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HarHarVeryFunny 29 minutes ago [-]
I wonder how much of this is directly related to age, and how much is just someone's brain becoming "full" due to more memories getting added every year?
It seems that memories must be stored as embeddings with single multi-neuron assemblies (cortical columns?) storing multiple embeddings as a kind of contents-addressable memory that is able to keep memories distinct due to the very high dimensional space (# neurons per assembly) being used. However, you'd expect that at some point if you store too many memories in a single assembly the recall accuracy is going to go down.
You'd expect that with big brains being so costly, evolution has only equipped us with brains big enough to store a lifetime of memories, so it would be odd if memory didn't suffer as we get old.
To make a computer analogy, it's a bit like a hash table getting too full. Say you had a hash table without any overflow mechanism... up to a point recall may still be pretty good, but as the table gets closer to full there will be more hash collisions and likelyhood of "false recall". Obviously the brain is not a computer, but the analogy may hold up reasonably well if you consider the hash table keys and values as embeddings and the store operation being an embedding merge rather than overwrite.
cheschire 18 minutes ago [-]
I am not a biologist so I cannot say this authoritatively, but I’m fairly certain that’s not how neuroplasticity works.
HarHarVeryFunny 15 minutes ago [-]
I only mentioned neural assemblies storing multiple embeddings - what about that contradicts your understanding of neuroplasticity?
petreradu 2 hours ago [-]
The paper certainly has its limitations. Only 61 participants, with almost nobody between 30 and 50, so we shouldn’t read the age trend as a decline across lifespan. What’s more interesting than the title suggests (and I find the title forcing the conclusion a bit) is that the attention measures were not linked to age or the brain patterns at all.
Then again, i'm 45 and I've been losing my keys and my IDs since I was 20
yborg 60 minutes ago [-]
>I find the title forcing the conclusion a bit
The entire article is AI-generated.I wish such sources would include the prompting used as well as the model so a (human) reader can better evaluate the document.
snarfy 2 hours ago [-]
My dreams imprint stronger than reality. This has the unfortunate effect of sometimes recalling memories as real, when in fact it was all a dream.
thataccount 1 hours ago [-]
Unless the dreams are the reality and the reality is the fake!
Gooblebrai 56 minutes ago [-]
The new version of this tale is that reality is a simulation. Reality being a dream is so 4th Century China
leedrake5 1 hours ago [-]
Compacting
———-~~~~~~~ 40%
DonHopkins 1 hours ago [-]
Deticulating splines...
dan-bailey 2 hours ago [-]
This comes as absolutely no surprise to me -- my mother was recently transferred into memory care, and the changes to her memories are definitely showing some interesting changes. The foremost was that her new "apartment" is shared with one other person, gives off a bit of a dorm room vibe. First day, she was talking about how excited she was to be going back to school and seeing her boyfriends again(?!). I said, "Oh, like Doug? [my dad]". Her response? "Ew. No."
But, she's come around on that, and recently been upset about the affair he's been having (they divorced in 1980), and is irate over him having another kid with his new wife (1983), but isn't surprised that I haven't spoken to him in 12 years. She's never surprised at how I've aged, but doesn't remember her grandkids even exist and insists on meeting them soon (but remembers them when she sees them). Two weeks ago, she called to yell at me for things I did in high school (1990). At this point, I seem to be the anchor for everything recent, but when I'm not around physically, it's scattered everywhere else.
HarHarVeryFunny 1 minutes ago [-]
Sorry to hear that - my dad spend the last few years of his life in a care home, and I can very much relate.
barbazoo 2 hours ago [-]
I feel for you. Even though it's entertaining to read, that must be really hard to go through for you.
Gooblebrai 53 minutes ago [-]
Is so fascinating and horrifying to read this. We still have to learn so much about how the brain works
xnx 2 hours ago [-]
It's interesting to compare and contrast LLMs and biological brains. Both use a form of "compaction".
un-diletante 57 minutes ago [-]
Compaction is not even an intrinsic function of an LLM, but of it's harness or whatever code is calling it. When an LLM compacts something it's just creating a summary of the previous conversation using the same mechanism that it uses to generate any other text. It doesn't "forget" the text from before the summary, it just no longer receives it when it is invoked.
In contrast, when we forget something we are not summarizing anything, we are just losing the ability to recall something. We might remember what we have forgotten later on, showing that it is still somewhere in the mind, and that the reason we have forgotten it is not necessarily because it has been discarded.
Even then, what this article is talking about is not even normal forgetting as a function of the brain. It's talking about a degenerative and dysfunctional form of memory loss where different memories are confused with each other.
voidhorse 2 hours ago [-]
That's largely because we intentionally model llm "brains" after the human brain.
It seems that memories must be stored as embeddings with single multi-neuron assemblies (cortical columns?) storing multiple embeddings as a kind of contents-addressable memory that is able to keep memories distinct due to the very high dimensional space (# neurons per assembly) being used. However, you'd expect that at some point if you store too many memories in a single assembly the recall accuracy is going to go down.
You'd expect that with big brains being so costly, evolution has only equipped us with brains big enough to store a lifetime of memories, so it would be odd if memory didn't suffer as we get old.
To make a computer analogy, it's a bit like a hash table getting too full. Say you had a hash table without any overflow mechanism... up to a point recall may still be pretty good, but as the table gets closer to full there will be more hash collisions and likelyhood of "false recall". Obviously the brain is not a computer, but the analogy may hold up reasonably well if you consider the hash table keys and values as embeddings and the store operation being an embedding merge rather than overwrite.
Then again, i'm 45 and I've been losing my keys and my IDs since I was 20
The entire article is AI-generated.I wish such sources would include the prompting used as well as the model so a (human) reader can better evaluate the document.
But, she's come around on that, and recently been upset about the affair he's been having (they divorced in 1980), and is irate over him having another kid with his new wife (1983), but isn't surprised that I haven't spoken to him in 12 years. She's never surprised at how I've aged, but doesn't remember her grandkids even exist and insists on meeting them soon (but remembers them when she sees them). Two weeks ago, she called to yell at me for things I did in high school (1990). At this point, I seem to be the anchor for everything recent, but when I'm not around physically, it's scattered everywhere else.
In contrast, when we forget something we are not summarizing anything, we are just losing the ability to recall something. We might remember what we have forgotten later on, showing that it is still somewhere in the mind, and that the reason we have forgotten it is not necessarily because it has been discarded.
Even then, what this article is talking about is not even normal forgetting as a function of the brain. It's talking about a degenerative and dysfunctional form of memory loss where different memories are confused with each other.