Research laboratories around the world sought the location of human
memory. The research had followed diverse leads. One clue related to the
branched inputs of nerve cells, called dendrites. Branch growth was
assisted by a protein called cypin. Some memory disabilities were
related to deficits in cypin. So, one possibility was that nerve cells
grew new branches to store memory. New branches could represent added
memory. But, human memory was ...
The search to reveal a mystery
Research laboratories around the world sought the location of human
memory. The research had followed diverse leads. One clue related to the
branched inputs of nerve cells, called dendrites. Branch growth was
assisted by a protein called cypin. Some memory disabilities were
related to deficits in cypin. So, one possibility was that nerve cells
grew new branches to store memory. New branches could represent added
memory. But, human memory was immense. People were reported to be able
to recognize, with 99.5% accuracy, any one of 2,500 images shown to them
at one second intervals. Each of those images contained millions of
pixels of specific information. When the size and scale of human memory
was considered, the idea of branches, however microscopic, growing to
add memories sounded perilously cancerous.
More hints
LTP was another possibility. High frequency stimulation of the dendrites
of a neuron were known to improve the sensitivity of the synaptic nerve
junctions. Such activity was seen to be "remembered" by the cell through
greater sensitivity at specific inputs. Neurochemicals at the synaptic
junctions were also known to increase such sensitivity. But, while the
process enhanced memory, LTP failed to offer a global hypothesis about
how memory could be stored.
Without answers
The hippocampus was also mentioned in connection with memory research.
Damage to this organ, a component of a region of the brain called the
limbic system, was known to cause patients to forget ongoing events
within a few seconds. But, incidents from childhood and early adult life
were still remembered. Memory had faded from a couple of years prior to
the event that caused damage to the hippocampus. Older memories were
still retained by the patient even without the hippocampus. Evidently,
the organ did not store such memories. It could play a role, but the
actual storage of memory remained enigmatic. In the end, all science did
know was that memory resided all over the system and that one particular
organ helped the formation of memories.
Combinatorial coding
Yet, the answer to the memory enigma had been staring them in the face
for years. That happened, when science acknowledged the use of
combinatorial coding by nerve cells in the olfactory system.
Combinatorial coding sounded confusing and complex. But, in the context
of nerve cells, combinatorial coding only meant that a nerve cell
recognized combinations. If a nerve cell had dendritic inputs,
identified as A, B, C and so on to Z, it could then fire, when it
received inputs at ABD, ABP, or XYZ. It recognized those combinations.
ABD, ABP, or XYZ. The cell could identify ABD from ABP. Subtle
differences. Such codes were extensively used by nature. The four
"letters" in the genetic code – A, C, G and T – were used in
combinations for the creation of a nearly infinite number of genetic
sequences.
Highly developed skill
It was combinatorial coding, which enabled nerve cells of reptilian
nosebrains to recognize smells and make crucial life decisions since the
beginnings of history. Such sensory power had been developed in animals
to a remarkable degree. Research showed that dogs could register the
parameters of a smell and then pick it out from millions of competing
smells. The animals could detect a human scent on a glass slide that had
been lightly fingerprinted and left outdoors for as much as two weeks.
They could quickly sniff a few footprints of a person and determine
accurately which way the person was walking. The animal's nose could
detect the relative odor strength difference between footprints only a
few feet apart, to determine the direction of a trail. Recording and
recognizing ABD and DEF enabled animals to record and recall a single
smell to differentiate it from millions of other smells. Inherited
memories of millions of smells decided whether food was edible, or
inedible, or whether a spoor was life threatening. The system had both
newly recorded and inherited memories, which enabled them to recognize
smells in the environment.
Inherited and acquired memories
While such remarkable odor recognition skills were known for ages, it
was only in the late nineties that science discovered combinatorial
coding. A Nobel Prize was awarded for the discovery of the use
combinatorial coding by the olfactory system in 2004. The olfactory
system used the coding to enable a relatively small number of olfactory
receptors to recognize different odors. Science discovered that
particular combinations could fire to trigger recognition. In the
experiment scientists reported that even slight changes in chemical
structure activated different combinations of receptors. Thus, octanol
smelled like oranges, but the similar compound octanoic acid smelled
like sweat. We remembered the smell of oranges. Even the smell of sweat.
Which meant that the system remembered those combinations. But science
failed to recognize the true significance of combinatorial coding when
they searched for the location of human memory. Millions of combinations
were possible for the nerve cell with inputs from A to Z. But nerve
cells had thousands of inputs. If nerve cells remembered combinations,
then that could be the location of a galactic nervous system memory.
Global applications
Combinatorial coding could provide immense intelligence to the nervous
system. The wonder of nature was the enormous scale, scope and
sensitivity of its reporting systems. The mind had this vast army of
scouts, reporting back on millions of tiny sensations - the heat of sun
and the hardness of rock. Pain on the skin too was a report. When their
impulses were received in the cortex, you felt pain. In the earlier
example, with combinatorial coding, a cell could fire for ABD and be
inhibited for ABP. If the pain reporting nerve cell recognized inputs
from its neighbours, it could also respond to neighbouring pain and fire
to report sympathetic pain. It could respond to touch and inhibit its
own sympathetic pain message. The cell could respond to context.
Pattern recognition
Nerve cells didn't receive just a few inputs. They received thousands.
So, pain could be sensitive to context. Inherited memories in
combinatorial codes could enable the system to recognize and respond to
patterns in context. Combinatorial coding could explain the mind as a
pattern recognition engine. But science worked on the assumption that
the neurons in the brain did not recognize, but did computations. The
search for a mathematical formula which could simulate the computations
of the mind goes on. But, if you assumed pattern recognition, you just
stepped out of the mathematical maze. Unfortunately, the recognition of
patterns was too formidable a task for computers. The diagnosis of
diseases was a typical pattern recognition problem.
The pattern recognition difficulty
The obstacle was that many shared symptoms were presented by different
diseases. Pain, or fever were present for many diseases. Each symptom
pointed to several diseases. In the customary search, the first selected
disease with the first presented symptom could lack the second symptom.
So the back and forth searches followed an exponentially expanding
trajectory as the database increased in size. That made the process
absurdly long drawn – theoretically, even years, when searching
extensive databases. In the light of such an impregnable problem,
science did not evaluate pattern recognition as a practical process for
the nervous system.
An instant pattern recognition process
There is an Intuitive Algorithm (IA), which follows a logical process to
achieve real time pattern recognition. IA was unique. In a feat never
achieved by computers before, IA could almost instantly diagnose
diseases. IA used elimination to narrow down possibilities to reach the
correct answer. In essence, IA did not calculate, but used elimination
to recognize patterns. IA acted with the speed of a simple recalculation
on a spreadsheet, to recognize a disease, identify a case law or
diagnose the problems of a complex machine. It did this holistically and
almost instantly, through simple, logical steps. IA proved that
holistic, instant, real time pattern recognition was practical. IA
provided a clue to the secret of intuition. The website intuition.co.in
and the book explain IA in detail.
Seamless pattern recognition
The mind was a recognition machine, which instantly recognized the
context of its ever changing environment. The system triggered feelings
when particular classes of events were recognized. The process was
achieved by inherited nerve cell memories accumulated across millions of
years. The memories enabled the mind to recognize events. Similar
inherited memories in nerve cells enabled the mind to trigger feelings,
when events were recognized. And further cell memories caused feelings
to trigger actions. Actions were sequences of muscle movements. Even
drive sequences could be remembered by nerve cells. That was how we were
driven. So the circuit closed. Half a second for a 100 billion nerve
cells to use context to eliminate irrelevance and deliver motor output.
The time between the shadow and the scream. So, from input to output,
the mind was a seamless pattern recognition machine.
Intuition and memory
Walter Freeman the famous neurobiologist defined the critical difficulty
for science in understanding the mind. "The cognitive guys think it's
just impossible to keep throwing everything you've got into the
computation every time. But, that is exactly what the brain does.
Consciousness is about bringing your entire history to bear on your next
step, your next breath, your next moment." The mind was holistic. It
evaluated all its knowledge for the next activity. However large its
database, the logic of IA could yield instant pattern recognition. Since
that logic was robust and practical, intuition could also be such an
instant pattern recognition process. Intuition could then power the mind
to instantly recognize an infinite variety of objects and events to
trigger motor responses. Each living moment, it could evaluate the
context of a dynamic multi-sensory world and its own vast memories.
Those memories could be stored in the combinatorial codes of nerve
cells. The Nobel Prize should have been awarded not for the discovery of
combinatorial coding, but for the discovery of human memory.
No comments:
Post a Comment