Posted on 01/20/2014 2:51:32 PM PST by Sir Napsalot
Interesting...I have always used my system for remembering a grocery list. I have to run in the store and get specific items. I memorize the number of items I must get...lets say 5 items. That way I can then recall those specific items along with the usual stuff I shop for. Works for me.
Hi Marcella. Thx for sharing this. What a great story-and a great lesson. I’m 49. Will be 50 in April. I am going to remember this and take your advice to heart.
Yep, the brain is for APPLYING information, not just storing and accessing it.
I had a buddy who had an interesting theory along those lines. When people commented on his thinning hair, he would patiently explain that he's acquired so much knowledge that his head has expanded and the hair has to spread out over a larger area giving the illusion of hair loss.
The explanation seemed perfectly reasonable to all of us middle-aged guys there. When his children and grandchildren objected, it was quickly decided by us old guys that their brains just hadn't expanded enough to grasp complex theories.
As good as any ‘story’. I am sticking with it too.
I do not believe it is the volume of information stored that slows our thinking in older age. The “retrieval” time of the brain is faster than any hard drive, and even the “slower” time of the best hard drives - when they are so “full” is not a great noticeable weakness.
I think there is something else going on.
The brain is a “living machine” and the heart of it is the cells that perform the mental and related neurological (”communications between cells”) functions. Over time, bilogical cell health and repair is less good in old age than in youth.
I have not heard medical professionals refer to it the following way, but I believe there are mechanisms or a basic mechanism that helps the brain “catalog” (like writing an index/map) to whatever information it has stored. Just as in our machine computers, catalogues & indexes makes information retrieval faster - faster than having to hunt for a needle in a haystack until it’s found.
Like with our memor lapses as we get older, so it is with our “slower” thinking, I believe, in that the mental cataloging sysyem does work as well as it used to.
The idea was first told to me in what a friend was given as a joke - “it’s not that we lost some of our memories; it’s just that our retrieval system does not work as well”. But I believe that that is no joke, it’s probably the real issue.
When we can understand the mechanism of HOW the brain makes a catalogue/index of it’s information stores, I think we would be further along in solving issues of “slow thinking” and memory lapses in the elderly.
told ya so !
Keeping it alive with the world going by my window. Loving this nap!
don’t do that ... lol
(that's a 'been there, done that .. often' rofl !)
I thought humans typically only use about 10% of the brain? What the heck does the rest do, or potentially COULD do.
Yeah, that’s it.
I would guess that you just take them out of the cabinet and throw them out.
I’ve been hypothesizing this to my kids for a while. I just knew it was true!
The article had some promise until I read that ridiculous part about “simulating” the brain with a hard disc drive. What a joke.
I installed an SSD on my MacBook Pro a few months back and the first thing you learn is you can toss all your defrag software. You simply don’t defrag a solid state drive because the seek time is close to zero — you don’t have to move a big, high inertia magnetic head all over the disc.
“only use about 10% of the brain? What the heck does the rest do”
It does the important things, the things that the 10% can neither comprehend nor conceive.
LOLOL! Unbelievable! First they tell you to keep your mind agile by doing puzzles and metal gymnastics, then they tell you your brain slows due to too much information. Me thinks their brains are totally fried.
That was a great episode
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