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Cog sci

Place cells etc.

One’s cognition is built in part by interaction between the hippocampus and the medial entorhinal cortex (MEC). The MEC has grid cells, which in a 2d space, correspond to a grid of neurons that fire in patterns in reference to a grid that maps out one’s own internal coordinate system. The MEC is one’s internal compass. The MEC and its grid cells allow for one to keep track of their position in space in the absence of external cues—more on dead reckoning to come.

The MEC provides spatial phase and metric information (the “where” in abstract coordinates). The hippocampus binds this with sensory, emotional, and temporal information (the “what” and “when”). The hippocampus has place cells that do this semantic encoding of the grid cells. The MEC uses these to create simulations and predict future events that help us survive. This memory consolidation occurs during both sleep and awake states. Awake states feature greater neuromodulators that focus on external cues.

Within the MEC, there is a complex adaptive cognition that occurs in regards to cognitive function and the pattern of neuronal firings within the grid cells. During instability, times of newness, exploration, or surprise, the grid cells firing form a spontaneous emergent hexagonal pattern in order to stabilize. During stability, there is a coherence in pattern as the mind moves.

Dead reckoning is one’s ability through the MEC to maintain spatial and temporal orientation in the absence of external cues. Stability is what is active during dead reckoning—one does not need external cues in order to know one’s orientation in time and space. Instability may occur if external cues cause instability in orientation. A high level of cognitive function occurs with a push and pull of these times of stability and instability. Dead reckoning allows for us to understand ourselves in time and space without external cues.

Generally what is thought of as an external cue that largely informs our understanding of time and space is from visual cues. A walk to school or work is largely filled with place fields that are predictable and unmoving. Our place field is largely made up of straight lines that don’t seem to change. This includes buildings, paths, roads, lights, phones, and other man made objects. Our place fields are filled with things that are predictable and unmoving. If this is the case, then we are frequently in stable states.

If we were to alter our external cues to create frequent place fields that are unpredictable and moving, would that make us more likely to experience unstable states thus allowing us to have a cognition that inches closer to the edge of chaos (adaptive and intelligent cognition)? Would such an alteration make us more likely to be more creative, compassionate, and open to new experiences? What would such an alteration look like?

Or maybe, what would such an alteration sound like?

Audition takes up space and time, but it is an external cue that we have a different relationship with and has different functioning than other senses. We put audition as subordinate to how we orient ourselves in space and time. Visual stimulus is our dominant point of reference. Visual stimulus is our dominant world view. Visual stimulus is often unmoving and predictable in man made places.

Sound can have straight lines, so to speak in terms of pitch, amplitude, rhythm, timbre and other forms of predictability and movement. Most coffee shops sound the same. Most street corners sound the same. Often we have very similar conversations at work school—think Charlie Brown wa wa wah.

More importantly, sound is more ephemeral than visual cues. Experience is ephemeral and phenomenal, but hard to differentiate from one second to the next. Our experience is often lost in the stream of memory. Memory cues are some of the few ways we are able to access our memory, think revisiting a childhood home, a hat from a party, songs, a photo, a journal entry, a letter, etc.

The hippocampus doesn’t care what kind of space it’s mapping—only that there’s a coherent structure of relationships. Sound can define that structure.

What if we made auditory stimuli for people in spaces that were moving and unpredictable, and yet held great semantic importance to the space it is inhabiting? It seems this would make people’s grid cells firing cause more adaptive and intelligent cognition. How could this sound structure alter how that space is inhabited in the future? How could this sound structure alter how that space’s inhabitants understand the past? How could this sound structure alter how people move through space?

The sound we have in mind is an aggregation of oral tradition in the forms of audio and text that may be compiled to be tied down to the space on earth that they occurred. Instead of walking to school/work/life with the predictable and unmoving buildings and with the predictable bustling of the day/predictable music in headphones, one would have an auditory history of the grounds that they walk on that would be moving and unpredictable and yet tied down to a specific point in space.

The auditory history structure would be built by those who had walked and made noise in the same point in space. The auditory future structure would be built by those that walk and make noise now in the same point in space—users input their now in order to preserve it for the future, and to gain access to the past. The past would reverb and fill the void in sound.

People today are consumed by commercial existence and little connection with their history, communities, or their land. This could help them know their history, know their communities, and know their land. This could help them build their future, communities, and land better.

We envision this application to have similar effects to how maps change the way we understand ourselves in space—this application will try to change how we understand ourselves in time.

References

1. Burak, Y., & Fiete, I. R. Accurate Path Integration in Continuous Attractor Network Models of Grid Cells. Center for Brain Science, Harvard University, Cambridge.
2. Grossberg, S. A Neural Model of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Hippocampal Theta Rhythms: Anatomy, Neurophysiology, and Function.
3. Tolman, E. C. Cognitive Maps in Rats and Men.
4. Drieu, C., & Zugaro, M. Hippocampal Sequences During Exploration: Mechanisms and Functions.
5. Aronov, D., Nevers, R., & Tank, D. W. Mapping of a non-spatial dimension by the hippocampal–entorhinal circuit.
6. Kang, L., & DeWeese, M. R. Replay as wavefronts and theta sequences as bump oscillations in a grid cell attractor network.

Art of memory etc.

The art of memory is an ancient and ongoing practice originating in the Greek with Simonides all the way through Aristotle, Cicero, Aquinas, Petrarch, and more who put forth mnemonic practices to enhance one’s life and memory. We’d like to think that Mementōte is a continuation of such practice. These fundamental principles were that humans have a distinct ability to remember things when associating them with a place, their order in appearance, augmenting how they remember these through augmented associations, and through meditating on these memories that they wish to have in clear focus in the future. Much of this pertain with memory practices that actually left the memory, for example in remembering a speech, left the association of words around an imagined memorable palace. In many other cultures and traditions held similar utilization of storytelling and narrative history to be told and heard in this place based manner.

Spatial media interactions and the better ability to compute / models and more consideration towards media in place.