Brain Science: NYU Professor, Education, Memory, Debates and Mental Health

How does the memory work out what is understood? How does the brain determine interest in learning? What happens with the process of recalling or forgetting?

These are some of the absent questions in the debates about the New York University professor of organic chemistry, Maitland Jones Jr., fired because 82 students of 350 who failed the class wrote a petition.

Whatever side of the debate anyone is, it shows the problem with education, just like the problem with mental health, as well as with addiction and so on.

Everything is at fault except the brain where learning, mental health, addiction and so on are set. There is always something else to blame, when the brain, the base is the decision maker.

How does the brain make determinations for the experience to learn? What is the functional basis of memory regardless of subjective experience?

Education is not the build of a good school or resources, teacher or environment, no. They try, but it all starts and stops with the brain. This is similar to how mental health is not because of social, political or environmental factors, it all starts and stops with the brain. It is also the same with addiction, which is not a principal problem of drugs, social media, video games or others, but the accepting or rejecting elements within the brain, for individuals per moment.

So how really does the brain, or specifically the memory work? When information [or sensory input] goes in, what steps does it go through, to understand something or not? What makes it difficult? What is the difference or similarity in understanding something, remembering and having interest or not?

In brain science, all sensory inputs get to the thalamus, except for smell that gets to the olfactory bulb. It is where they are processed or integrated before relay to the cerebral cortex for interpretation.

The first stage is more direct, sensory integration or processing, but the next stage interpretation, is what is not so clear but can be theorized to be knowing, feeling and reaction. Knowing is memory, where whatever is known is stored.

How does this storage happen? This is different from labels of memory, for storage sets per experience but not the functional basis of memory, or applicable if say working memory dimension is used to deliver bad news, or episodic memory recalls trauma.

Feelings and reaction also play a role in learning, understanding and retention, just like they both do, for mental health, addiction and so on.

Memory

Conceptually, the memory has large and small stores. Large stores are where whatever is common between small stores is stored, while small stores store unique information. There are other small stores that do direct transport of whatever is incoming to the respective large stores without going to the corresponding small store, though it may happen later, or not, but both [transient and resident] are the two kinds of small stores in memory.

Small stores can be prioritized or pre-prioritized, for access to locations, both with fast and numerous interchanges, to determine experience.

Small stores travel in sequences, old and new to large stores. There is also an early-split or go-before for small stores, so that one goes first for what to expect, hold in mind to say, type, or for what to anticipate.

Large stores contain all the common experiences, depression, anxiety, sleep, appetite, thirst, fatigue, strain, stress and so forth, including understanding. It is the large stores and their parts that small stores go that expresses experience. This means that whatever is experienced is because the small store went to the large store that bears that it, or say experience is anything at the moment predicated on what stores go where.

Understanding

Understanding is, to get it, or know the how. To know the how of anything is often built from others. The how is collectively a large store with different sides. It is possible for small stores to get there using a new or old sequence playing a role in understanding, or time taken to, as well.

It is possible to describe something with standard terms and for a student not get it, but to use a description and then do. The standard terms are like seeking a new sequence or to make a new large store, or additions to one or some, which didn’t work, but the description used an old sequence, and existing stores and touched the understanding store to be understood.

There must be a touch of a side of the understanding large store, or a bounce to it, to understand or say for the experience of what it means to understand or get it.

It is possible to describe, use terms, or everything possible and still not understand something because the small store did not touch the understanding large store, including for subjects like organic chemistry, algebraic topology or others that some students find difficult.

This architecture in memory is similar to words that hurt, such that no matter how bad, they don’t always hurt, or to the same degree all the time. Hurt is a store that has to be touched.

Also, for internal senses, there are different ways one could be appetitive, not just by the hormone, ghrelin but could be by seeing food, perceiving, or remembering food and so on, meaning that the property for craving was acquired or touched the large store.

It is the same with understanding. It is not because the same language is used, or a great teacher, or all the materials possible, or whatever else, but that the store was touched or wasn’t.

There could be prioritization factor or pre-prioritization, or avoidance of [the content of the store] leaving memory area, to feelings destination and so on.

This says the professor is seeking one major store in memory, understanding. Though small stores relay all around but without that store, there is no understanding.

Interest

There are times when a song is listened to over and over again, because the transient small store conveying the song in the memory, touched the store of what it means for something to be interesting. This is the same when a movie, or a scene is too interesting and the person watches over and over again. But it is common to have this same one thing over and over and be bored, if the store touched the boredom store. 

Though it is possible to listen to a disliked song over and over, if it is playing without one’s control, as well as doing things uninteresting in general for the sake of it, without interest, but for something to be interesting, no matter how tough or strange, it has to touch that store in memory.

So for a class, lecture or course to be interesting, it has to touch that store in that moment.

This is similar to the ongoing debates on the issue, the views anyone has depends on the stores touched. If there is no take about the situation connected with anything else, then that store was not touched.

Retention

This is the ability to learn and stay, though repetition is often recommended as a means to or practical, but functionally, in the memory, the large store has to provide what it has from a particular side or slice or angle that is accessible by incoming small store, due to sequence, splits or other factors. This is how recall works, nothing else. Association may align with this and seem like association works, but there are times something associated is forgotten and cannot be recalled because there was no bounce to the large store, or hit to the side of a large store and so on.

There are things repeated multiple times but not remembered. There are practical that cannot be described after a while, or for some forgetting how to do it, even though they had done it before.

Learning

Modeling learning per functional basis of memory would be helpful in positioning how properties are acquired in memory locations, or sets like splits, sequences, sides and stores that make determinations. This also applies to mental health, addiction and so on.

Sensory to Thought

It is theorized that sensory processing or integration is into thought or a form of thought. This means that the lesson or class to the brain is in a form of thought, which can be used for thinking, imagination, dreams, memories, predictions, perceptions and so on.

It is thought in the same form, representing other external senses, as well as internal senses that school notes or classes become, meeting competition for properties in the memory that could make learning or dissemination tough.

Brain science still holds all the cards, regardless of diversions.