MomBoard: E-ink display for a parent with amnesia

This is one of the few HN articles that have profoundly moved me. Such a beautiful and simple use of technology to make a clear and big improvement in someone's life.

As a side note on his mother remembering that the tablet exists, it sounds like she has amnesia quite like Henry Molaison, a famous case study in neuropathology. He had very specific brain damage that seemingly stopped him forming new memories in the same way as OP's mother, but studies showed that he could remember some things, just not consciously. So for example he would have warm feelings towards people who'd been caring for him despite not remembering them, and would also pick up card games more and more quickly as he played them repeatedly despite saying he didn't remember the game. OP's mother remembering the tablet sounds very similar, particularly when paired with the feeling of being remembered and loved by her children.

> but studies showed that he could remember some things, just not consciously.

This reminds me of muscle memory. I can play pieces on the piano even though I don't actively remember the sheet music of them. My hands just "know" what to do. Funnily enough the moment I start actively thinking about certain passages that ability worsens by a lot.

In psychology memory is divided up into various groupings depending on what people are interested in, e.g. explicit (remembering that Paris is the capital of France) and implicit (remembering how to ride a bike). You can further subdivide explicit into semantic (Paris is the capital of France) and episodic (events that you have experienced), and implicit into procedural (how to ride a bike) and emotional conditioning (memories of feelings). Those categories aren't related to neurophysiology though, which is where I think it gets really interesting because I doubt matches those rather Platonic categories.

Perhaps if we approach technology more from the perspective of elders, and those in need, we are going to produce much better technology application for everyone else.

Yes same for me on guitar. If I try to play something too slowly or if I really start thinking about what I'm doing it all falls apart.

I think that's when you really know a piece, when you can play it incredibly slowly. Paradoxically it's easy to play quickly and just let your fingers play out their muscle memory, playing something really slowly is the challenge.

Further than just muscle memory, every cell in our bodies actually has "memories". That's why heart transplant patients can experience personality changes from the donor:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03069...

Excuse my ignorance in asking, but is this trustworthy? I'm a layperson regarding biology and I was always assumed that organs outside of the brain don't contribute to memory. At the end of the article is the statement "Data not available / No data was used for the research described in the article." Is it possible to see the data?

Reddit is telling me to not accept it at face value - https://old.reddit.com/r/research/comments/1bh2jmv/this_is_h...

Yes it is strange to practice a song one day and then come back to it again the next day. It's like meeting a new person who plays better than I did yesterday, and practice involves finding out more about this new person.

I ran into this when teaching my son to tie his shoes. He now ties his shoes “upside down” from me, because I tied it from my perspective. It’s surprisingly hard to tie shoes in slow motion, it took some practice by paying attention to myself tying shoes quickly.

Now I’m wondering if you can tell a kid is from an “even” or “odd” generation by which way they tie shoes…

We know there are lots of biological mechanisms that retain state at the cellular level to put it in CS-ish terms. A fraction of these mechanisms could plausibly be transmitted outside the cell (e.g., miRNA).

These mechanisms may or may not encode memories as we typically understand them, i.e., the ability to remember an event or fact, but could very plausibly shift personality, preferences, etc.

Yup. Really moved me.

My kid just figured it out, so generation parity can break

Not to mention that most neurotransmitters are produced / collected from the gut. Many seem to be produced / used as signalling molecules by gut microbiota.

It's like UK coins the new monarch face stamped on it faces the opposite direction compared to the previous one.

Passwords also work this way.

There was a study that suggested that the motor cortex can remember even if short term memory conversion was destroyed.

If nothing else, myelinization counts as a form of memory. Strengthened by reuse.

I would love to know if those warm feelings are stronger with individuals who remind you of someone you used to know. “This nurse reminds me of Aunt Sarah, who was nice to me when my dog died.” And so forth.

That study is an interesting suggestion that there might be a physiological basis for the explicit / implicit distinction in terms of memory. Makes sense in many ways that some kind of memory might be embedded in the motor cortex. I wonder if the same is true for emotional memories and midbrain structures, as hinted at in your last paragraph.

I always find those non-obvious connections fascinating, like the disorders where e.g. someone can't say the word "fork" when they're looking at one despite being to describe what you use it for etc, but can immediately name it when they touch it.

Edit: got a link? I'd be interested to read that.

> My hands just "know" what to do. Funnily enough the moment I start actively thinking about certain passages that ability worsens by a lot.

At least playing is mostly an entertainment. Passwords is where the shit happens. I recently lost a 20y old account thanks to this.

I remember a lecturer in undergrad psychology talking about this in the context of walking, and my walking felt really messy for a week, like when you start to become conscious of your breathing.

>> can experience personality changes from the donor

> organs outside of the brain don't contribute to memory

Interesting question. To start, personality typically refers to the totality of a person's behaviors, not the memories they may be able to bring forth. Behavior, esp automatic, is informed by cognitive states informed by the body.

Affect is the general sense of feeling that you experience throughout each day. It is not emotion but a much simpler feeling with two features. The first is how pleasant or unpleasant you feel, which scientists call valence. . . . The second feature of affect is how calm or agitated you feel, which is called arousal. [0]

Simple pleasant and unpleasant feelings come from an ongoing process inside you called interoception. Interoception is your brain’s representation of all sensations from your internal organs and tissues, the hormones in your blood, and your immune system.

...[M]oment-to-moment interoception infuses us with affect, which we then use as evidence about the world. People like to say that seeing is believing, but affective realism demonstrates that believing is seeing.

0. Barrett, Lisa Feldman. How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (p. 72). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

1. ibid (p. 56).

2. ibid (pp. 76-77)

I thought we discussed it here a few years ago but neither algolia nor DDG are giving me hits. I’m probably using the wrong search terms.

I have a relative with anterograde amnesia from a stroke, so that story got passed on to my father when it happened. 8 years ago perhaps?

My dad's left-handed and I'm right-handed, so I got to learn to tie in mirror image. That was helpful.

OK, thanks for trying - will try a bit of searching myself.

My choir director does this with new rehearsal pieces on purpose. We go through them once at the beginning and then let them "percolate" while we practice some other songs. Then we go back to them in "stabilization" before the end of the same rehearsal and they suddenly feel familiar, so we can pay better attention to things like dynamics. It's wild.

I have this weird issue where about a third of people I meet for the first time swear they know me from somewhere, and it's somewhere specific that I know I've never been. My dad and brother have the same issue, and we strongly resemble each other, so I think I just have a congenitally familiar face.

I have no idea if feelings would automatically transfer to me from people with amnesia, but they certainly do for people without it, even though I don't remind them of anyone they know well enough to name.

> but studies showed that he could remember some things, just not consciously

I expect it is very hard to overestimate how incorrect our mental model memory and learning is. If literally everything was forgotten, then you could set up a reverse groundhog day or groundhog hour for someone, just optimize for them having a wonderful day every day. (Would still be horrible for the loved ones to be effectively disconnected from their still-living relative.) Probably there have been movies made about this.

I have no experience with this but I am sure it is nothing, nothing, nothing like that. The article says you wouldn't wish it on your worst enemy.

> Because she cannot remember things, she goes through each day in a state of low-grade anxiety about where her grown children are and whether they are all right. She feels she hasn’t heard from any of us in a long time.

To me this is not a description of someone frozen in time. To me this is a description of some horrific combination of some amount of learning or "remembering" happening, some sense of passage of time, and no episodic memories to draw on to explain any of it.

> If literally everything was forgotten, then you could set up a reverse groundhog day or groundhog hour for someone, just optimize for them having a wonderful day every day. (Would still be horrible for the loved ones to be effectively disconnected from their still-living relative.) Probably there have been movies made about this.

There is a Drew Barrymore movie Fifty first dates. And yes, it is horrible for the relatives.

Absolutely. I was reading this and knew I'd be bookmarking it in case I ever need it.

It's even aesthetically pleasing! What mom wouldn't find this charming?

It's exactly the same when solving Rubik's Cubes.

At the start it's all about carrying around notes full of picking the relevant condition depending on the current permutation/state of the cube then following the step by step algorithms on which sequence of steps to perform for that condition.

Then you'll naturally realise that certain conditions happen a lot more than others and you'll start to remember the sequence of letters for each series of steps to perform.

Over time you'll forget the letters and your fingers will just know the sequence to perform when you perceive that condition, kind of like typing a password without thinking about it.

Eventually you'll be able to fit each condition and algorithm into your muscle memory and completely forget the series of letters that you used to memorise.

Now I can barely explain how to solve a rubik's cube in-person. I just do it.

2002 I think is a little earlier than the research I was thinking of but that’s essentially the same conclusion.

Reminds me of https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/grannyknot.htm

I wonder if what you describe is kind of the reason for this.

Yep. I couldn’t write down my work one without a keyboard.

They often teach it in schools nowadays because busy parents will often not teach their children.

I taught it by standing (kneeling) behind, so my left was my son’s left. Didn’t occur it could be done the other way.

However my wife, who’s 3 weeks younger than me, ties her shoes in a completely different way to me, which I believe is a “bunny ears” method.

Give the large variety of ways to tie shoes, there’s no way you could infer anything other than the way they are doing it now.

Yes. This is the big reason why muscle memory is the worst possible memory for music. The slightest glitch leaves you completely lost if you don't have conscious knowledge of where to go next.

I remember seeing a docmentary about this. There was a man who received a transplant arm from someone who died and started to exhibit the donor's manners and ended up planning an elaborate scheme to get revenge on the donor's twin brother.

You'll also notice this if you try to significantly slow down performing an algorithm, or try to solve a digital Rubik's cube where you have to click and drag to rotate sides.

This Ian guy's shoe-tying tip you've linked is one of the most universally useful life-improving pieces of knowledge I have, which I try to evangelize to anyone I know who will listen. The only facts whose impact comes close are mostly household tips:

- cheap liquid dishwasher detergent including in the prewash cup instead of costly pods that deprive the prewash cycle of soap

- Put bleach in the washer's bleach dispenser and use hot water for any light sheets, no, it doesn't hurt prints or fade light colors

- cook anything you can fit in the air fryer to decrease total time ~70% vs an oven

> cook anything you can fit in the air fryer

Why would I want to cook my milkshake?

There actually is a right way and wrong way to tie your shoes.

Even with the bunny ear method right bunny ear over left is wrong, it comes undone much easier than left bunny ear over right.

If you're like me there's a Google rabbit hole to disappear into for 1/2 hour, completely forget about, and carry on doing it completely wrong.