Einstein once famously said, “If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on it, I would use the first 55 minutes to formulate the right question.”
This sort of thinking drives the Brain Mind Forum, an organisation dedicated to researching the unfathomable nature of our grey matter. The group formed a couple of years ago and created as their building block, 21 neuroscience questions for the 21st century (an idea poached from David Hilbert’s 20 mathematical questions for the 20th century). Founded by a collective of retired computer experts, the Brain Mind Forum uses computers – the closest thing we have to a man-made brain – to inspire and assist their research.
For the last few months the organisation has been studying a very specific question:
What is the smallest measurable stable unit of memory in the human brain?
On July 25 at the Royal Institution, during a public experiment and demonstration, the group found an answer. Most importantly, the Brain Mind Forum proved such a thing could be defined and measured – a potentially groundbreaking development in the field of neuroscience.
The discovery was made possible through a software program that was developed a few years ago for a research project at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The MIT project’s aim was to measure the maximum capacity of the human brain, but although the study drew some interesting conclusions, the results failed to make waves, and it was eventually all but forgotten. Until Charles Ross, Chair of the Brain Mind Forum, stumbled upon it and recognised the implications the study might have on his own organisation’s research.
“A very good friend of mine said, ‘have you seen this?’ So I looked it up and I thought, my God, this is extraordinary, but we’re looking at it for a completely different purpose,” Ross says. “The actual experiment and demonstration is actually quite straightforward. It’s quite odd. Together with my friends and colleagues we’ve been saying that’s been staring us in the face for a lifetime. Why on earth didn’t we see it?”
The experiment the Brain Mind Forum devised involved showing a gathered group of people a sequence of 50 images, each displayed for a limited period of time (initially two seconds). Aftrewards, the group was asked how many images they thought they might be able to recall. Most participants said between 10 and 20. In reality, the average number recalled was only three. But when the participants were shown the images once again, each one, this time, paired beside a new, previously unseen image, they were instantly (to their surprise) able to point to the photograph they had already seen, because they had, unknowingly, committed each one to memory.
“I think we can reasonably say that proves the brain does make some sort of record, memory, trace of everything we see,” says Ross.”
After establishing the group’s brains had committed the images to memory, the researchers then asked the participants to recall the last 10 images of the 50. Once again, they stumbled on the task and said, no, they couldn’t remember them. Which sheds light on the distinct differences between recognition and recall.
“I think that teaches us a very great deal about what the brain creates as memories and how the brain accesses memories, and I think that’s almost more important than the fact we can prove now that we remember almost everything (…) yet it’s only the beginning of the story.”
The findings may well act as a gateway of sorts allowing for further discoveries about memory and the brain within other areas of vital neurological research. For example, Alzheimer’s, a modern epidemic that still bewilders doctors and scientists. To the point Ross says pharmaceutical companies are pulling back on research funding because it’s just so difficult to measure memory – particularly in patients dwindling into dementia.
“They say it’s so difficult to define what the problem is. If you give someone medication, how do you tell if it’s worked?” says Ross. “We just worked out that we can put a group of people in front of a screen, show them a whole pile of images and prove they’ve remembered them. (…) Now we could do that over time. We could bring someone in at the beginning of the year and then bring them in at the end of the year and see if that varied. We could give them some medication and see if that has any effect. We’ve got the means of measuring.”
Ross, who co-authored the book Biological Systems of the Brain — Unlocking the Secrets of Consciousness, says he is still constantly astonished by how little we know about the human brain, and how many discoveries there are still to be made.
“I have to tell you that I’m feeling slightly, I don’t quite know what the word is, because it all seems so obvious. The guy at MIT, in his write-up, there’s no mention of any of (this). He was solely concerned with trying to see what he was expecting to see. If you’re looking for X, you look for X, and if Y happens to be totally visible next to you, you don’t see it because you aren’t looking for it.”
The diverse work and the not-taking-themselves-too-seriously attitude the Brain Mind Forum fosters has sparked the interest of television producers interested in turning the organisation’s approach to holding public neuroscience debates and experiments into broadcasting gold.
“We’d talk about cognitive neuroscience,” says Ross, “but not all about neurons or finances, because anybody that reads the New Scientist is bored to death reading about them. Everyone knows about those.
“The television people got terribly excited, because it would make very good television, because you know absolutely everybody could participate, whether they’re sitting in the theatre/(studio) or watching their television sets. The research works equally well for them.”
Ross says the proposed television debates would address more relatable issues people face on a daily basis such as, how does this research assist me in helping the kids with their homework? Or how does it help me cope with Aunt Flo’s forgetfulness? Ross says the Brain Mind Forum’s approach to research isn’t always regarded favourably by traditionalists within the world of neuroscience, but a lifetime spent immersed in the evolution of computer science quite adequately prepares a person for the naysaying that often accompanies the breaking of new ground.
“Where we go from here of course, I have no idea. That’s what makes it such fun. Nearly all of us (in the Brain Mind Forum) have been in the computing world from day one. We’re used to everyone telling us that we’ve no idea what we’re doing; it’s all a load of rubbish. Why are you bothering? And they said, you aren’t seriously suggesting the public are going to have computers in their houses are you? And so we’re used to people sort of disagreeing with what we’re doing. We may be totally wrong, but if we got the debate going it would be rather fun.”
