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This demo gives some ideas about how the human brain manages to remember events. With just a few lines of code, containing very little information, it generates

This demo gives some ideas about how the human brain manages to remember events. With just a few lines of code, containing very little information, it generates something we perceive as a very detailed record of a highway trip at night. Even if we don't know exactly what tricks the human brain uses to compress information about places and events, this demo let's us imagine how some of it might be done. The human brain is a master at recognising and codifying geometric 3d shapes. The developer who created this is a master at coding geometric shapes and transitions in javascript as well.

dorgo 12y ago
java script remembers events this way. Dont see how one can apply this to human brain..
- thomasfl 12y ago
  How can the human brain remember hours of highway trips in basically 3 pounds of fat without using some tricks to convert the information in to geometric 3d shapes? The developer who created this demo also know how to do it the other way round, he can write javascript that generate simple geometric shapes and animated transitions in javascript that generates a pretty good rendition of a highway trip at night.
  - dorgo 12y ago
    I doubt that (all) humans think in javascript :P Im sure the brain has its tricks, but they dont need to have something in common with the ones used here. I wonder what Kolmogorov Complexity this program has. Obviously <= 1023.
    - jacquesm 12y ago
      How does Kolmogorov Complexity deal with the fact that you're specifying that number within a certain execution context (in this case JavaScript)? Otherwise you could simply reduce the program to a single bit and have an interpreter that includes the original program as a primitive. This program without the libraries that it accesses would be a lot larger than it is. Also, shouldn't the number be expressed in bits rather than bytes?
      - judk 12y ago
        There is no absolute complexity scale, for the reason you state. There is only relative complexity within a defined domain.
      - vegedor 12y ago
        I think it's fair to assume the brain has some interpretation frameworks as good as javascript/html at least, even if it's a cheesy metaphor.
  - apl 12y ago
    There's a lot of good science on this exact issue, dating back to the 50s/60s (good entry point: the Nobel Prize-awarded work of Hubel & Wiesel). The brain does indeed perform many, many passes of feature extraction and reduction. Essentially, this process starts at synapse one -- retinal inputs, for instance, are immediately split into multiple channels coding different features of the incredibly rich feature space impinging on your photoreceptors. The higher up you go, the more diverse the features and the higher their level of complexity. There's no need for guesswork! Just dive into the literature.
tezza 12y ago
I think you may have the memory issue the wrong way round. Human memory is built precisely around remembering geographic locations, human faces and images[1]. The 'have I seen this before feeling' you get is your brain trying to match the demo location to memories ( my conjecture anyway ) [1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci

dorgo 12y ago

java script remembers events this way. Dont see how one can apply this to human brain..

thomasfl 12y ago
How can the human brain remember hours of highway trips in basically 3 pounds of fat without using some tricks to convert the information in to geometric 3d shapes? The developer who created this demo also know how to do it the other way round, he can write javascript that generate simple geometric shapes and animated transitions in javascript that generates a pretty good rendition of a highway trip at night.
- dorgo 12y ago
  I doubt that (all) humans think in javascript :P Im sure the brain has its tricks, but they dont need to have something in common with the ones used here. I wonder what Kolmogorov Complexity this program has. Obviously <= 1023.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    How does Kolmogorov Complexity deal with the fact that you're specifying that number within a certain execution context (in this case JavaScript)? Otherwise you could simply reduce the program to a single bit and have an interpreter that includes the original program as a primitive. This program without the libraries that it accesses would be a lot larger than it is. Also, shouldn't the number be expressed in bits rather than bytes?
    - judk 12y ago
      There is no absolute complexity scale, for the reason you state. There is only relative complexity within a defined domain.
    - vegedor 12y ago
      I think it's fair to assume the brain has some interpretation frameworks as good as javascript/html at least, even if it's a cheesy metaphor.
- apl 12y ago
  There's a lot of good science on this exact issue, dating back to the 50s/60s (good entry point: the Nobel Prize-awarded work of Hubel & Wiesel). The brain does indeed perform many, many passes of feature extraction and reduction. Essentially, this process starts at synapse one -- retinal inputs, for instance, are immediately split into multiple channels coding different features of the incredibly rich feature space impinging on your photoreceptors. The higher up you go, the more diverse the features and the higher their level of complexity. There's no need for guesswork! Just dive into the literature.

tezza 12y ago

I think you may have the memory issue the wrong way round. Human memory is built precisely around remembering geographic locations, human faces and images[1]. The 'have I seen this before feeling' you get is your brain trying to match the demo location to memories ( my conjecture anyway ) [1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci