Memories may be stored outside the brain

reply to post by kmb08753

They certainly could be, but I see no reason why they need to be or even anything that really indicates that they are.

The scientific method does not entertain "occultism, NDE, telepathy, telekinesis, astral travel/remote viewing" etc.

This may be due to the fundamentally different nature of mental phenomena from physical phenomena. For example, science starts out with doubt and skepticism. It has worked WONDERS for us, nobody can deny that. Yet, mysticism, prayer, and even hypnosis, requires resonance. It's as if a psychic field were created between two minds. If they are "in tune" with each other, psychic connection can occur, and paranormal events become likelier. But if any person carrying 'doubt' with him enters the psychic field, he dilutes it's force and circumvents the experiment.

Or, maybe this is all just hogwash? In any case, I side with philosophers like Dave Chalmers and NYUs Thomas Nagel in finding physical reductivist theories to be inadequate in providing an intelligible explanation for consciousness.

Originally posted by kmb08753

Originally posted by filledcup
well ive already said this here on ats in more than one response. memories are held in consciousness. when memories are called it is consciousness that has devotedly written to that location in the brain. this area is really for storing all your immediate decision making abilities' assets. things that the body can do on it's own with out need for added focus from the spirit for interaction with a person's immediate environment. the ego brain as eastern spiritual doctrines refers to it. there is ego brain (physical), and soul intellect (spiritual/invisible/dark matter producing light charged by consciousness).

So are you saying the worm's, incorporeal consciousness reconstructed its brain with the memories it was just taught? That it was the consciousness that directed the form it should take instead of a biological mechanism?

I am not saying it can't be true, but it can't be tested at this point, that I know of. DNA can, on the other hand, be seen to direct the construction of cell tissue. I can only speak to what I can see, not what I ponder. Unforunately, I can't believe something until it can be demonstrated(even that belief can be called into question until all things are known, which could be impossible).

If it is not demonstratable, its not science. Philosophy is awesome and allows for conclusions through premise alone. Separate schools of thought. This was a scientific study citing what they saw happen when they taught a worm and cut its head off.

However, if there is an incorporeal consciousness, it could certainly explain very well how this happened. So if that's what you are saying... Kudos, good point. Wish we had proof.

well if i remember correctly, dna also acts as an antenna and has various receptors. couldnt you interact with the dna by replicating commands and observing it perform a task on the relevant type of cell. or to create a particular kind of cell. this would hint that someone or rather something.. is playing a symphony which guides the construct and replication of cells as it develops into a child in the womb. for test tube babies as we call it.. we are able to begin the process in a simulated environment, but are unable to continue the symphony to full development. thus we must re-insert the fertilized egg into the woman's uterus. the environment must also contain nourishment in the form that the dna can use for its tasks.

id imagine trying to sing this symphony artificially would be quite difficult. but it is quite obvious just from the beginning stages of offspring production, that when consciousness is formed in a complete dna chain, it knows what structure it has to complete. never was a dog born to a woman and a man mating. it is not a fun area to explore. but would a fertilized egg in a rat, which has just completed it's first cell division reconstruct the same kind of cell indefinitely (or until the cell dies) if i were to remove it's copy every time it does the division from 1 to 2 cells? and at various stages. if i removed the last 4 cells out of 8, would it reconstruct the 4? and extend the gestation indefinitely until it is able to construct it's next set and type of cells to move on? or perhaps removing the original first cell in the first cell division will result in the newer cell taking up the mantle of creation?

i think the answer would be yes. the dna seems to inherently know what it must do to complete it's task. and it is a very complex task, hinting at intelligent design. when the dna chain is completed thru fertilization of a sperm with an egg and forms its first complete cell.. a human soul is born. and this guides development from primal consciousness.

I think Rupert Sheldrake and his Morphogenetic fields theory have some interesting things to say relevant to the discussion. Here is an article that talks about how they may relate to memory.

back in 1920 when W. McDougall, a biologist at Harvard, began an experiment to see if animals (in this case white rats) could inherit learning. The procedure was to teach the rats a simple task (avoiding a lighted exit), record how fast they learned, breed another generation, teach them the same task, and see how their rate of learning compared with their elders.

He carried the experiment through 34 generations and found that, indeed, each generation learned faster in flat contradiction to the usual Darwinian assumptions about heredity. Such a result naturally raised controversy, and similar experiments were run to prove or disprove the result. The last of these was done by W.E. Agar at Melbourne over a period of 20 years ending in 1954.

Using the same general breed of rats, he found the same pattern of results that McDougall had but in addition he found that untrained rats used as a control group also learned faster in each new generation. (Curiously, he also found that his first generation of rats started at the same rate of learning as McDougall’s last generation.) No one had a good explanation for why both trained and untrained should be learning faster, but since this result did not support the idea that learning was inherited, the biology community breathed a sigh of relief and considered the matter closed.

Our brains, like any other physical form, are constantly generating morphogenetic fields, not only for the general form of the brain, but also for each moment of our existence. Sheldrake suggests that this continuous trail of experience – recorded in the morphogenetic fields – is at least part of the basis for memory. We recall a past state by having some initial pattern of associations that acts as a "seed," allowing us to tune in that particular memory.

As the memory begins to be tuned in, it influences the brain to fill in more of the pattern which, in a feedback process, improves the resonance until the essential features of the past state are recreated in the present. These ideas fit very well with the observations that retention seems to be so complete and so effortless (we can’t help leaving our mental "morphogenetic trail"), and why multiple associations and uniqueness aid recall (since these improve the precision of our tuning).

But the big implication of this approach is that memory is transpersonal. These mental morphogenetic fields are not locked in your brain, but are available throughout all space and all future time! From this perspective, the results of the McDougall- Agar experiments become easily understood. Each rat that learned the task gradually strengthened a morphogenetic field associated with the correct choice.

Later rats of the same breed placed in the identical experimental setting could have a high degree of resonance with the earlier rats regardless of whether their immediate parents had been trained. Agar’s rats started where McDougall’s had left off because the field had not been diminished by space or time. Some readers will likely recognize this as an example of what is generally known as "the hundredth monkey" phenomenon, but these experiments and Sheldrake’s interpretation are much more precise.

Full article puts ^ the above into greater context; www.context.org...



Parts 2 and 3 of this lecture are also on Youtube.

en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by kmb08753

I have often wondered how some animals can remember spawning grounds or migration locals without ever having been there.

it is most likely genetically stored.

studies have been done on mice and their burrows. they found that the shape of a burrow could be predicted ahead of time, and that they all shared common features.

it turns out that mice don't "recall" what burrows look like, but that they build them in specific shapes because of genetics.

it makes more sense that the location of a spawning ground is similarly stored and passed on through genetics.

Originally posted by Bob Sholtz
it is most likely genetically stored.
it makes more sense that the location of a spawning ground is similarly stored and passed on through genetics.

Richard Dawkins has a good book on this topic of genetics defining things that happen outside a creature's body.
The Extended Phenotype (1982)

reply to post by kmb08753

I read somewhere that there is such a thing as 'cellular memory', where organ-transplant recipients have taken on some characteristics and traits of the organ donor ... freaky stuff.

A 47 year-old white male foundry worker, who received the heart of a 17 year-old black male student, discovered after the operation that he had developed a fascination for classical music. He reasoned that since his donor would have preferred ‘rap’ music, his newfound love for classical music could not possibly have anything to do with his new heart. As it turned out, the donor actually loved classical music, and died “hugging his violin case” on the way to his violin class (2).

An eight year-old girl, who received the heart of a murdered ten year-old girl, began having recurring vivid nightmares about the murder. Her mother arranged a consultation with a psychiatrist who after several sessions concluded that she was witnessing actual physical incidents. They decided to call the police who used the detailed descriptions of the murder (the time, the weapon, the place, the clothes he wore, what the little girl he killed had said to him) given by the little girl to find and convict the man in question (2).

www.namahjournal.com...
Interesting topic OP. S&F

I find that a lot of scientists seem to have morphed into fundamentalists. This attitude is a limiting factor, it is causing science to stagnate. Study some of the greatest scientists from history, they were a lot like little kids. Curious, open minded, and having a lot of fun learning new things. That is where the breakthroughs occur. Also, science has really seemed to have gone to the dark side. A whole lot more money and man hours put into creating destruction in new and terrifying ways, instead of creating real solutions to problems. Why solve problems when you can just blow the problems up?

When it comes to the "paranormal", that is where the real fundamentalism starts showing. They would rather explain away things with halfassed theories, or outright deny the existence and ridicule, than learn about it. Swamp gas comes to mind here.

I have personally experienced prophetic dreams before, nothing amazing like predicting a huge event, but dreaming of a place I have never been to, and who went there with me, then later going to that place. It was eerily similar to the dream. Plenty in my life I cannot explain, but I refuse to stick my head in the sand and pretend it never happened. How boring would that be, life is mundane enough, without purposefully making it duller

Originally posted by Hadrian
TheLieWeLive's post brings to mind Jung's interpretation of some of the themes covered in this thread: the personal and collective unconscious - often used to explain why so many completely different (and often believed to be isolated) cultures share such similar and rudimentary concepts in their culture and beliefs.

This supports the similarities in religions, but also folk tales, cultural preferences, morality and you could even say some exhibitions of natural instinct. There certainly appears to be support that we accumulate cultural and sociological, if not natural, knowledge and expressions of belief, preference and basic human processing throughout all our successive generations and pass it on. And it often is not a product of teaching and learning, but innate.

Both Freud and Jung used the term archetypes as a label for this instinctual knowledge, especially as relates to common themes in stories and oral tradition which may reinforce that which is already present in our ... minds? To infer this knowledge may not be physically situated within the brain is interesting and provocative.

If, mankind was virtually wiped out, which some ancient text suppose, and the myths and legends of many cultures. Except for a few natives from a remote jungle, would we continue on the same path eventually inventing the same things, a continuous cycle?

Are we making steps everyday to understanding the great mystery of life, or only asking the same questions since mankind looked outside of himself.

Is knowledge imparted and is only so much knowledge available and is there a source that stores all the memories

Take the Biblical stories
"Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.

And they said, Go to, let us build us a city, and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.

Only enough knowledge, only what is safe to be given.

It seems to me that man keeps reinventing the wheel, or making better spears, it is still all about survival, clothing, medicine, shelter, transportation, weapons.

The flat worm always is a flat worm, it is able to regenerate, but only what it has been programed to be.

I agree. I think there is a great possibility that this is true. It could explain why Im driving around certain parts of Toronto that I havent been to before, Yet having a strong feeling like I have been there before, or kind of feeling like I am home. And then I realize that my father, and at one time grandfather used to live in Toronto, where maybe DNA of their memories could be passed down to me. Long shot, Who knows...lol. Maybe some of our dreams are being influenced by memories of ancestors in the past. Like why I would have re-occuring dreams of getting shot in what felt like a war in Europe. Maybe our dreams are also influenced by spirits (who knows).
Also, to me, the best proof of thinking outside of the brain is proven to me by the ghosts in my house. One night while tucking my son in and getting him to bed, Anne, the original owner of my house who passed away in this house was peeking around the corner at me from the living room. When I turned around, she was leaning over peeking at me from behind the divider wall. As soon as she seen me look at her, in real time she pulled back behind the wall. I was totally freaked out...lol. Also, I think her deceased husband Ben has a coin which he taps off of my steel furniture and glass table top. A few times I left out my digital recorder on my dresser, asking to give me a sign if they are here. When I would play back the recorder you could here someone spinning out what sounded like a rather large coin and picking it up again. They would do this repeatedly. Being a hobby music producer, and knowing that my equipment is not faulty, these recording are a little creepy to listen to. But for me personally, it shows proof of intelligence without the use of a physical brain. And for those of you who don't believe me, oh well, not much I can do to prove otherwise I guess...lol.

Originally posted by TKDRL
I find that a lot of scientists seem to have morphed into fundamentalists. This attitude is a limiting factor, it is causing science to stagnate. Study some of the greatest scientists from history, they were a lot like little kids. Curious, open minded, and having a lot of fun learning new things. That is where the breakthroughs occur. Also, science has really seemed to have gone to the dark side. A whole lot more money and man hours put into creating destruction in new and terrifying ways, instead of creating real solutions to problems. Why solve problems when you can just blow the problems up?

Strawman fallacy. Einstein took months/years pondering his problems, so I wouldn't exactly say he had the impatience of "little boys". I do agree there was a curiousity and openmindedness to his speculations, though he understood that in order not to be disproven easily by his scientist peers he had to have some solid grounds to his speculations. I'm not going to do a straw man and mock you because you are using more parapsychology than established scientific theories to build your arguments.

Originally posted by TKDRL
When it comes to the "paranormal", that is where the real fundamentalism starts showing. They would rather explain away things with halfassed theories, or outright deny the existence and ridicule, than learn about it. Swamp gas comes to mind here.

Coming back to the "careful" part. There is a basis for mental phenomena and alot of faith is put into neuroscience to explain these. I may be scientifically oriented but I have had many experiences and fascinations surrounding the occult. My opinion is that in time science will explain these phenomena, whether its methods of measurement & detection have developed or not. Your subjective experience says it's "fantastic", meanwhile the objective truth may be that your mind is subjectively responding to something as normal and boring as dirt. I do not know that, and the fact that I don't KNOW fascinates me.

Originally posted by TKDRL
I have personally experienced prophetic dreams before, nothing amazing like predicting a huge event, but dreaming of a place I have never been to, and who went there with me, then later going to that place. It was eerily similar to the dream. Plenty in my life I cannot explain, but I refuse to stick my head in the sand and pretend it never happened. How boring would that be, life is mundane enough, without purposefully making it duller

I haven't experienced prophetic dreams (what I'd initially call "normal dreams getting something right for once"). My approach would first be to figure out the odds for the same happening three nights in a row, and then I'd be fascinated. Again, I've had UFOs scare the crap out of me and ghost experiences from way back but I'm still not going to make crackpot theories when I have no scientific data to base it on. I keep them to myself until I have something good, unless I allow myself to be speculative, which I also have been on these forums.

The question is, are you being speculative or are you actually trying to tie a scientific experiment to a mental phenomenon? If you're attempting the last then you need to have valid data for anyone to question the common paradigm or your legitimacy plummets. That's just the way it is, and that's how it's been in academia over the past millennium.

I'm offtopic once more. This time thanks to you.

Originally posted by QuantriQueptidez
Yea, because amnesia after organic brain damage is part of your soul taking a vacation, and alzheimers is the devil... ooookay.

Actually, the brain accesses contextually attributed residual fact sets that (as a result of the specific attributing system itself) reside in what amounts to a "memory cloud" (sort of like the data cloud concept within company intranets). If the brain is damaged in the region where specific access circuits are located, then those "memories" will never be accessible, and there you have amnesia or dementia-related memory loss.

Migratory animals share a "memory cloud" that helps them survive as a species, with some sets contextually associated with the migration process, and the brains evolutionarily developed to "reach" for those instructions when environmental factors hit a predefined "tipping point", which is why all such group-think occurs per locality, as opposed to species-wide.

Human beings do not share a memory cloud. Most predators don't as well, with lions and wolves being a prime example of apex predators that do share one, but on an as-needed basis.

When the human brain dies, the contextual specifics become meaningless, and the data itself is effectively "released" as simple Residual information - no different than any other fact set collective, as far as the rest of the environment is concerned. It wasn't created by the human brain. It emerged as an environmental default response to the specific information that the brain itself created. Once the brain has died, it's no longer unique or necessary for anything other than the Identity definition of the Contextual Environment as a whole, as is the case with all residual fact sets.

reply to post by kmb08753


I have always believed that there is knowledge locked away in your dna...who teaches a spider to make a web, its a very complex structure yet we know they don't learn it from watching mommy spider

Originally posted by LUXUS
reply to post by kmb08753

 

I have always believed that there is knowledge locked away in your dna...who teaches a spider to make a web, its a very complex structure yet we know they don't learn it from watching mommy spider

There is actually some basis to your belief. For example, a couple of years ago scientists conducted an experiment which resulted in pretty solid data for hereditary facial expressions within families. Why DNA does this I don't know, but it's fascinating nonetheless!

As we are a social species structures for decoding have likely evolved where we inherit an expression which is familial to anger (for example) to be able to communicate these emotions "from the crib". Spiders actually have a learning curve when it comes to successfully making webs, though human expressions may have one as well.

phys.org link

It seems very likely to me that memory is stored somewhere beyond the brain. In DNA? Maybe. Or maybe there's another answer that has not yet been scientifically proven.

Why do I think so? Why is it that people remember stupid stuff like every episode of "I Love Lucy" that they saw in 1956? You catch a piece of a rerun while flipping past an odd cable channel. Desi walks in the door, just so. You know at that moment exactly what he is going to say. And you know what Lucy will reply. The sheer volume of memory needed to store all this trash well exceeds the known physical capacity of a human brain. So, where is it stored?

reply to post by Detergent


My cousin has downs syndrome, after seeing a movie he likes once, the next time he watches the movie he will say every line of dialogue along with the actors/actresses. That always amazed me.

I find the notion that memories could be stored in DNA laughable. Seriously, human DNA sequence is about 50 MBytes when compressed in a RAR file, do you believe anything as extensive as human memory can be compressed into one 50 MB archive? It's obvious that DNA is highly redundant for the sake of error-correction and mainly contains instructions on how to produce proteins. DNA is overly mystified, so anything unexplained tends to pop up in some sort of 'it must be stored in the DNA' argument.

reply to post by NorEaster


You're making stuff up, kid.

Stop trying to sound intelligent, while just running with the latest assumptions.

reply to post by Runciter33


Thank you for that. Very interesting.
That was an example of someone trying to test, objectively, for a physical answer. I am not against a shared field that might even transmit information. I think people should be more grounded in their approach and leave mysticism out, when talking about fact. I just hope they were objective enough when conducting the experiments.

I am curious, did they obvservation a Morphogenetic field? What instruments did they use to detect it? What unit is it measured in? What lead them to think of a field?

Originally posted by Astrocyte
reply to post by kmb08753

 

They certainly could be, but I see no reason why they need to be or even anything that really indicates that they are.

The scientific method does not entertain "occultism, NDE, telepathy, telekinesis, astral travel/remote viewing" etc.

People who ascribe to the scientific method need to be open as well. If an observation doesn't fit with what they believe to be true, they shouldn't just throw it out. If they don't like one explain, they should work toward another, with an open mind.

If there is a demonstratable case of telekinesis, for example, then there has to be an explanation. Is there a real video of someone moving something with their mind? Not a report of someone that has seen it, but a recorded phenomena, a solid observation. If so, anyone would be remiss in dismissing it. Mystic or scientist.

Originally posted by Bob Sholtz
reply to post by kmb08753

 

I have often wondered how some animals can remember spawning grounds or migration locals without ever having been there.

it is most likely genetically stored.

studies have been done on mice and their burrows. they found that the shape of a burrow could be predicted ahead of time, and that they all shared common features.

it turns out that mice don't "recall" what burrows look like, but that they build them in specific shapes because of genetics.

I wonder if some test was done on this that lead then to conclude genetics. If we could identify the gene, or program, for the shape of a burrow, change it and see if they start digging a different shape. Identifying the gene would likely be difficult and long research in itself though.

Thank you for the post.