Tentative Topic

My tentative topic is about machine learning but I think I may change my topic to be about memories. I’ll explain more about why I may be choosing a topic about memories later on. I chose machine learning because I’m majoring in computer science and I’ve heard a lot of people talk about machine learning. I decided to learn more about machine learning and the recent developments of machine learning to see if I would be interested in going in that direction in the future. I only broadly know about what machine learning is. According to the definition that I found, it’s “a type of artificial intelligence (AI) that provides computers with the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed” (Rouse). It’s interesting because with machine learning, computers can adjust their program based on the patterns that it detects in data that it’s exposed to.

The reason that machine learning led me to research about memories is because I researched a little about what machine learning was and the article below led me to something called deep learning. It was explained similarly to machine learning, but it used how children learn as an example. That led me to be more interested in how our childhood memories affect us now. A few questions I have about memory is how it is stored, how does our brain decide what should be long-term and short-term, and why our memories from early childhood are so distant. How long does a long-term memory stay in our memories?

In an earlier blog post, I read an article about how our dreams help us form memories and I would like to incorporate that into my research somehow. The article said that a lot of our memories form while were dreaming because it takes what occurred that day and the brain filters what’s important and puts it in our memories. I would like to learn more about this if there are other articles I can find about it.

Machine Learning

Senuri’s Article:

In “What Is Dreaming and What Does It Tell Us about Memory?” Penelope A. Lewis tells us about dreams, their purpose, and how memory is related to dreams. According to Lewis, there is actually “no universally accepted definition of dreaming. One fairly safe catch-all is ‘all perceptions, thoughts, or emotions experienced during sleep'” (Lewis). The purpose of dreams is also unknown. There are a few theories on what dreams are for. The most famous theory is by Sigmund Freud. He suggests that dreams are forbidden desires. Another theory is about how dreams prepare people for the future.

Memories are often incorporated in fragments into our dreams. It’s very rare for a whole memory of an experience to be replayed in our dreams. Researchers have also found that our memories are more likely to be incorporated into our dreams on the first night and the sixth to seventh night than on the third to fifth night after it occurred. One possibility for this is that “memories may be inaccessible [in consolidation] because they are being processed in some way which takes them temporarily ‘offline'” (Lewis). This effects is called dream-lag.

Although it is unlikely for new memories to be made in dreams, our dreams replay random fragments of our memories with random knowledge. This process in dreaming produces “highly creative mixtures of memories and knowledge” (Lewis). This has led to many creative works of art, literature, and science.

What Is Dreaming and What Does It Tell Us about Memory?