Statistics and you!

[standalonehuman]

Hitori Togusa 3/30 near Recolle

Let me ask a question that is the reverse of one that, I believe Dave was asking before. Who has access to this site but has not seen any strange memories? A lot of people have mentioned the phenomenon of memories that have been recalled, but don't seem to fit with the rest of your life, or what you remember. I still love the term 'hallucinomemories.' But it can't be all of us, statistically. A related but different question, every time we talk about this, I have to bring up that I'm not an expert in memory. So do we have anybody on this site who is? Psychologists, researchers, somebody who worked in a memory lab during grad school? I'll take anything.

Comments

[professahhh]

Speaking of which, here's another one!

If applied to the human brain, magnetic pulses can have all kinds of effects! For example, they can render you unable to speak... or boost your memory.

[standalonehuman]

Hunh. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. One of the ways you can image the brain uses magnets. It's that same iron content in the blood that you can change if you use magnetic fields. Keep blood from going to one part of the brain, make it go to another part more. One part of the brain doesn't work now, another part is working overtime.

You wouldn't be able to keep that strong a magnetic field up for very long, but long enough to make somebody remember one thing they couldn't before?

[professahhh]

Well, I don't believe you're actually changing the flow of blood in the brain, really -- that sounds a bit dangerous. It works, or so they say, because the activity in your brain is made up of electrical impulses!

Magnetic fields affect those impulses, so depending on the part of the brain you stimulate, you can create different effects.

[standalonehuman]

Oh, right. Remembering from my bio classes now. That's how any activation in the brain works, a buildup of an electrical charge, and magnets are related to the positivity or negativity of that charge.

So not blood increase, but a temporary activation increase. Getting the neurons in that part of the brain to light up for a short while.

It would be a way to trigger memory recall, but you can't control what information is recalled. But that sounds just like what's happening to people.

[professahhh]

There is a way to trigger particular memories... but it doesn't seem likely that either method is really what's happening here.

[standalonehuman]

Still, your point is that there are more ways to trigger and affect memory that we don't know about, so don't feel limited to just what we know when thinking about what Retrospec is doing?

[professahhh]

I didn't particularly have any point in mind... it was just that you had me thinking about memory and science!

Now that you mention it, though, I haven't any explanation for all these memories that doesn't sound like conspiracy theory and claptrap.

[standalonehuman]

But have you gotten anything, yourself? People I've spoken to are still so certain that what they're seeing is real.

[professahhh]

I've been remembering some things lately, but it's nothing like that lady with a girlfriend.

[standalonehuman]

I would hope not!

...You're how old, again?

[professahhh]

Twelve.

[standalonehuman]

Comment stands.

I'm not gonna pry into whatever it is you did remember. We've determined that everybody's remembering something different so it's not like one person's memories are going to have a lot of meaning to somebody else.

[professahhh]

I see! So you don't think there's any connection between them?

[standalonehuman]

Well, a friend of mine posted about remembering a battle from feudal samurai times.

So, unless that sounds familiar, no, I think there's nothing connecting them.

[professahhh]

Really? But I recall talking to someone who said that people were remembering the same things, as well.

[standalonehuman]

Oh. That's the first I've heard of that.

It can't all be related to each other, though, can it? Maybe I'd have to ask some more people who would be willing to share.

[Or, more accurately, that Togusa would be willing to pry into their personal lives. Which is a small list.]

[professahhh]

Some of them are and some aren't, it seems. It's quite the conundrum.

[standalonehuman]

Maybe it's like families? Ah, the Izunias, the...Wolves? Wolfs? Detective Wolf's family.

Maybe they'd all be remembering similar things.

[professahhh]

Perhaps an investigation is in order!

[standalonehuman]

I know I'm looking in to the company. But if you can ask your own friends, see if there are any similarities between what people are remembering? That would help.

[It's a relatively harmless thing that a kid can do, okay, Togusa's not going to cut him off at the knees here.]