SciShow Tangents - Memory

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the lightly competitive science knowledge showcase. I'm your host, Hank Green, and joining me this week, as always, is science expert, Deboki Chakravarti. Oh, me. I was not ready for my debut. Yes, it's me. You know what the word always means. And our resident everyman, Sam Schultz. Hello. So, Deboki is here. Deboki's always helping out behind the scenes, making things work, but Deboki is also a podcast host in her own right with a podcast called Tiny Things. Tiny Matters. Frick. Frick.

Starting point is 00:00:49 I actually had this conversation with someone else where they also thought it was called Tiny Things and they were like looking it up and they were like, I can't find it. I can't find it. So now I feel like we might need to change the name to Tiny Things. Or you just have to buy that website too or whatever.

Starting point is 00:01:02 Get your SEO going. TinyThings.com. I wonder what it is. What if they sell tiny things? It's not available. It'd be cool if it was tiny things though. It's good to have some small stuff around. That way you can leave it in places at the grocery store and people find it.

Starting point is 00:01:19 What's your phone number in it or your address? Or they just get to keep it? No, just find a tiny thing. There also is not a tiny things podcast. There are small things. That's amazing. Little things. But no tiny things.

Starting point is 00:01:34 Yeah. People just haven't gotten small enough yet. They're just not ready for that next step. No. To go from small to little to tiny. Yeah. I care about small things. And I care about little things and I care about little things.

Starting point is 00:01:46 I can't really get on board with tiny things. As far as matters go, we're there. But things, not quite. I think if anybody can sell the world on tiny things, it's Debuki Chakravarti. That's what I'm here for. That's right. But that's not what we're talking about today. Can I ask a question?

Starting point is 00:02:02 Oh, yeah, sure. What's cold fusion? What's's happening it's not cold fusion it's just fusion um so fusion we've been able to do for for a while cold fusion is specifically the idea that you could do fusion without heating stuff up a lot which sounded nice but was a fraud it turned out oh shoot okay and what what we've got going on at the national ignition facility is beyond just fusion so like you can do fusion in a lot of different ways but you have to dump in a lot more energy than you're going to get out what would they have achieved at the national ignition facility is that they uh they dump a lot of energy into this pellet of fusion fuel which is

Starting point is 00:02:39 just like isotopes of hydrogen uh and that made fusion happen and that resulted in more energy being released than was put into the pellet and that's never been done before and it's a very big deal you know as far as like commercializing that technology turning it into something that would be valuable to uh to like generate electricity with not what this is designed for um but it is definitely proof that it can be done and there are a lot of experiments going on both in the private sector and uh government work to get to get closer to having this more more power coming out of fusion reactions than going in and it it seems like that's going to be stories that we're going to be hearing a lot of in the next 10 years. It seems like we're finally at a place where we've got the materials, the software, the understanding sort of all lining up that maybe someday before I die, we'll actually have commercial fusion power.

Starting point is 00:03:42 Okay. So it's going to only be as soon as it like the soonest it could be is right before you die. It's not going to be imminent. It's not imminent. It's not within 10 years, but it might, it might be within 20, which is the first time I've ever felt like that could be a thing in my life. So Oren's first car is going to be a fusion car.

Starting point is 00:04:02 I very much doubt, though, who knows that they would be portable yeah what would that look like like is there just a fusion plant that's delivering power is it something that can be made into like a battery i don't i don't know i don't know definitely in the beginning it's going to be heating up power to make steam well i guess not definitely but very likely it's going to be heating up power to make steam in a giant power plant that's centralized because it is very complex and so you wouldn't want to have going to be heating up power to make steam in a giant power plant that's centralized because it is very complex. And so you wouldn't want to have lots of them. You would want to make as few as possible.

Starting point is 00:04:30 But who knows? I understand completely now. We're going to change the theme at the last minute now for a fusion episode. Fusion or whatever. So that's not the topic of today's episode. Every week here on SciShow Tangents we get together to try to one-up a maze and delight each other with science facts while also trying to stay on topic. If you notice my voice sounding weird, I kind of do, because I've made so many SciShows today.

Starting point is 00:04:58 Feeling rough. But our panelists are playing for Glory and also for Hank Bucks, which I'll be awarding as we play. At the end of the episode, we're going to have a winner. But before we get to that, we're going to introduce this week's topic with the traditional science poem. This week, it's from Deboki. It's been four months since I've seen my cat. I wonder if he still knows who I am and that I left and that I like to pet his nose. The signals running from his brain have so much work to do.

Starting point is 00:05:27 They help him find the best place to sleep and keep track of time for food. But his head is full of so many fears. I wonder if there's space for neurons that remember me once he sees my face. The most famous song about memory was sung on stage by a cat. Surely that must count for something. There's nothing more scientific than that. In a week, I guess I'll know whether I'm in his memory or perhaps he'll scoff and turn his back because he prefers my parents to me. Oh, brutal.

Starting point is 00:06:02 Deboki's been out of town for a long time. Yeah. He's been out of the country for a long time. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I mean by town. America town. Just one giant town. You don't think Andrew Lloyd Webber did his research before he made cats?

Starting point is 00:06:18 He looked up cat neurons. He's like, that's what this song is about. He did a bunch of primary research. He was like, there's not enough known here. I'm Andrew Lloyd Webber. I can fund anything. His ultimate finding was a cat is not a dog. That was his thesis at the end of all of it.

Starting point is 00:06:35 But the topic for the day isn't cats or cats. It's memory. Devoki, what is memory? That's a great question there's not a really good like specific biological definition that we have for memory uh it's very broadly a biochemical way of storing information and then using it later on um but like that's also kind of a complicated way to define memory because you know there are things like bacteria and plants who like, they,

Starting point is 00:07:07 they seem to be able to remember certain kinds of things like, you know, environmental stresses that help them respond and adapt to those, those stresses, but like they're not doing it the way that we do it. So like, how do we, how do we conceive of memory actually to shamelessly,

Starting point is 00:07:24 you know, self-promote on tiny matters. We did an episode about memory. And the main, the thing that I took away from that episode is that memory is a process. Like we like to think of memory as a thing, but really it's more of a process. And so we can think about that, like on the neurological level, there are actual signals. Like a lot of it is about the strength of signals between our neurons. And that's a lot of what defines memory, at least as we understand it right now. You can also think of it in the process, in vertebrates at least. There are three main steps that we know of to form a memory. There's first like the actual experience that you have in the world, like you touch something, you hear something, and then you have a short-term memory

Starting point is 00:08:05 from that, which just helps you do things in response to that initial thing that you've sensed. And then there's a long-term memory that might build from there, and that actually gets encoded in your neurons and stored so that you can bring it back later on. As a person who makes content and that stays on the internet forever, there is nothing quite so uncanny as watching a YouTube video you do not remember making. Uh-huh. Where I'm just like, oof. Yeah. I did that?

Starting point is 00:08:37 I mean, I was there, clearly. I was in the room when that was made, and yet none of that. None of that's in there. It's disturbing to have to scroll to the end credits and be like, yeah, I guess I did. I animated that one. I guess that was me. Couldn't have guessed that. So what's like computer memory?

Starting point is 00:08:56 A non-biological way to store information. It's the same thing. Just change that one word. Okay. Well, yeah. I mean, like the way that Deboki described it was very intentionally to like allow for the fact that plants and bugs can kind of remember stuff. And bacteria can kind of remember stuff. And in that case, yeah, computers can also remember stuff.

Starting point is 00:09:14 Through the programming. And the ones and the zeros. Yeah. So what is memory? Where did it come from? from that word not the biological activity well luckily this part is a lot easier to to to figure out um it's one of those words that we've had for a while because people have needed to remember things for a while so it comes from the Latin memoria, which means memory, remembrance, faculty of remembering. And so there have been similar words in English and French, memoria, memoir, memoir, and so on. Yeah. So it's a much more straightforward word than it is

Starting point is 00:10:00 a concept. Those Latin guys, they were just words right off the dome they had a word for everything i mean there was this is the thing there there were words before any words that they had a bunch of stuff off the dome it's because people earlier than that had words they were just writing and then they were like oh i need a word for this okay it's a great word though and there's so there's a bunch of words that come from that same root. One of the ones that I like the most is mourn, which is from the same root as remember, which makes sense. And that brings us to the beginning of the part where you can earn points. It's a quiz portion of our show.

Starting point is 00:10:45 This week, we're going to be doing a truth or fail, one that wasn't written by DeVoe. Sarah wrote this one. Hey, we're not supposed to admit that, okay? Thank you, right, all of them. I think we're slowly admitting it. I think that we're, I think it, I would hate to be taking credit for all of this.

Starting point is 00:11:01 At some point, I'm going to just ask for a title change. I'm going to be the game master. Oh oh that's a good one i like that today that episode came out where we played all the games that you were on and some people in the comments were like deboki's the secret puppet master of sideshow tangents yeah yeah it's true so one of the uh the most weirdly intense forms of memory is imprinting which is basically when a young animal sees or hears something and then recognizes and prefers that thing. Usually it's one of their parents who gives them food and teaches them how to survive. So here are three stories about visual imprinting in baby birds, but two of them are fake and only one of them is real. And you have to figure out which one is the real one. So is it? Fact number one, Peking ducks generally imprint on whatever they

Starting point is 00:11:50 first see as their mother and they follow her around. But a 2016 study found that each eye stored visual memory in a different part of the brain and those parts can't quickly communicate with each other. So if they only imprinted on their mom with their left eye, and then that eye was covered, they wouldn't be able to use the right eye to remember or recognize her. But it might not be that fact. It might be fact number two. In 1982, there were an estimated 24 wild California condors. So researchers stepped in to help breed and raise the chicks. So to make sure the condor chicks didn't imprint on humans, they crafted wrinkly, lifelike

Starting point is 00:12:30 puppets of condor heads that covered their arms and fed and raised the hatchlings. But that backfired when it was time to leave the nest. The researchers had to stage elaborate fake funerals to get the chicks to leave their puppet parents behind and fly off on their own. Oh my God. But that might be a lie. It might be. Fact number three. The last remaining Siberian cranes breed in northeastern Siberia,

Starting point is 00:12:56 and they spend their winters near Poyang Lake in southeastern China. When they hatch as chicks, they imprint on one of their parents to learn how to survive. But right before their first winter, they undergo adolescent imprinting, where they follow different leaders that break from the flock into subgroups and glide and rest together along their 5,000 to 6,000 kilometer journey. We don't understand how this memory reboot and reprioritization works, but the clock is ticking to learn. So it might be fact number one, Peking ducks form different memories with different eyes. Fact number two, California

Starting point is 00:13:31 condor researchers had to stage elaborate puppet funerals. Or fact number three, Siberian cranes go through adolescent imprinting before they migrate. I just can't think that the two different eyes thing, that they would last very long. That seems like a bad idea. Seems like a bad, bad design. Well, there is no designing is what we always say and know. But it also seems like it would be hard to survive. Yeah, that seems stupid even for a dog.

Starting point is 00:14:01 Well, I mean, look, you don't usually have to have this problem because you're usually seeing mom with both eyes what if you're laying down and then you got your head in a pillow yeah the first time you ever wake up pillow i think that would be tough yeah for the people i'm not i'm not buying it nice try sari i feel like i mean i feel like i've heard of people needing to do, like, you know, they're like the pandas, like the keepers who wear the panda suits for the panda babies. I don't know if that's about imprinting or just not making them deal with humans. I don't know about this. Deal with people.

Starting point is 00:14:40 Yeah. Oh, you've never seen a human in a panda suit? No. I mean, I have, but not to do not in that context yeah maybe for other reasons now i hope i'm not making this up but that sounds like that sounds real right that sounds like something that a bird would be like, that a bird would need to see. Birds are very, they're very particular.

Starting point is 00:15:13 Yeah, I don't want to leave my parents behind. But the last one's kind of boring. So the last one makes me think it's real just because it's a little bit boring, but it's like they meet like a cool new dad. Is that basically what's happening? They get a cool new dad. Is that basically what's happening? They get a cool new dad, yeah. Their stepdad. They're like, I've imprinted on my parent. And then it's like, not anymore,

Starting point is 00:15:34 which is kind of how we work. Yeah, exactly. Who did you imprint on when you were a teenager? The Strokes, the band, the entire band, the Strokes. That's why I started smoking and why I still wear a um why i still wear a jean jacket i never smoked mom and dad that's not true i made that part well i can confirm that sam never smokes now at least

Starting point is 00:15:56 uh deboki who did you imprint on as a team probably av Avril Lavigne. Did you ever wear a tie over a t-shirt? I almost definitely wore a tie over a collar shirt, but not a t-shirt. Okay. That'd be, that's, that's a little rough. I would, I mean, imagining teenage Deboki in a tie and a t-shirt is hilarious. It was pretty cool. It was very cool. I definitely had worse looks, so that would be better than a lot of what I had going on. I think I'm going to go with that one, though. I have a good feeling about the Siberian crane stepdad situation. Yeah, I was going to say that one, but now I want to spread it out, so I'm going to go with the condor funerals, because if it's not going to be the Siberian cranes, and I just can't think it's the ducks, I want to imagine condor funerals because like if it's not going to be the siberian cranes and i just can't think it's the ducks i want to imagine condor funerals well since you're both in well i'll tell you about the structure the corpus callosum which placental mammals have it helps integrate visual sensory

Starting point is 00:16:57 information and memory from both eyes in both brain hemispheres but all other vertebrates aside from placental mammals including birds have more divided brains what so at least for a little while there are two eyes and two separate visual memory banks competing for which is the true information that's stupid and the the way to figure this out to really describe describe how this works, is from an experiment from 2016. They had ducklings imprint on a red mother duck decoy with their left eye, and they had their right eye covered with a little eye patch. No. Which Sari has written in the notes, I assume this was very cute.

Starting point is 00:17:42 which Sari has written in the notes, I assume this was very cute. Around three hours later, they took all the ducklings and gave them a choice between a red or a blue mom. If their left eye or both eyes were left uncovered during this choice, they preferred to follow the red decoy

Starting point is 00:17:58 because they had imprinted on their red mom and could access that memory. But if their left eye was covered, then they could only see through their right eye and they couldn't access the imprinted on their red mom and could access that memory. But if their left eye was covered, then they could only see through their right eye, and they couldn't access the imprinted memory, and they just, like, picked one or the other. They picked them at random. So, that's real, and

Starting point is 00:18:14 they really did that. And the ducks turned out fine. They turned, they grew up okay? Yeah. You promise that they grew up okay? I read a whole history of their whole lives, and it was really lovely from start to finish. They had no bad days. Oh, okay. Good. That's fascinating because I feel like when I've been looking at animal memory experiments, they're all food related. And I was just thinking about like, that must just be how we test out memories. But no, it can get so much worse.

Starting point is 00:18:45 You forgot your mother. that must just be how we test out memories, but no, it can get so much worse. Like we can be, we can be, you forgot your mother. They tested a bunch of different conditions and they, all of these went into the same results. The next weirdest one was they had duck legs imprint on a red mother duck decoy with one eye and a blue decoy with the other. And those memories, they seemed to neutralize each other so they uh they didn't imprint on anyone and had to re-imprint after

Starting point is 00:19:12 they took their their eyes their eye patches off bonkers it's totally bonkers as for the other two facts it is true that they had puppets that looked like the heads and necks of adult birds, and they used it to feed hatchlings. And a 2007 study found that condors fed by real condor parents tended, they learned to be more aggressive than the ones that were reared by puppets. That doesn't mean, that doesn't seem to affect their survival rate or they're willing to like establish their own lives in the wild. So that's great news, but it is funny that they were able to see a difference. establish their own lives in the wild. So that's great news, but it is funny that they were able to see a difference. And captive breeding and reintroduction programs have helped boost the total population of California condors to over 500. It's a mix of captive and wild birds. So that's great news. And you are right, Deboki, that they dress up like pandas and like condors just so that they don't like imprint. Specifically, they don't get as comfortable around humans,

Starting point is 00:20:06 I think is the main thing that you really don't want them to do. But these cranes in Siberia, they do migrate and they are critically endangered, but I think we've ever heard of a bird imprinting more than once. It's pretty much an early development memory learning thing. And it's physically like it's a term for that. So you kind of would have to more loosely define the term in order for this to be a thing. And it's physically like it's a term for that. So you kind of would have to more loosely define the term in order for this to be a thing.

Starting point is 00:20:29 Devious, devious lies. Yeah. Devious lies. So headed into the break with a score of zero to zero. It's an even playing field. We'll see you when we get back. oh welcome back everybody it's time for the fact off our panelists have brought in science facts to present to me in an attempt to blow my mind.

Starting point is 00:21:06 And after they have presented their facts, I will judge them. I will award them any way I see fit. But to decide who goes first, we're going to do a little trivia question here. So a particularly fun memory study in non-human animals was conducted by a behavioral scientist named John W. Pilly with his border collie. So he used his own border collie, whose name was Chaser. She's very cute and very good, scientifically speaking. Starting on June 28th, 2004,

Starting point is 00:21:33 Pilly gathered a ton of different toys that varied in size, shape, color, material, and so on. And he gave each toy a unique one or two word proper name, like tennis, lion, or Santa Claus. And he wrote those names with permanent marker so that all trainers who worked with Chaser could reinforce the same words. After three years of daily learning and practice,

Starting point is 00:21:57 how many unique objects could Chaser remember and fetch? We did a science show kids about this and I think it was something huge, but we did it like seven years ago. So I don't remember. My first number that popped into my brain was 10,000. That seems crazy. I don't even know if I know 10,000 different things,

Starting point is 00:22:21 but that's what I'm going with. Sam's going to go for 10 000 individual unique doggy toys the the first number that popped into my brain was 284 and i don't know why but i'm gonna go with that well 1022 is closer to 284 than it is to 10,000. Shoot. Well, I had to go with my gut. It's funny because I feel like in spirit, Sam was actually more correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like orders of magnitude. It's like much closer, but.

Starting point is 00:22:57 It was 1,000 in dog numbers, you know? So that means Nabuki gets to decide who goes first. I'll go first. So when we get old, we tend to get worse at remembering things. And that's in part because our hippocampus starts to deteriorate. And that's probably a thing that many animals have to deal with as they age, except for the cuttlefish. Cuttlefish, it turns out, have very good memories even as they get old. So old in cuttlefish terms is about two years old. They're cephalopods and we know that they have large brains for their size, so they're pretty smart. And they also have a vertical lobe where

Starting point is 00:23:37 much of their learning and memory seems to take place and it doesn't seem to deteriorate until the last two to three days of their life so scientists wanted to put their memory to the test using food they trained the cuttlefish to approach specific spots in their tank marked with black and white flags and the cuttlefish would get fed one of two things depending on which flag it swam to either they got a king prawn or they got what they consider more appetizing, which is a live grass shrimp. The location of these flags would change each day of the experiment. So they would have to like basically kind of repeat this experiment each day to actually put their

Starting point is 00:24:16 memory to the test. And so the way that they would actually test this out is there was a morning feeding where the cuttlefish could see the flags and randomly approach one of them, at which point they would find out which flag was associated with each prey. And they could then choose between them and pick out if they want the grass shrimp or whatever. And so they could pick out which food they'd get. An hour later, there was a second feeding, but at this one, they would only be fed the king prawn, and they would only get it if they swam to the correct king prawn flag. And then three hours later, there was a third feeding where they could get either the king prawn or the live shrimp, depending on which flag they swam to. So researchers based their assessment of the cuttlefish's memory on how well they were able to correctly guess the king prawn in the second feeding and the live shrimp in the third.

Starting point is 00:25:04 the king prawn in the second feeding and the live shrimp in the third. Basically, over the course of all of these feedings and all of this complicated flagging and picking out food, the cuttlefish would need to remember what they had eaten in the morning, where they'd eaten it, and how long it had been since they'd eaten it, which is a lot of stuff to keep track of and to remember. Yeah. Like even describing the experiment. I'd be like, I don't remember where i got the beans yeah so it's a lot to remember like even describing the experiment i was like trying

Starting point is 00:25:33 to remember the details like i was struggling and i'm thinking about these cuttlefish who are like doing this day in day out and what was wild is the researchers found that there was no significant difference between the 22 to 24 month old cuttlefish. So that's their old cuttlefish and their 10 to 12 month old cuttlefish who are younger ones in remembering all this, which means they're probably pretty good at remembering things. They're better than us, like even in their old age. And there is a caveat that they didn't test out the cuttlefish memory in those last few days of life where their brain is starting to deteriorate. So that might be where they start to lose their memories. And the researcher suggested that this good memory might be related to the fact that cuttlefish mate towards the end of their life.

Starting point is 00:26:15 So maybe this is part of how they remember the who, the when, the where of all of their mating choices. They might still need to have some memory to be to know that they're making good good choices they gotta make the good decisions up to the last moment yeah yeah and then and then they do it and then they're like i'm gonna die now thank you to the cuttlefish i love that they're discerning enough to know the difference between those two different shrimps the king prawn looks much tastier than a live grass shrimp to me, but I guess I'm not a cuttlefish. Yeah, but we're not cuttlefish. We don't have a discerning palate. You know, the researchers didn't need to figure that out. Like, that's something that they've known. They are perfectly aware of cuttlefish preferences for various crustaceans.

Starting point is 00:27:00 Sam, what do you got? A stereotypical boomer thing to say is that kids these days experience life through their phones, taking pictures and recording things instead of engaging with their lives and experiencing things firsthand. Remembering things because you live them and not just because you have a picture of them. And geez, grandpa, you might say, what is a picture if not a memory frozen in time perfectly? How does taking pictures of something mean I'm not engaging with that thing? How does taking pictures of something mean I'm not engaging with that thing? Well, it hurts to say, but in this instance, boomers might be right.

Starting point is 00:27:31 And science, unfortunately, seems to have their back. So in 2021, some findings were published. Unacceptable science. Get on board. I can't believe I'm about to argue that science is wrong. In 2021, some findings were published of a series of experiments where people walked around an art museum and looked at all the art. They were given a camera and told to just look at some of the pieces and told to take pictures of other pieces. Then 20 minutes after they were done looking around, they were given a test asking them about the physical elements of the work that they looked at, as well as questions about the meaning and the themes of the work.

Starting point is 00:28:00 And then they were given the same test two days later, and both times they weren't allowed to look at their photos. They just had to remember all that stuff and what they found was that people's memories of pieces of art that they took pictures of were way worse than the pieces that they just looked at and this experiment was conducted three times with some slight variation between 2013 and 2021 and those studies showed the same result even versions of the experiment where there were limitations in place with the goal of making people more thoughtful about what pictures they took, like limiting the number of pictures they were allowed to take, had similar results. The researchers suggested that the act of thinking about taking a photo,

Starting point is 00:28:36 like figuring out the composition and getting everything just right, becomes the thing that your brain remembers instead of the thing that you're taking a picture of, which kind of makes sense why you don't remember anything from SciShows that you do, because you're thinking about like, yeah. Making a video. And if you assume that people are taking pictures mostly of things that they want to remember, that seems bad. And I know that anecdotally, when I go to museums, I take a lot of pictures of art that I like or want to copy somehow. And I both never look at those pictures again. And I couldn't tell you what any of the stuff I took pictures of was. So the advice that the researchers also give is to think about if you're ever actually going to look at the picture you take before you take it and to

Starting point is 00:29:13 just enjoy and soak in the moment if you don't think that you will. But looking at pictures later does help retain memories better. So it's very complicated, but basically you just got to be thoughtful before you do it. So the next time your parent or old relative scoffs and rolls her eyes, when you take pictures and videos of everything, say, okay, boomer, perhaps you are correct. Like, I want to do this from now on when my parents, I want to say, okay, boomer, you're right. Which it's impossible. No, that sounded very, that sounded very aggressive.

Starting point is 00:29:51 It's unnatural and aggressive. Yeah. They're going to think you're messing with them. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. It sounds to me though, like I can still take pictures of stuff,

Starting point is 00:30:01 especially if I'm going to look at the pictures, which I, yes, mostly what I don't want is to forget my, like to lose memories of my child. Yeah. Cause I take a lot of pictures of my child, but I look at those pictures.

Starting point is 00:30:12 Yeah. Kind of like a embarrassing amount. Like, it's like, like, are you obsessed with this kid or something? What's up, Hank?

Starting point is 00:30:20 Why do you look at this kid? But he's just so like, look, he's so freaking cute. So maybe if it's like a sunset, you know,'s not gonna look as good as a sunset so maybe you should just be like yeah i'll just look at the sunset instead but i'm gonna put it i'm gonna put it on instagram though it's all that's a good point i remember it i just want to create content sunset it's still pretty good usually i guess so i do appreciate it like i feel like in the moment

Starting point is 00:30:45 i hate taking food pictures like when i'm out eating i feel so self-conscious about taking pictures but when i'm traveling especially i like it's actually super helpful for looking back and remembering like oh right yeah i had this meal that was this was a good meal one of the i did my once when i we went to england i filmed i said this is our this meal i did it for every single meal we were in and then I edited them all together into a thing and even now I can go back and watch that video and be like that trip. Oh yeah.

Starting point is 00:31:11 That was sort of like the outline of the trip. All the different places we were encapsulated in various pizzas and pastas. Look guys, I didn't do this research, okay? I think I'm going to go with i'm sorry sam with deboki just because i feel like the scientists worked harder on that experience i don't know they like creating the methodology for how to confuse a cuttlefish is better than creating a methodology for how to get people to take pictures

Starting point is 00:31:46 or not take pictures in a museum. Both had fascinating, fascinating results. And that means, Deboki, since there were no points in the first round, that you are the winner! Congratulations, Deboki. And we're going to move on to it's the time to ask

Starting point is 00:32:02 the science couch, where we've got a listener question for our virtual couch of finely honed scientific minds sustice katie asks why do we sometimes easily remember dumb things like gum commercial jingles and have difficulty remembering meaningful info i know that they're like there are things about music that makes it easier to remember and it's it's almost like a like i'm fairly certain just from examining my own the own the functioning of my own brain it's it's interesting i can i can sing a song and listen to a podcast no problem but i cannot talk and

Starting point is 00:32:39 listen to a podcast and if the podcast starts playing music, then I can't sing anymore. Is this something you do a lot? Embarrassingly, yes. When I'm singing to my son, the Night Night Songs. You have to listen to it? Which is about a 10 to 15 minute process. And I'm like, I can listen to a podcast right now. You've like automated the Night Night Song, basically.

Starting point is 00:33:04 So don't let him know that don't listen to this orin we'll put a warning at the top of the episode orin not this one never never but i just yes i like i got a lot of audio i love listening to an audio book uh well that is maybe one of the things that's involved um so they're I mean, like, who knows? But also there's like two general things that maybe are involved with this. So one is kind of the music aspect. There's what we call earworms, but the technical term is involuntary music imagery, INMI. And there's something that people have been studying for a while because

Starting point is 00:33:45 they're like basically common relatively common involuntary thoughts and like they've been around for a while like or like people have been trying to figure them out um for a while because yeah they're weird uh apparently the term earworm entered the english language around the 1970s from the german word or worm or or I don't know how to say German, but or worm. But it's also been called the Piper's maggot in older texts, which I think is a very scary. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:34:15 And so they're, they're pretty common. There was a 2012 study where 12,000 Finnish internet users were asked to fill out a survey and 89% of them reported experiencing earworms at least once a week. So they're pretty common and also they might make you annoyed. They might be something you hear a lot, so they might trigger some kind of emotional response in you. And that's actually related to the other reason then that these kinds of things might like a jingle might stand out to you, which is really kind of the factors that relate to why you might remember something more, especially if you have like a strong emotional reaction to

Starting point is 00:34:54 something or something super repetitive. So there are two types of memory. There's an explicit slash declarative long-term memory where like, that's something that you're trying to actually recall something like it might be your friend's birthday or something that like happened recently, but there's also implicit or non-declarative long-term memories, memories where you're remembering something unconsciously, like maybe because something was playing in the background. Um, or like if you're an animal, like there's a flag that's being waved in front of you, you're a cuttlefish, you see an animal, like there's a flag that's being waved in front of you, you're a cuttlefish, you see a flag, like that's your cue. Like those are different ways

Starting point is 00:35:30 that we might recall memory. And so a lot of our thoughts and memories are actually that involuntary and implicit kind. And we don't necessarily understand much behind that, behind why or how this type of memory recall works. But there's definitely a factor of like strong emotion. So especially for something like a commercial jingle where advertisers are trying to make something that you're going to listen to and that you're going to pay attention to, like, you know, they're going to have branding involved.

Starting point is 00:35:57 They're going to try to invoke a specific memory. So that's probably a big part of why you're going to recall it. And then also it's probably going to be repeated a lot. And so that's going to be something that will factor into just the likelihood that you're going to recall something. So those are the big factors, the music and the repetitiveness and the emotional aspect. So I just need a professional jingle maker to just write songs about my friend's birthdays. Yeah, basically. Well, if you want to ask the Science Couch your question,

Starting point is 00:36:31 you can follow us on Twitter at SciShow Tangents, where we'll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes every week. Or you can join the SciShow Tangents Patreon and ask us on our Discord. Thank you to at CrystalR99, James on Discord, and everybody else who asked us your questions for this episode. Deboki, thank you. Where can I go get Tiny Matters? Anywhere you listen to podcasts, look for Tiny Matters.

Starting point is 00:36:52 Not tiny things. Tiny Matters. And you can also find me on Twitter at Okidoki underscore Boki. And you can also hear her work every week on tangents and dear hank and john and microcosmos and journey to the microcosmos devoki's kind of the secret power behind the whole operation

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Starting point is 00:37:48 SciShow Tangents, just tell people about us. Us. Thank you for joining us. I've been Hank Green. I've been Sam Schultz. I've been Devokhi Chakrabarty. SciShow Tangents is created by all of us and produced by Sam Schultz. Our associate producer is Faith Schmidt.

Starting point is 00:38:03 Our editor is Seth Lixman. Our story editor is Alex Billow. Our social media organizer is Julia Buzz-Bazio. Our editorial assistant for this episode was Sari Riley. Our sound design is by Joseph Tuna-Medish. Our executive producers are Caitlin Hofmeister and me, Hank Green. And we couldn't make any of this without our patrons on Patreon. Thank you. And remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted. But one more thing. All right. One more thing.

Starting point is 00:38:53 There have been a couple viral anecdotes about people getting constipated or taking a giant dump and experiencing what's known as transient global amnesia. What? We should just do a butt podcast. So transient global amnesia is kind of a catch-all term. You don't have to tell me. I know what it is. It's all there. It's in the name. Continue. Sorry. Please tell me what it is.

Starting point is 00:39:18 So transient global amnesia is a kind of catch-all term for a sudden, mysterious, couple hours long period of memory loss, usually in middle-aged or elderly people. Our best guess as to the science behind potential amnesia poops involves the vagus nerve, which runs all the way from your brain to your large intestine. A particularly large poop getting squeezed out of your body can stimulate the vagus nerve

Starting point is 00:39:44 and drop your blood pressure, change oxygen flow to your brain, and cause all sorts of lightheadedness or maybe even brief memory problems. Oh my god! What on earth? That's the best butt fact of all time. You can have a poop so big

Starting point is 00:39:59 that you forget! You just wander off into the wilderness. Who am I?

SciShow Tangents - Memory

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