Schizophrenic Computer Points to New Theory of Disease

Re:Schizophrenic Computer Points to New Theory of Disease by 6ren on Sunday August 14, 2011 @08:05PM (#2884882)

How does assigning greater importance to learning lead to mixing up identities?

There doesn't seem to be a link to the actual paper (if there is one yet) - the DISCERN link is to a 1998 paper. The idea of a "story parser" is interesting...

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Re:Schizophrenic Computer Points to New Theory of Disease by jal278 on Sunday August 14, 2011 @08:21PM (#2884909)

http://nn.cs.utexas.edu/?grasemann:cogsci11

I believe this is the paper, from the abstract it seems like hyperlearning is related to greater consolidation of memory, which might imply creation of connections between things that are not really connected

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Re:Schizophrenic Computer Points to New Theory of Disease by pierreminik on Monday August 15, 2011 @12:02AM (#2885388)

The "connection between things that are not really connected" part match my own experience of having schizophrenia very well.

It's not uncommon for me to have thoughts that very much makes sense and is meaningful to me while others simply can't make any sense of it what-so-ever.

This means I'll have to be cautious of my own thoughts and I often doubt them.

Thoughts as well as meanings change over time too. Sometimes I write down ideas I think is brilliant to save for later. Revisiting those writings can be troubling because I might not be able to make a similar sense of what I wrote earlier.

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Re:Schizophrenic Computer Points to New Theory of Disease by 6ren on Monday August 15, 2011 @01:01AM (#2885551)

Thanks. I can see how this would lead to "derailments", particularly if the story line was modeled as arcs (given it's a "connectionist model"), but the "delusions" seem less obvious... unless things, including identities, were also modeled as arcs between different ways of referencing the same thing (e.g. my address, where I live, my home). Sort of using the same model for instances (events in a story) and schema (actors in a story) - which makes sense, and may well be how it works in the brain. Reuse, don't reinvent, is what nature does when it can.

I have doubts about Science based on making up computer models and seeing what happens (although it is a lot of fun to do). OTOH, they clearly casting this as merely a hypotheses - which is pretty reasonable.

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Re:Schizophrenic Computer Points to New Theory of Disease by srl on Sunday August 14, 2011 @08:32PM (#2884927)

DISCERN is old - this researcher has apparently been working on it since 1990.

According to popular mechanics, the article was published in the online version of Biological Psychiatry. This seems to be the issue in question: http://bit.ly/n66BeO

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Re:Schizophrenic Computer Points to New Theory of Disease by pierreminik on Sunday August 14, 2011 @08:56PM (#2884970)

Not sure I got the "mixing up identities" comment part right but just wanted to point out schizophrenia has nothing to do with multiple personality disorders.

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Re:Schizophrenic Computer Points to New Theory of Disease by 6ren on Sunday August 14, 2011 @09:09PM (#2885005)

9th para:

  DISCERN was just as eager to adopt the life of a crime boss named Vito
  or to thrust its assigned identity onto another character.

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Re:Schizophrenic Computer Points to New Theory of Disease by pierreminik on Sunday August 14, 2011 @09:20PM (#2885038)

Oh, right.

Reading that at first I thought the writer had completely mixed up schizophrenia and multiple personality disorders. Something that is not uncommon at all in the media and pop culture.

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