Thinking about how most of our early education is essentially writing in a standardized processing order, and how expensive deviations from that processing order get as the processing order gets more complex.
For example, it’s “easier” to learn basic concepts, particularly as a child, when the pre-existing dependencies are low, but as we add more complex rule sets we become more “set in our ways”. Eventually, as a matter of efficiency we establish strong default processing pathways and deviating from those can be quite difficult.
Which brings up an interesting conceit, is the “difficulty” of “learning” a particular construct a direct artifact of metabolic performance in particular functional modules? We often image brains and assert things about activation based on learning, what if a particular module didn’t have the metabolic overhead to flexibly generate new engrams/order of processing connections?
Could we resolve something like “dyslexia” by imaging to find a “low” module, and stimulate that until a new order of processing was established? What about enhancing physical learning by stimulating spinal nuclei?
Would too complex of an order of processing create an “overactivation” state and be harmful, even after oligos had remyelinated the information?
Specifically, I’m thinking about the tendency to “associate” new information with existing information, and why information which cannot be associated is almost always discarded. Thinking about this in the context of a question about “far transfer”, or the ability to cross-associate information across different functional domains.
Is it possible that some people with “great” memories have a unique functional module which works as an associator that gets averaged out in population studies? Seems like the only real research around this topic is focused on HSAM, which is pretty limited in scope and burdened by psychiatric garbage. HSAM is also usually just “overconfidence” rather than “great memory”.
False memories in highly superior autobiographical memory individuals – Suggests good dorsal write, bad ventral downselect?
Similarity in activity and laterality patterns in the angular gyrus during autobiographical memory retrieval and self-referential processing – Huh. Maybe that’s a decent guess?
Causal involvement of the left angular gyrus in higher functions as revealed by transcranial magnetic stimulation: a systematic review – Evidence supports spiking the stack changes memory performance and behavior.
Stimulation of distinct parietal locations differentiates frontal versus hippocampal network involvement in memory formation – Translating this as “dorsal memory is more accurate”. Which makes sense, as it’s not context modified yet.
Altered functional hubs and connectivity in type 2 diabetes mellitus with and without mild cognitive impairment – Type 2 Diabetes, which is metabolic dysfunction, reduces the amount of “energy” available for dorsal side writes. I suppose as this advances it ultimately becomes “alzheimer’s” or other dementia (thinking FTD specifically).
Okay… another proposition here, is the occurrence of individuals who can “write” information if it personally relates to them (ventral stream/4th ventricle)? What if “dorsal” writes are supposed to be weak, to facilitate the consciousness feedback loop? What if part of the reason dementia is not quantifiable in imaging is because the dorsal side loop decays as a part of “development”?
Under this conceit as a child we rely heavily on the dorsal side in order to “learn”, however one of the artifacts of puberty/maturation is that it mechanically and steadily weakens dorsal side inputs to strengthen the effect of social behavior?
What if some psychiatric conceits like phenotypes of “ADHD” were actually measurements of high metabolic performance on the dorsal side, but that high metabolic performance was detrimental, as it overly focuses on external vs internal priorities?
What if the memory difficulties in this description are based not around actual ability to store and recall information, but inability to appropriately bind that information to ventral side information due to stack imbalance/mismatch?
Are most cases of “ADHD” resolving after childhood a related pattern, or a pattern at all? Is this an example of the stacks evening out with further development? My brain is telling me that the short term memory issues might be an artifact of a “weak” metabolic write process (e.g. output write not “strong” enough to over-write the input side). Perhaps this improves with development?
Are there studies which address this looking specifically at the Layer III<->Layer V reciprocal connections specifically in the context of short term memory, “executive function”, “ADHD”, “default mode network”, etc?