"It's on the The Tip of My Tongue" -Probes the Depths of the Brain

Don't worry, that title doesn't correspond to an extraordinarily graphic fetish, but to how a group of cunning neuroscientists have probed the mysteries of metacognition armed with nothing but an everyday feeling.

The human brain is an extremely improvised structure.  Started by the mixing of fluids by two people who, frankly, have other things on their mind at the time.  Inundated with random data from the entire world from the get go, and for the first four years it self-improves pretty much by running into things to check which hurt.  With a development cycle like that we should consider ourselves lucky if we can remember how to spell, let alone so many details of our lives.

The brain doesn't have a central index file, a master record that lets you find any of these memories at any time.  Instead it scatters a little piece of everything everywhere and all over the place - some liken it to a cluttered desk.  Now imagine cutting every file into five pieces and scattering them at random on that desk and you'll have a better idea of the brain.

This doesn't seem a very efficient recall system, and it isn't. We've built far superior central-filing style memory devices (you're reading on one now), but you'll notice that the "worse" system is the boss and the "better" system is sitting covered in dust (and possibly yellow stickies).  This is the trick that makes the meatbrain superior - the ability to not only act and think, but think about thinking, and it's this "metacognition" that Florida researchers are studying.

The frustrating feeling of a word on the tip of your tongue is an artifact of our spectacularly disorganized internal filing system.  By deliberately triggering this feeling in subjects in brain-imaging apparatus, scientists have identified distinct signals responsible for

a) leaving you spluttering like a startled guppy
b) working out what your brain is going to do about it.

First, your frontal lobes decide if you know what you don't know - is the errant fact hiding somewhere in the stacks of your mind?  If they say "yes", this is the start of that wonderfully annoying "I know it I know it" feeling while they dispatch search parties into the piled (shredded) desk that is your memory.

This research is an awesome collision of everyday experiences and the cutting edge of metacognition, itself an almost impossible blend of neurology and philosophy.  Where does that put us?  Quite simply:  I think that I know that I don't know, but I will, just give me a minute, hang on, therefore I am.

Tip of the tongue tests http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/06/01/whats_that_name/?page=full

Comments

[rannva]

A fascinating topic!
Here is a very simple and completely (?) unscientific exercise:
Pick a conversation you had yesterday and try to remember it word for word. It helps if this conversation was filled with emotion. Then, after you have thought about this conversation, focusing especially on how you felt, let your brain pick out any events that you can remember that seem to be connected to this particular type of emotion. Completely let your brain roam. It is amazing what stuff comes up. Amazing what we can retrieve seemingly trivial memories we haven't accessed for many years.