Eidetic memory -photographic memory Overview[edit] The ability to recall images in great detail for several minutes is found in early childhood (between 2% and 10% of that age group) and is unconnected with the person's intelligence level.[citation needed] Like other memories, they are often subject to unintended alterations. The ability usually begins to fade after the age of six years, perhaps as growing vocal skills alter the memory process.[2][3] A few adults have had phenomenal memories (not necessarily of images), but their abilities are also unconnected with their intelligence levels and tend to be highly specialized. Persons identified as having a related condition known as Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM)[1] are able to remember very intricate details of their own personal life, but this ability seems not to extend to other, non-autobiographical information. Skeptical views[edit] Notable claims[edit] Prodigious savants[edit] See also[edit] References[edit]
Cognition Cognition is a faculty for the processing of information, applying knowledge, and changing preferences. Cognition, or cognitive processes, can be natural or artificial, conscious or unconscious.[4] These processes are analyzed from different perspectives within different contexts, notably in the fields of linguistics, anesthesia, neuroscience, psychiatry, psychology, philosophy, anthropology, systemics, and computer science.[5][page needed] Within psychology or philosophy, the concept of cognition is closely related to abstract concepts such as mind, intelligence. It encompasses the mental functions, mental processes (thoughts), and states of intelligent entities (humans, collaborative groups, human organizations, highly autonomous machines, and artificial intelligences).[3] Etymology[edit] Origins[edit] Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) heavily emphasized the notion of what he called introspection; examining the inner feelings of an individual. Psychology[edit] Social process[edit] Serial position
Neuroscience of free will On several different levels, from neurotransmitters through neuron firing rates to overall activity, the brain seems to "ramp up" before movements. This image depicts the readiness potential (RP), a ramping-up activity measured using EEG. The onset of the RP begins before the onset of a conscious intention or urge to act. Some have argued that this indicates the brain unconsciously commits to a decision before consciousness awareness. Others have argued that this activity is due to random fluctuations in brain activity, which drive arbitrary, purposeless movements.[1] Philosophers like Daniel Dennett or Alfred Mele consider the language used by researchers. Overview[edit] ...the current work is in broad agreement with a general trend in neuroscience of volition: although we may experience that our conscious decisions and thoughts cause our actions, these experiences are in fact based on readouts of brain activity in a network of brain areas that control voluntary action... William R.
Berkeley on Biphasic Sleep If you see a student dozing in the library or a co-worker catching 40 winks in her cubicle, don’t roll your eyes. New research from the University of California, Berkeley, shows that an hour’s nap can dramatically boost and restore your brain power. Indeed, the findings suggest that a biphasic sleep schedule not only refreshes the mind, but can make you smarter. Students who napped (green column) did markedly better in memorizing tests than their no-nap counterparts. Conversely, the more hours we spend awake, the more sluggish our minds become, according to the findings. “Sleep not only rights the wrong of prolonged wakefulness but, at a neurocognitive level, it moves you beyond where you were before you took a nap,” said Matthew Walker, an assistant professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and the lead investigator of these studies. In the recent UC Berkeley sleep study, 39 healthy young adults were divided into two groups — nap and no-nap.
Cognitive bias Systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment A continually evolving list of cognitive biases has been identified over the last six decades of research on human judgment and decision-making in cognitive science, social psychology, and behavioral economics. The study of cognitive biases has practical implications for areas including clinical judgment, entrepreneurship, finance, and management.[9][10] Overview[edit] The notion of cognitive biases was introduced by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in 1972[11] and grew out of their experience of people's innumeracy, or inability to reason intuitively with the greater orders of magnitude. The "Linda Problem" illustrates the representativeness heuristic (Tversky & Kahneman, 1983[13]). Critics of Kahneman and Tversky, such as Gerd Gigerenzer, alternatively argued that heuristics should not lead us to conceive of human thinking as riddled with irrational cognitive biases. Definitions[edit] Types[edit] List of biases[edit]
Learning how the brain does its coding Most organisms with brains can store and process a staggering range of information. The fundamental unit of the brain, a single neuron, however, can only communicate in the simplest of manners, by sending a simple electrical pulse. The challenge of understanding how information is contained in the pattern of these pulses has been bothering neurobiologists for decades, and has been given its own name: neural coding. In principle, there are two ways coding could be handled. The alternative, sparse coding, tends to be used for memory recall and sensory representations. A study released in yesterday's Science provides some perspective on just how flexible this sort of system can be. The authors of the paper traced the connections among the neurons in the mushroom body, and found that most were contacted by a single, giant interneuron that sent them inhibitory signals.
The lost art of total recall | Science | The Observer A few middle-aged couples are chatting at a dinner party when one husband, Harry, starts talking enthusiastically about a new restaurant he has just visited with his wife. What's its name, demands a friend. Harry looks blank. It's a vintage joke but it makes a telling point, one that forms the core of a newly published book on memory, Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything, by American journalist Joshua Foer. As Foer points out, we no longer need to remember telephone numbers. As a result, we no longer remember long poems or folk stories by heart, feats of memory that were once the cornerstones of most people's lives. Hence Foer's book, which is published by Penguin this month. The trick, Foer says, is to adopt a process known as "elaborative encoding", which involves converting information, such as a shopping list, into a series of "engrossing visual images". In this way, all sorts of feats become possible.
Embodied Cognition Embodied Cognition is a growing research program in cognitive science that emphasizes the formative role the environment plays in the development of cognitive processes. The general theory contends that cognitive processes develop when a tightly coupled system emerges from real-time, goal-directed interactions between organisms and their environment; the nature of these interactions influences the formation and further specifies the nature of the developing cognitive capacities. Since embodied accounts of cognition have been formulated in a variety of different ways in each of the sub-fields comprising cognitive science (that is, developmental psychology, artificial life/robotics, linguistics, and philosophy of mind), a rich interdisciplinary research program continues to emerge. Table of Contents 1. 2. To say that cognition is embodied means that it arises from bodily interactions with the world. a. i. Hannah’s problem was different from Gabriel’s, but it was also the same. ii.