From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!wupost!emory!gwinnett!depsych!rc Wed Feb  5 11:55:59 EST 1992
Article 3375 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: rc@depsych.Gwinnett.COM (Richard Carlson)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Intelligence Testing
Message-ID: <VL6gFB3w164w@depsych.Gwinnett.COM>
Date: 1 Feb 92 16:42:42 GMT
References: <477@trwacs.UUCP>
Lines: 44

erwin@trwacs.UUCP (Harry Erwin) writes:

> Re: storage of images in the brain.
> 
> There is a lot of evidence that memories are stored in the brain
> transformed by a wavelet transform. (Think of a fourier transform with
> finite support.) Karl Pribram discusses this in his latest book. Hence the
> images we retrieve (or the thought sequences we retrieve) are not the form
> in which they are stored. Philosophical or psychological discussion of
> this should take this logical/physical disjunction into account. It's
> similar to the problems physicists have in dealing with quantum mechanics.
> We don't have anything in our classical, perceived reality that
> corresponds to probability waves, and until the emergence of holograms, we
> haven't had anything in our perceived reality that corresponded to how
> memories were stored in the brain.

I suspect images are stored in a different format than verbal
information.  But the one can affect the other.  Picture in you
mind's eye the candy house that Hansel and Gretel come upon in the
woods.  Then read the following passage:

But it seemed to Gretel that the candy had a sickly and strangely
unnatural or even magical quality to it.  The reds of the
red-striped candy cane lattices were _too_ red.  The creamy,
sugary stuff between the gingerbread boards was too lush and too
creamy, and Gretel couldn't imagine any ordinary kitchen in which
it could have been made.  The impression lasted only a moment, and
Hansel hadn't seemed to notice anything of the kind for he had
begun eating the strange house, gobbling it in huge, greedy gulps.
Gretel had never been so hungry before in her life and she almost
instantly forgot her momentary misgivings and joined her brother
in his gustatory assault on this unusual habitation.

Notice that even though the experience isn't even labeled as
"yours" -- you are viewing the house through Gretel's eyes -- your
visual image alters in accordance with the suggestion of the text.
A complete explanation of memory would have to account for this
interface between text and image.

--
Richard Carlson        |    rc@depsych.gwinnett.COM
Midtown Medical Center |    {rutgers,ogicse,gatech}!emory!gwinnett!depsych!rc
Atlanta, Georgia       |
(404) 881-6877         |


