X-Message-Number: 8400 From: (Thomas Donaldson) Subject: Re: CryoNet #8384 - #8390 Date: Sat, 19 Jul 1997 13:20:38 -0700 (PDT) Hi again! Some comments on answers to Marty. (And I hope he follows through with his present desire to join a cryonics society, stated in one of his latter messages). As many have said, our long term memories are not stored electrically. The best current ideas for how such storage works is that it involves changes in the connectivity of our neurons, including (possibly) changes in the individual synapses which mediate that connectivity. LTP, though it may be a means for somewhat longer-term storage, is unlikely to be the means for storage of real long term memories. For one thing, most research on LTP looks at our hippocampus, which is actually a very small part of our brain, unlikely to hold all our memories. What it can do, of course, is allow much slower processes needed for real long term storage to take place --- after which it vanishes. Second, even if we decide on uploading (to what? no current computer would satisfy the requirements, and simple computing power is unlikely to be enough) we are likely to need much more understanding and technology to read out memories from our brain. Some forms of nanotechnology may be needed to do this, biological or other. Since our brain organization is not that of a computer, readout will require entirely new technologies based on how brains work rather than how computers work. Understanding of how brains work, and nanotechnology in any form, are NOT opposites. In PERIASTRON I have followed work on both memory and consciousness for years now, specifically because both are important for us as cryonicists. I have no doubt that we will come to understand both quite well, but presently we do not. Our understanding of memory has just started to gell; our understanding of consciousness (as seen in how our brains work) is much less firm. Naturally we'll need both: none of us want to be "revived" if that revival does not include an accurate sense that we are the same person (whatever same may mean!) as we were when we were suspended. For some computer people reading this, I will add that no amount of good theories of how cognition and feeling take place, and simulations in computers of each, will substitute for an understanding of how our brains actually work. Sure, they may in some sense work according to these theories, but we're unlikely to be able to do much with those theories until we understand in great detail how actual brains behave at the cellular level. Even if we decide on uploading, we must still understand how our brains work, not just in theory but by actual knowledge of real brains. Long long life, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=8400