The Tell-Tale Heart

Over the last year and a half or so, I've had the great good fortune to reconnect with some of my long lost high school friends. One of the sad things that  has made this current bond a bit stronger is that we collectively mourned the passing of two of our friends and peers at about this time last year, both of whom had been in my extended circle. One of them was Dagmar Matzat, who I especially remembered for her dramatic flair.

Here's why I'm choosing to commemorate her in this particular blog. When we were all in eighth grade together, Dagmar did a solo rendition of Poe's The Tale-Tell Heart. She was just a young girl, barely a teen, but she managed to put her heart and soul into her rendition:

TRUE! — nervous — very, very dreadfully nervous I had been, and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses — not destroyed — not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Harken! and observe how healthily — how calmly I can tell you the whole story.

I'll never know why she chose this particular story, but I will until I lose life or sentience always be able to picture her pacing the stage in a fevered way, conveying the madman's character.

The odd thing, though, is that no one I know has the slightest recollection of this piece. This role, this bravery of undertaking it, which is the defining essence for me of my long ago friend, is not part of anyone else's general consciousness. Perhaps there is someone else in the world who remembers this, but among the four or five people I asked, it made not an impression, and I know at least some of them were there that day.

I suppose Dagmar herself would have remembered it, but alas, I will have no chance to ask her, and it's quite possible that even she would by now have suffered a lapse of memory.

Foreign Policy reviews the year

One of the reasons I started this blog was to recall moments in our collective life that have quickly passed m thought. Haven't kept too true to that, but luckily, Foreign Policy has done a much better recap than I ever could.

How many of these moments have slipped from your mind already? 

The Brain's Memory "Buffer"

It's ironic but appropriate that I don't remember how I happened upon this  article on scientific research into the cellular differences between short term and long term memory storage. The newspaper is called The Hindu, and so it's not one that I come across in my normal web wandering.

It's probably more informative to read the article, but just to move this info from my short term memory to something a little longer, I'll summarize by saying that scientists have found evidence that short term memory is held in single nerve cells in the front of the brain, for a minute or longer. "Permanent" memory (to me a dubious concept) is formed when the amino acid glutamate stimulates nerve cells in the brain to reorganize and strenghten their connections with each other. But this process takes time and is to slow to deal with rapidly incoming information--as what isn't these days?

Enter metabotropic glutamate transmission. A rapid fire signal stimulates single cells to be temporary storage for moment to moment information. The example the article uses is that of a card shark counting cards in a game of blackjack. This would seem an oddly random example, except it goes on to say that casinos have figured out that it the type of memory that is most sensitive to disruption by alcohol and noisy distraction.

"It's more like RAM [random access memory] on a computer than memory stored on a disk," Dr. (Don) Cooper said. "The memory on the disk is more permanent and you can go back and access the same information repeatedly. RAM memory is rewritable temporary storage that allows multitasking." 

The researchers also did experiments on mice to see how these findings work with addiction. Apparently, a neurochemical called dopamine is what helps focus attention and make fast decisions, but after mice were given repeated doses of cocaine to simulate addiction, the  short term memeory "buffer" cells were no longer
as easily stimulated. Even adding dopamine after did not have the effect of focussing the mice's thought processes.

"If we can identify and manipulate the molecular components of memory, we can develop drugs that boost the ability to maintain this memory trace to hopefully allow a person to complete tasks without being distracted," Dr. Cooper said. "For the person addicted to drugs, we could strengthen this part of the brain involved with decision-making, allowing them to ignore impulses and weigh negative consequences of their behavior before they abuse drugs."

Maybe, maybe not. As usual with these things, though, I mainly feel sorry for the mice.

Orwellian memory hole

I don't know where I came across this concept in recent months--I just noted it down as something to explore at a later time. Although I have read  Orwell's 1984, it has been quite some time, so I didn't immediately remember this passage:

In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices. To the right of the speakwrite, a small pneumatic tube for written messages, to the left, a larger one for newspapers; and in the side wall, within easy reach of Winston's arm, a large oblong slit protected by a wire grating. This last was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.


So, of course, over the years, these literal memory holes have expanded in meaning to include all kinds of memory holes--not just pneumatic tubes, but any way in which information of all kinds has been made to disappear or been doctored to say something different than it was originally intended to say.

I was curious to see what the modern manifestations of this phenomenon might be. As it turned out, several examples came up pretty quickly, and I thought I'd mention them here. The funny thing is that some of them at least will be quite familiar, but have already some what faded into memory, without making quite the stir they should. Which is perhaps Orwellian in its own way.

The first is the well publicized circumstance of Orwell's work itself  slipping down a memory hole. In brief, it vanished overnight from many Kindles when Amazon learned that the uploader did not have the rights for the book and were in copyright violation. People learned then if they hadn't figured it out already that they did not actually own the books on their Kindles, but had only been given the license to them, which could be revoked without even notification. Although Amazon promised never to do it again, in fact, they have now shown the world that they do have the power to do this, and any other copyright holders who might have a beef can no longer be told that withdrawing the copies "can't be done". Meanwhile a student from Detroit was suing Amazon over taking back the copy that his personal annotations were attached to, rendering, he said, his notes largely worthless.

In a perhaps more purely Orwellian example, because it has to do with government and government archives, I found this article about Whitehouse.gov, which made such claims about being away for the American people to connect to the executive branch, disheartening. I would have thought the Obama White House would be better archived than Bush's, but according to this writer, it is not the case.

And finally, I found this little rumination from The Atlantic about how Orwellian our age really is or isn't interesting. A professor had made an effort to delete an unwise diatribe he had written from the world wide web, deleting it. In this age, though, nothing is ever truly deleted. The author, James Fallows, says that in this sense our world is worse than the one Orwell conceived, because it's not what goes unremembered but what is remembered that comes back to haunt us. A reader posted in, though, and pointed out that Orwell had, in fact, anticipated this too...The last line is worth reading through to the end for. 

Myla Goldberg, The False Friend

It's been awhile since I posted here, but I heard a very good interview on Rick Kleffel's show tonight with Myla Goldberg, and they had a lot to say about memory. You can listen to the whole thing here:

http://www.bookotron.com/agony/news/2010/11-08-10-podcast.htm#podcast110810

September 23rd, 2010

I think it's safe to say that no one in the entire country is in love with what happened with health care reform six months ago. You wanted more, you wanted less, you wanted something completely different.

Fine. Me too. No polemics are intended here. I am just going to mention that six months ago, a healthcare reform bill was passed and whatever you think about it, today was the day that certain fairly significant changes became law.

Here, as reported at http://www.americasfairhealthcare.org/ , they are:

•No More Getting Dropped After You Get Sick

You no longer can be cut after the fact, period.

•Immediate Access, Even If You Have Pre-Existing Conditions

Children younger than 19 no longer can no longer be rejected from health care plans due to pre-existing conditions, and new plans cannot exclude adults or children from coverage for a pre-existing condition.

•No More "Lifetime Limits"

Insurers no longer can stop your benefits because you have "maxed out".

•Tax Credits for Small Businesses Providing Coverage to Workers

Qualified small businesses will get tax credits to help cover up to 35 percent of their workers’ premiums.

•Medicare Prescription Drug Rebates for Seniors

Medicare Part D enrollees who hit the Medicare prescription drug benefit gap in 2010 automatically will receive a $250 rebate check.  
 
 
Whatever you may think of the total package, you may one day have reason to thank your lucky stars that one of these changes is in effect. Don't forget about them...

Brain Rules

Here's an interesting website promoting John Medina's book, Brain Rules. This particular segment deals with short term memory. Medina says that memory is volatile. I hadn't really thought of it that way before.

Do I remember how I came across this?   Uh, no...