’t be able to read a paragraph, just get a vague shape of the page. it improves over time.

4.   Cover the page, exposing only one paragraph and hold the book out in front of you. Close your eyes and open, adjust distance so that your eyes focus instantly with ease on the writing.

The concept here is fascinating: you’ll be training yourself to be able to read a paragraph only from a brief glance. After 30 days, the amount of time it takes to establish a habit, you’re mind will essentially be on autopilot, doing this automatically. How cool! Over time use smaller and smaller font to train your eyes.

5.   Turn off light. You will see an afterglow as your eyes adjust to the dark. Flip light on for a split second and then off again.

Have fun playing around with the length of the flash, because the difference of a few milliseconds makes a huge difference, especially if there is any motion going on. Eyes work like cameras, and we want to avoid time-lapse photography (right).

6.  You will have a visual imprint in your eyes of the material that was in front of you. When this imprint fades, flip the light on again for a split second, again staring at the material.

You’ll be able to see everything, as though the lights were still on. It’s a dizzying experience (can be scary and mind-blowing).

7.   Repeat this process until you can recall every word of the paragraph in order. You will be able to actually see the paragraph and read it from the imprint in your mind.

Just start with details around the room and work up to this. Count tiles, trace wood-grain lines, anything. The memory itself is exactly “photographic;” an image is at your mind’s disposal. In the end, if you asked me what was the third word of the second paragraph on page 327 of Moby -Dick, I’d know it was blubber, not because I have it all memorized but because I can bring up the image of that page perfectly to my mind’s eye. It works on this same idea: currently, do you know what the fourth word in this paragraph is? Probably not. But you can find out easily enough because it’s only an inch or two up.

photographic memory head

A photographic memory is possible, but find out for yourself. http://www.mishes.com/inspiracion/collage-illustrations-randy-mora

Two weeks into my first attempt, my mind made a leap. I was spinning in revelry at the notion that soon I’d have the super power of photographic memory and I wanted to test it, so I went to the shelf with all the movies and tried it out. I wasn’t really sure what to do or how to “take a picture” so I looked at a shelf with 200 or so videos and just thought “click,” looking at the shelf for only a second or so, being careful not to consciously read the titles. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine, not remember, the shelf. ‘Imagine’ isn’t quite right either; maybe see is the best word. Once you experiment you’ll understand what I mean. The experience is like perfectly looking into the past with a camera with resolution as detailed as your eyesight and clipping out a perfect 3 dimensional frame of reality. you can go back and look at these images the same way you look at a photo album except… it’s more like if time suddenly stopped, but you can’t perceive beyond whatever you’re focused on this exact moment. I imagined the shelf and could see every bit of it, even details I’d never noticed before, like little cracks in the wood or tiny things that would normally elude or not interest me. Most importantly, I could read every title. Today, 4 months later, I still can.

One man’s speculations and lunatic claims are hardly proof of anything, so let’s try this together. What have you got to lose besides your mind?

 

Sources: