The basic ideas is that there are multiple centers in the brain, and “k-lines” are likes wires which go through all of them, and can be programmed to store which centers were active during events or episodes that the brain needs to remember. There are multiple layers of abstraction in the brain, as some centers are managers for other centers, in a layered fashion.

When the brain recognizes it needs to solve a type of problem it has seen before, it activates a k-line which enables the brain centers which turns on those centers which were used the last tie. If the k-lines extend too far up and down the hierarchy, it will seem to the person as if they are actually re-experiencing the situation, instead of just having enough of the brain centers turned on to get them in the same general frame of mind.

I’d say because our brains’ capabilities shaped the world over time, rather than just -happening- to work in the world we suddenly find ourselves in today.

BBC Radio 4′s “In Our Time” was talking about brain-mind in this wise only a couple of weeks ago. You can Listen Again here.

As for Price, the 42-yo with the memory, I wonder if she has perfect memories of previous occasions she recalled something? When she is 60 will she remember being 42 and remembering perfectly some memory of her 25-yo self remembering something irritating or embarrassing happening to her 15-yo self?

It sounds at least as though she has a hard time experiencing any “present” to have future memories of, except for for the experience of having older memories.

As to whether (Turing) machines can think or there’s really “something more” to consciousness, there are volumes of philosophical work on the topic. Check out Alan Turing’s paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” (http://www.abelard.org/turpap/turpap.htm) for some early work on the subject that seems to have been wrongly ignored in much early work among “proper” philosophers. I will add that the Turing test is both too hard and too easy — normal people can be fooled by things as simple as ELIZA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA), but a “proper” Turing test can involve pretty much any computationally hard problem whatsoever.

No. Natural selection merely rejects or chooses characteristics that fail or fit the conditions in which the organism finds itself. It’s not a search engine, it’s a filter.

“…how and why did we evolve such powerful noggins in such a short period?”

We didn’t. It took a long time. But it appears there was a transformational leap forward a couple hundred thousand years ago, a nodal point, when the evolving brain’s wiring led to something new and unique. Suddenly … consciousness and all its attendant woes.

We left the animal kingdom and became Marlin Perkins.

To make matters worse, for complicated science-fictional reasons, he’s got someone else’s memories in his head, too.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5350362

It’s interesting that at the time of the NPR story, Jill Price was not revealing her real name or really any other details about her life. The NPR story also has less of a dark and gloomy take.

The story has stayed with me these past couple of years as I, like others here, definitely felt a connection with this woman. I have nothing near “total recall” like Price, but my memories have always been very strong, detailed, and long lasting. From age 2 on. It does come with it’s baggage (much of which people discussed above). There’s no “forgive and forget” – only “forgive.” Learning to adjust to what other people are capable of remembering I’d say is the trickiest. But for me, there’s a lot of good and fun, too.

What was it about our evolution that produced not just a brain capable of surviving and dominating the prehistoric world, but one that can understand and do all the things my rather normal brain does today. The knowledge we accumulate is amazing, the skills we develop are almost limitless, then add to this we remember a few thousand songs and adverts, etc. Not only can we use the technology that surrounds us, but many of use have very detailed understandings of how it operates and what to do when something fails.

I guess I should have said, our brains seem to have excess ability. A man born in the Dark Ages had only a lack of information and opportunity, but otherwise would fit in well today. This excess ability has given us a technological explosion of creativity and discovery.

My memory doesn’t -start- until I was at least twelve. I have a few flashes of my childhood, but nothing more, and nothing significant.

from the description,it sounds like she has no control of WHAT is recalled WHEN. Perhaps you might never be there when her memory of you scrolls by.

Now, if you see an event a certain pattern or sequence of neuron firings occur. Memory is just (pretty much) a RE-firing of that pattern (with only a few million neurons the possibly combinations are ridiculously many, the human brain has up to 100billion neurons. That gives a few possible patterns..). The tricky bit is keeping events “indexed” so you can recall them. That is one of the reasons we have a complete loss of our earliest memories, and possibly large gaps in memory in our childhood. That is the time the brain is forming the ability to consciously and purposefully recall events. Learning how to index and keep track of the vast amounts of data. And for this it has a vast amount of possible connections.

And to the one who said that a person born in the dark ages would have had less need for brain power…. Really?
Think about it.
That sounds like equating book knowledge and theoretical stuff with knowledge while ignoring completely practical knowledge.
Throughout human history we have had a need and a thirst for knowledge and specialization. A farmer may actually know some pretty interesting stuff, through training from childhood and experience. A fisherman may have an understanding of his local waters so intricate that the uninitiated may have a hard time grasping the scope of the knowledge, let alone the details.
In polynesia (iirc) some fishermen are said to find the islands based on wave patterns striking their boat. That is serious knowhow. The vikings had navigational knowledge which let them sail to America (possibly INTO America) as well as east to India, possibly further.

Credit where credit is due.

I would think that it would be much harder for the person with the episodic memory dealing with you as you gloss over and tint memories that they still recall clearly. It is hardly uncommon for people to get angry or frustrated when dealing with people whose recall does not fit their own and that would be pretty much everyone else for this person.

Insert standard refusal to accept baseless assumption that humans are the only conscious entities here.

Going back even further, to roaving bands of barely-not-apes, you need to know your entire group and you need a lifetimes worth of memories to help you keep straight how they act and react, when you don’t have the crutch of language to lean on to find out peoples motivations and interests. You need to know your territory in great detail – these trees fruit at this time of year, those trees will fruit next, these stems were succulent last week but won’t be edible again for another year, there’s a leopard who likes to take this path but I’ve only ever seen him at night, there’s a crocodile in that watering hole but he ate a deer yesterday so he’s probably not dangerous…

Standard response: Prove it.

I remember Mark Twain describing a sitting dog as “pondering his sins.” Really?

I need to finish RFTA and talk to these people.

Data recording technology isn’t about remembering. It’s about forgetting. We let the recording do the remembering for us.

In both PTSD and this woman’s case, we have uncontrolled recall of events, although in this case, it is for pretty much any event rather rather than just traumatic ones.

This story certainly gives weight to the idea that the human brain is at least *capable* of storing everything that happens to us, although it doesn’t prove that it always does. It would be fascinating to know if this is a case of inadequate input filtering, or simply uncontrolled recall. Do we all remember everything, but are just bad at recalling it, or do we filter the information on the way in?

Like many of these neurological case studies this is both fascinating and tragic.

Nice stream of, eh, consciousness here:

“…there’s a leopard who likes to take this path but I’ve only ever seen him at night, there’s a crocodile in that watering hole but he ate a deer yesterday so he’s probably not dangerous…” but…

How could he see him at night? This is an extinct “barely-not-ape”? Wandering around at the leopard’s hour was not selected behavior, and…

anthropomorphizing barely-not-ape. Almost-Cheeta couldn’t know the digestive cycle of crocodiles. That would take an almost-Tarzan, homo sapiens sapiens.

Interesting that you would call our truly distinguishing characteristic, language, a “crutch to lean on” — although there are many, including myself, who at times seem to use it as such. : )

Evolution isn’t based on need. We don’t gain useful traits, we just die if we have situationally bad traits.

I have terrible episodic memory. I have very few “memories” in the way I’ve come to realize most people use it past roughly two or three months, which means my friends and family have learned that the answer to “Remember when…..” is always no. I can recall associations between things (ie, I usually can recall I met Person A at Place B in context C), but specific happenings are lost to me.

But my factual memory is excellent. I can memorize pages upon pages of text without a sweat, and my friends use me as a walking reference book, because if I’ve ever seen a fact or figure, I almost certainly still remember it.

I’ve always wondered why that was (and have constantly had to deal with, “You can recite pi to a thousand digits but you can’t remember that time we went bowling!?!”), but this article really sheds light on things.