The basic metaphor is 4-D brain as a kind of magnetic tape in time direction carrying memories as a text consisting of letters with fixed width (temporal duration) and decomposing into paragraphs, sections, etc... just like written text. Rhythms of generalized EEG would realize the decomposition to letters, and larger sub-units.
Computer analogy suggests also the analog of directory system allowing an easy and rapid access to a particular record in a particular file. Fractality would automatically make possible fractally scaled down variants of the system with life span scaled down to a second but details absent or not visible in the cognitive resolution available.
Web suggests a link system in temporal direction realizing temporal associations automatically and topological light rays which would be vacuum extremals in passive state could realize the link system.
The two kinds of memories seem to be closely related
There are two kinds of memories. The proposal is that the sharing of mental images of geometric past gives rise to episodal memories, re-experiences. These memories would correspond to mental images identified as quantum jumps containing quantum jumps containing... for zero energy states. This hierarchy would correspond to dark matter hierarchy and hierarchy of Planck constant.
One can criticize this idea.
- Does the quantum entangled zero energy state of the magnetic body and brain of the geometric past really give rise to the episodal memory as sharing of mental images? The sharing aspect would certainly give rise to experience of time as analog for the depth experience in stereo vision assumed to result from the sharing of left and right visual mental images. But why not interpret this kind of state as a representation for a "law of nature" telling that state pairs in the superposition of states are causally related? Isn't state function reduction reducing entanglement necessary to experience sharp sensory qualia? The answer to these questions is that it is entangled system whose qualia are in question, not either of the individual systems. In quantum context this would mean that the sum of observables giving rise to the qualia of separate systems are measured in quantum jump.
- What it really means to have an episodal memory? For sharing of mental images by space-like entanglement of sub-selves the space-time correlate is the join along boundaries bonds connecting the space-time sheets condensed at larger disjoint space-time sheets. In the case of episodal memories it would seem that the experiencer-now and and experiencer-then must correspond to disjoint space-time sheets and containing smaller space-time sheets connected by a topological light ray. Hence also classical communications would be an essential part of the mechanism of memory and the distinction between episodal and declarative memories does not seem so sharp as thought originally.
- The mere re-experiencing of events of the geometric past by quantum entangling with a subsystem representing sensory mental image is not very effective mechanism. A more effective manner to remember is to represent memories symbolically as bit sequences with bits represented as population inverted state and ground state of laser (say many-sheeted laser). In this case metabolism is required to keep the representations intact.
Memory recall as communications between magnetic body and brain of geometric past
Memory recall would be communications between magnetic body and brain of the geometric past. Magnetic body can be visualized as a kind of onion with several layers: the larger the radius of layer the longer temporal distance T to the geometric past it corresponds. In memory recall the size of the active layer would correspond naturally to the temporal distance to the brain of the geometric past where the memory is stored. The frequencies of large Planck constant photons involved with communications would correspond to this distance (f≈ 1/T) and a de-coherence to photons with much shorter wavelength would take place in the process.
Neuroscience suggests that theta waves, which still have wavelength of order Earth size scale, are involved. They could result in de-coherence of waves with wavelength of order λ=cT reducing the value of Planck constant.
The most primitive memory recall would rely on the scanning of brain of geometric past by using negative energy signal with a slowly varying carrier frequency. One can however consider MEs which are present permanently as vacuum extremals and activated to non-vacuum extremals during memory recall: this would mean a realization of a link system.
How could one realize links in time-like direction?
Links are certainly one of the most powerful functions of the web. Links are always present and activated when used. The obvious counterpart for the web link would be a topological light ray connecting two subsystems with a time-like separation. Topological light rays can also reduce to vacuum extremals and the activation of the the link could correspond to a feeding of energy to a topological light ray deforming it to a non-vacuum extremal. This kind of links would be naturally associated with long term memories and would make it un-necessary to scan the entire geometric past in the search of a particular episodal or declarative memory.
Dreams and building up of copies of memories
Important memories should be stored in several copies since would increase the probability that the scanning of the geometric past allows to build ME bridge to the subsystem representing the memory mental image. Memories represented as bit sequences can be also lost in a repetitive recall since they might fail to receive metabolic energy feed.
Dreams might be a manner to build this kind of copies. The copies built up in this manner can involve a considerable processing and it could even happen that for painful memories large number of less painful variants are constructed. Also the original memory could be transformed to less painful during the period of time-like entanglement. When it is important that memory remains unchanged, PS might in fact be not favorable and it is known that PS deprivation can help of keeping memory intact [Giuditta].
There is a lot of evidence that memory processing indeed occurs during sleep (memory consolidation): in particular during paradoxical sleep (PS, REM periods with dreams) and during periods of deep slow wave sleep (SWS) preceding them. The sequential model for memories [Giuditta] assumes that both periods are necessary. The first guess is that dreams and preceding SWS periods could build copies of both episodal and declarative memories.
The sensory experience associated with a dream possibly resulting partially by sharing of sensory mental image of geometric past (say previous day) could give rise to a symbolic representation realized as a kind of record. If also a copy of sensory mental image is created, the dream would involve virtual visual input generated by sending signals from brain to retina and other sensory organs involved (in TGD sensory organs carry fundamental sensory qualia). This back projection is present also during wake-up state and essential part of building sensory representation from the raw sensory data. The fact that dreams are by no means direct copies of the sensory inputs of the geometric past suggests that an active buildup of sensory mental images indeed takes place. One could however stretch the limits of imagination and argue that the dreams could be composed of sequences of shared mental images from different times: this would conform with the short time range of "dream logic".
If the brain can be regarded as a kind of magnetic tape in the temporal direction, SWS period might be interpreted as a kind of empty interval in the tape telling that a memory record comes next (kind of silence before concert). Second function of SWS pattern would be to divide the time axis to frames analogous to letters appearing as units in computer memory. The SWS interval might also contain a temporal pattern defining among other things what might be regarded as a name of the record in question. The temporal pattern of the negative energy signal used in memory recall should have such a pattern that it would "resonate" with this pattern. Note that vacuum extremal MEs could define "static" links to memory mental images activated during memory recall to non-vacuum extremals and one can imagine also sequences of these extremals building a sequence of links.
Directory system, holograms, and p-adic fractality
Directory system is necessary in order to handle computer memory effectively. Basically the directory would be a scaled down fractal variant of the geometric past with a reduction of details leaving only titles of sections and subsections, so to say. These directories would make possible an effective scanning of the brain of the geometric past by going directly to the correct directory coded roughly by the temporal distance. The fact that we can construct mentally fractally scaled down memory representations about what happened during day and even during lifetime without effort suggests that this kind of fractal representation indeed is there.
The obvious idea is that the items of directories serve as links to subdirectories so that it is possible to active link in each directory item leading to a subdirectory associated with that item.
The fact that p-adically small is large in the real sense would automatically realize small time scale representations of long temporal intervals. This would suggest that the memory storage mechanism is hologram like so that copies of memories in various time scales are present. Effective p-adic topology would indeed suggest the presence of this kind of representation with various copies appearing as p-adically scaled variants of basic pattern for given p. For this option declarative memory recall would not require a precisely targeted signal to a particular moment of geometric past whereas sensory memories would require it (note however the possibility that dreams build more or less faithful copies of sensory memories).
One could imagine a fractal coding of names of directories and subdirectories by temporal distances in various p-adic length scales. Here effective p-adic topology giving rise to a hierarchy of p-adic length scales might play key role in the coding. Also dark matter hierarchy and hierarchy of Planck constants would be involved in an essential manner and code for various scales of long term memory. The fact that favored value of Planck constants and p-adic length scales come in octaves suggests a close interaction between the two hierarchies.
The p-adic view about cognition suggests that p-adic numbers give a representation for the addresses of records and that effective p-adic topology for real space-time sheets is essential. Their space-time counterparts would be discrete intersections field bodies and p-adic space-time sheets having literally infinite size. The density of points of intersection would reduce as one moves away from biological body both in temporal and spatial direction and the fact that p-adic numbers correspond always to non-negative real numbers would conform with the fact that memories are about geometric past and the memories of nearest past are the most precise and for time scales which are fractions of second become sensory experiences which are actually very short term memories as findings of Libet demonstrate.
What is the role of generalized EEG rhythms from the point of view of memory?
TGD predicts entire hierarchy of EEG rhythms which are predicted to correlate with various biorhythms. One challenge is to understand the precise role of EEG rhythms, in particular theta band known to be involved with memory consolidation. Functional magnetic resonance imaging led to the discovery of so called so called spontaneous fluctuations in BOLD (blood oxygen level dependent) signal having 1/f spectrum in average sense [BOLD] (I am grateful for Vesa Kiviniemi (who is also working in this field [Kiviniemi]) for sending me this review article). The frequency spectrum of these fluctuations is in the range range .1-.001 Hz.
This activity is regarded as spontaneous in the sense that it is not induced by stimulus, motor output, or task but is something independent and thus conflicts with the paradigm that EEG corresponds directly to the brain state dictated by the input to brain and motor output and by cognitive tasks. For this reason spontaneous BOLD fluctuations were originally interpreted as noise but it has become clear that the fluctuation patterns possess both spatial and temporal coherence and that it is possible to assign regions of spatial coherence with brain functions in various brain areas.
The variation of spontaneous BOLD fluctuations explains also the variation of responses in experimental situations involving fixed stimulus or tasks. Spontaneous BOLD fluctuations seem to superpose linearly with the effect due to stimulus or task. BOLD fluctuations seem correlate with the slow fluctuations in EEG known to modulate the power spectrum in various EEG bands. Interestingly, there are also ≈ 1 Hz slow fluctuations of membrane potential, which could be related to the cyclotron frequencies of DNA nucleotides (carrying constant negative charge density).
These findings conform with the fact that TGD predicts a fractal hierarchy of EEGs corresponding to the hierarchy of values of Planck constant. A further prediction would be that scaled variants of alpha band and its harmonic should appear in BOLD fluctuations as also the counterparts of beta and theta bands whose positions cannot however predicted without further assumptions.
EEG and its generalization would allow to interpret EEG rhythms as dividing the magnetic tape in time direction to a linear lattice of separate frames which each could represent a record in turn containing further records. This would be much like a fractal variant for the decomposition of a written text to letters with an approximately constant width. SWS would define kind of empty lines between paragraphs in this text and during wake-up state similar empty lines might be present.
Of course, the strict linear lattice is an idealization. It could be perturbed by insertions just like written text by pictures. These insertions could represent sensory mental images due to sensory input. Another analogy for sensory input would be as external force inducing kicks to the harmonic oscillator changing the amplitude of oscillation and inducing phase increments.
References
[Giuditta] A. Giuditta et al(1995), The sequential hypothesis of the function of sleep, Behavioural Brain Research, 69, 157-166. M. V. Ambrosini and A. Giuditta (2001), Learning and sleep: the sequentical hypothesis.
[BOLD] M. D. Fox and M. E. Raichle (2007), Spontaneous fluctuations in brain activity observed with functional magnetic resonance imaging. Nature Reviews/Neuroscience. Vol. 8, September, p. 700. http://www.nature.com/reviews/neuro.
[Kiviniemi] V. Kiviniemi et al (2004), Comparison of methods for determining non-deterministic BOLD fluctuation in fMRI. Magn. Reson. Imaging 22, 197-203. V. Kiviniemi et al (2005), Midazolam sedation increases fluctuation and synchrony of the resting brain BOLD signal. Magn. Reson. Imaging 23, 531-537.
For details see the chapter Quantum Model of Memory.
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