General Questions Thread

[OutPhase]

As long as the video in question doesn't indirectly link to any fansubs of the series in question (or any other licensed series for that manner) from them being "related videos", I don't think it's much of a problem. After all, it is only the opening/ending theme.

[FateAnomaly]

How does the brain store information (memory)? Is it a chemical function, electrical function or organic function?

[Clarste]

Originally Posted by FateAnomaly

How does the brain store information (memory)? Is it a chemical function, electrical function or organic function?

I'm curious as to what an organic function is that's different from a chemical function. IIRC, in chemistry organic just means "involves carbon."

That said, I have no idea. I think you'd probably get a Nobel prize for accurately answering this question. Also, probably both chemical and electrical in a super-complicated way.

[Kakashi]

Originally Posted by FateAnomaly

How does the brain store information (memory)? Is it a chemical function, electrical function or organic function?

Originally Posted by Clarste

I'm curious as to what an organic function is that's different from a chemical function. IIRC, in chemistry organic just means "involves carbon."

That said, I have no idea. I think you'd probably get a Nobel prize for accurately answering this question. Also, probably both chemical and electrical in a super-complicated way.

Yeah, electrical impulses travel along the neurone and then along the synapse via chemicals called neurotransmitters; which do contain carbon, so I'm guessing 'chemical function' is an umbrella term which includes organics.

I heard something about memories being stored in the protein make up, but that's pretty vague, no one understands it yet.

[Jan-Poo]

As far as i know there isn't a definitive answer.

It is known that amygdala plays a major role on the storing of memories. But it is possible that it works as an access point.

A common theory is that "brain circuits" strengthen themselves through frequent use. Let's say an image activates a certain pattern of neurons, the neurons become connected in a way that when one is activated everyone else in the same pattern will also activate. If that image becomes associated with a word, thinking about the word will trigger the activation of the neurons associated with the image and viceversa. This theory explains why frequent use is needed to successfully store informations and why memories in the human brain are chained together.

[Jinto]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

As far as i know there isn't a definitive answer.

It is known that amygdala plays a major role on the storing of memories. But it is possible that it works as an access point.

A common theory is that "brain circuits" strengthen themselves through frequent use. Let's say an image activates a certain pattern of neurons, the neurons become connected in a way that when one is activated everyone else in the same pattern will also activate. If that image becomes associated with a word, thinking about the word will trigger the activation of the neurons associated with the image and viceversa. This theory explains why frequent use is needed to successfully store informations and why memories in the human brain are chained together.

Yep thats pretty much what science assumes how it works.
There are predefined regions in the brain that usually process different information especially well. Since processing basically means memory based filtering in the case of a brain, each such regions has sort of a memory. But the memorized data is not electrons or chemicals per se. Its how the neural nets are interconnected. Learning means building structures in the neural net that function as sort of filters. Learning requires conditioning, the more a certain pattern is conditioned (imprinted into the brain) the more the brain will think according to this pattern. Of'course there is also some randomizing in it... otherwise we could never invent new stuff... but still... the randomizing is itself influenced by patterns (for e.g. mathematicans... typical patterns of how to prove something).
Now short term memory must work a little bit different. It depends in large on active patterns. Once neurons were stimulated they should keep their energetic level for a while and therby save the structural information of what the brain had actively experienced some milliseconds before. So until the neurons are back to "normal level" one can utilize this image in the neural net as sort of a memory pattern. Using two (or more) neural nets that refresh each others image makes this memory medium term memory (good for thinking about solving a problem). If one (or more) of the refresher nets are flooded with new structural images, it is likely that the medium term information becomes lost.
Oh and one final thing, the ability to forget keeps the brain in a sane state (its sort of doing many micro reboots to free resources).

[FateAnomaly]

Sorry thats quite a brain full for me. In short do you mean that memories are store as patterns (data) formed by neurons?

Anyway, about forgetting keeping the brain sane, how about those with photographic memories. They are not insane even if they can't forget.

[Jinto]

Originally Posted by FateAnomaly

Sorry thats quite a brain full for me. In short do you mean that memories are store as patterns (data) formed by neurons?

Patterns that are defined by temporary or permanent structures/filters in neural nets. Not a too well fitting example, but imagine water running downwards an even sand hill. First it will behave very chaotic and meander a lot. If it runs long enough it will use small canals and meander less.

Originally Posted by FateAnomaly

Anyway, about forgetting keeping the brain sane, how about those with photographic memories. They are not insane even if they can't forget.

So what about these people? They forget things too... they just memorize key events. And this far more efficiently than normal people. However, their memory becomes less detailed the older the memory is. This is because of heavy reuse of new patterns, that will (slightly) influence the old patterns.

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

Forgetting can have very different causes than simply removal of stored content. Forgetting can mean access problems, availability problems, or can have other reasons such as amnesia caused by an accident.

Ah btw. I mean the normal forgetting, not the access problems, availablity problems or other reasons based forgetting.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by FateAnomaly

Sorry thats quite a brain full for me. In short do you mean that memories are store as patterns (data) formed by neurons?

Anyway, about forgetting keeping the brain sane, how about those with photographic memories. They are not insane even if they can't forget.

Yes it's not really intuitive because it's very different from how stored memory works for computers. There are no "files" in the human memory.

Jinto explained it well but it is still difficult to grasp the whole concept.

Let's say that he human brain strores memories by modifying itself. There is not a single place where memories are stored. The brain area that is used for visual images will memorize images, the brain area that is used for processing sounds will memorize sounds and so on.

To simplify things you can say that memories are created by creating strong connections between neurons. To answer your original question: it's organic. It strongly depends on the physical structure of the brain itself.

It should be also said that it also happens the opposite. While some connections and neurons strenghten, many other neurons weaken themselves if they are not used. Neurons do not just activate other neurons, they also deactivate them.

[Yui-da]

I've always been so curious as to why certain parts of the bodies of one gender differed so much from another. Everyone knows even if you have a cleaner, brighter skin, make up and a feminine haircut, most males can't look as supple as a true female. I've noticed the biggest things that stick out.

1. The skull (especially around the side jaws?)
2. The knees
3. Hips

The hips are obvious, being the shape they tend to be for a more 'mature' female or someone with more 'sex appeal', being biased of course from majority. However the knees and the skull I don't quite get. Why is it that a male's skull looks a bit off as to a female? Is it that the jaw is placed out-lower than the females? Do our chins tend to stick out more? I'm just very curious as to what it is. Also; the knees. Our knees tend to look; different. And why is this? I'm usually very interested in biology and more specifically the anatomy of the human being; but I just can't tend to figure this out. Could some expert or anyone in general who has an idea explain this to me in depth?

Thanks in advanced; and I hope I've started an interesting discussion.

[james0246]

^Herre are somewhat simplistic answers dealing with structural differences between males and females:

Part of the reason that the skull is different is because the male brain is 10+% larger than the female brain. This is due to general body size amongst the genders, though, and not any true difference between the brains of a man or a woman. (There are, of course, various differences within the brain itself (Hypothalamus is shaped a little differently, various different levels of hormones, etc), but nothing that really impacts your question). Additionally, females bones are generally smaller and rounded, whereas males bones can be far more promonient (seen quite well in a man's square jaw or eyebrow ridge).

As for knees...well female kneecaps actually develop earlier than male kneecaps, but besides that, there is no true structual difference between the two (I think some of the muscle groups around the knee are a little different, and women's knees are a little more flexible).

And, of course, the hips on a female are lower and wider compared to males. This is due to the fact that the pelvis on a woman is wider to allow for child birth.

[risingstar3110]

Question: is there an anime that was so popular in international online anime community that it starts to affect that anime's popularity in Japan?
If not, then are there any cases close to that?

[Daniel E.]

Originally Posted by risingstar3110

Question: is there an anime that was so popular in international online anime community that it starts to affect that anime's popularity in Japan?
If not, then are there any cases close to that?

Obviously not related, but I still feel it's worth mentioning in regards to your question......

In the Saimoe competitions, whenever us foreigners started to give extra support to some characters, several japanese folks started to complain about the results of certain matches.

They just didn't liked the fact that many people were giving full support to certain shows (i.e: KyoAni shows) and thus complained about it. I don't think this actually affected the popularity of the shows in question, but it sure gave some people something to talk about for a few months.

[Frailty]

how can you put 1000000000000000 in words???

after a hundred trillion what's it called?

[felix]

One quaddrilion. But depends on region.

[Dist]

Originally Posted by Solafighter

I just updated my Windows Live Messenger to the newest version.

It looks good but there is something, that changed in a bad way.

In my contact list, there are some people, who changed their name color. Therefor, you need the, for example [c4] [/c] code. Instead of seeing the changed color, i see the codes.

Instead of Max i see [c5]Max[/c].

Does someone know, where i can configurate that?

Thanks ahead.

Its been a while so you probably got an answer by now.. But if not, here it goes :

You need Windows Live Messenger Plus extension. Just google it. What I find weird that you saw the colors before updating to newest because that shouldn't be possible without MsgPlus, and MsgPlus won't disappear if you update Messenger.

[-KarumA-]

I'm looking for a symbol, there was a site posted in this thread or another one about Chinese smileys, like a Chinese wiki kind of site that had like a huge list of different smileys including characters that are not standard on your keyboard, I used to have a smiley on my msn: (=•_•=)
but with recent reformatting my msn nickname got reset together with my bookmarks being gone (I should have exported them lol). Thign is I'm looking for this mark but then up instead of facing to the left "3" I use the 3 for a smilleys on forums :3 but on msn I had a turned version that went in this one: (=•_•=)

So now I wondered if anyone could reply this character for me and I wondered if you can type it yourself as well, are they alt codes or something else?
Also if anyone remembers what site I meant could you link it?

[-KarumA-]

Adding another silly question about Java, I want to install an older version of Java but the website then sends me to this confusing site that has things labeled with words and expressions that I have no idea of what it means.
I'm looking for an older version than the 6 series that are out now but that is also higher than 1.4 and I'm only planning on using it to view java required pages, however I thought I had found one I could use but then you get linked to another page that lets you pick various different packages with again things I have no idea of what they actually mean:

this is the archive site with the older versions:
http://java.sun.com/products/archive/

I first thought I would require this one: Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE) 1.4
But I am not certain and even if it is that one I wouldn't have the slightest idea which one I should chose then:
GlassFish + MySQL, GlassFish Java EE, GlassFish Java EE + JDK etc. etc.

As for why I want an older version, I can't install Java 6 for some strange reason, the installation keeps on saying that it cannot unzip the core files even though I have winrar on this computer

[felix]

I'm going to guess your not a developer.

Originally Posted by -KarumA-

As for why I want an older version, I can't install Java 6 for some strange reason, the installation keeps on saying that it cannot unzip the core files even though I have winrar on this computer

One has nothing to do with the other. For the JRE (what you need to run things) go to: http://java.com/en/download/manual.jsp and choose "install offline".

[-KarumA-]

Originally Posted by Cats

I'm going to guess your not a developer. One has nothing to do with the other. For the JRE (what you need to run things) go to: http://java.com/en/download/manual.jsp and choose "install offline".

gives me the same error
Cannot unzip core files