Consciousness during CPR

I think it's helpful to clarify what is meant by explicit and implicit, because it's confusing - especially because you can have explicit recall of implicit memories. And there are a couple of different kinds of implicit memories - one is the kind of implicit learning which comes from practicing a skill (which doesn't apply here) and another is a memory which forms without awareness. Dreams can help to understand the difference.

You're sleeping at night and you wake up to the sound of your neighbor's house alarm. The next morning you ask your neighbor about it, and they tell you it was a false alarm. That would be an explicit memory/recall.

You're sleeping at night and you have a dream about your alarm clock going off, and in the dream you panic about missing your flight. The next morning you are chatting with your neighbor about your dream. Your neighbor mentions that they had a false alarm during the night. Your dream would be an implicit memory of your neighbor's false alarm (it stimulated the dream, but you didn't have explicit awareness of the alarm going off), but your recall of that dream would be explicit.

I'm curious about how Parnia actually tested for implicit learning. He mentioned that 1 of 19 subjects recalled the audio stimuli, which sounds like he asked for an explicit memory. You have to do something different to test for implicit learning. For example, asking people to complete a word when given some initial letters or verbally asking people to spell a word which happens to be a homophone. Implicit learning would lead to people more likely to complete some initial letters with an implicitly learned word, or choose to spell the implicitly learned homophone (for example, if the phrase "their children are sad" was repeated during the CPR and they were later asked to spell "thehr", they would be more likely to choose "t h e i r", than "t h e r e". It is unfortunate that he does not provide the justification behind his statement that there were "no signs of implicit learning".

Examples of implicit memories in the pool of blinded, prospectively studied experiences would be recalling arms and legs so heavy that they couldn't move and being pursued by the IRA, when what happened was an Irish doctor whispering in a patient's ear to help calm her while five workers held her down when she became combative. Or recalling people in uniforms with swastikas, later recognized as doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers. 

Linda

You're sleeping at night and you wake up to the sound of your neighbor's house alarm. The next morning you ask your neighbor about it, and they tell you it was a false alarm. That would be an explicit memory/recall.

You're sleeping at night and you have a dream about your alarm clock going off, and in the dream you panic about missing your flight. The next morning you are chatting with your neighbor about your dream. Your neighbor mentions that they had a false alarm during the night. Your dream would be an implicit memory of your neighbor's false alarm (it stimulated the dream, but you didn't have explicit awareness of the alarm going off), but your recall of that dream would be explicit.

I disagree, the example of the alarm, and the alarm clock are both explicit memories. We can't say anything more.

I disagree, the example of the alarm, and the alarm clock are both explicit memories. We can't say anything more.

Try thinking of it this way. Suppose the house alarm wasn't a false alarm and a burglary took place. When the police interview the neighbors about whether or not they heard an alarm, and what time it went off, the person who had the dream would answer that they can't help - they didn't hear the alarm so they don't know what time it went off. That is, they have no explicit or declarative memory of the house alarm. However, unbeknownst to them, they have an implicit or non-declarative memory of the house alarm disguised as a dream. It was the sensory input of the alarm which was translated into a dream about a different kind of alarm.

For the purposes of the hypothetical, I stipulated that the house alarm was translated into a dream. Under real world conditions, knowing that there was a house alarm next door may allow us to guess that the dream was initiated by that alarm. However, under blind conditions, we can't work forward and specify what stimulated the dream - it could have been nothing, an alarm clock, a smoke alarm, music, something on the TV, etc.

This helps explain why people seem to have veridical experiences if some of the things they mention in their experience can subsequently be fit to known events under non-blind conditions, but those same people do not seem to perform any better than people without auditory/visual experiences if they are quizzed about specific events which did not happen to make it into their constructed experience (the hidden targets as one example). 

Interestingly, this idea has been used as a proposed security measure. Because people would not have explicit knowledge of their password, they could not coerced into giving up that password in a cyber attack. 

Linda

Try thinking of it this way. Suppose the house alarm wasn't a false alarm and a burglary took place. When the police interview the neighbors about whether or not they heard an alarm, and what time it went off, the person who had the dream would answer that they can't help - they didn't hear the alarm so they don't know what time it went off. That is, they have no explicit or declarative memory of the house alarm. However, unbeknownst to them, they have an implicit or non-declarative memory of the house alarm disguised as a dream. It was the sensory input of the alarm which was translated into a dream about a different kind of alarm.

For the purposes of the hypothetical, I stipulated that the house alarm was translated into a dream. Under real world conditions, knowing that there was a house alarm next door may allow us to guess that the dream was initiated by that alarm. However, under blind conditions, we can't work forward and specify what stimulated the dream - it could have been nothing, an alarm clock, a smoke alarm, music, something on the TV, etc.

This helps explain why people seem to have veridical experiences if some of the things they mention in their experience can subsequently be fit to known events under non-blind conditions, but those same people do not seem to perform any better than people without auditory/visual experiences if they are quizzed about specific events which did not happen to make it into their constructed experience (the hidden targets as one example). 

Interestingly, this idea has been used as a proposed security measure. Because people would not have explicit knowledge of their password, they could not coerced into giving up that password in a cyber attack. 

Linda

All you’ve got in your example is explicit memory... (unless you’re undertaken a specially designed test to discover an implicit memory)

[Laird]

All you’ve got in your example is explicit memory... (unless you’re undertaken a specially designed test to discover an implicit memory)

So, how would you define or describe "implicit memory", Max, perhaps with an example if that helps to get your point across?

All you’ve got in your example is explicit memory... (unless you’re undertaken a specially designed test to discover an implicit memory)

Asking about dreams is a test to discover an implicit memory. This was the idea behind the Maimonides dream studies, extending into the Ganzfeld studies. Rather than asking subjects what image is displayed, they are asked the content of their dreams or visual images during altered mental states (putting aside the question about whether the Ganzfeld truly stimulated altered mental states). If you look through the registered studies on the KPU registry, there are other examples of implicit tests attempting to detect psi. 

Linda

Asking about dreams is a test to discover an implicit memory.

Linda

That depends on the design of the experiment/test... in the house alarm and alarm clock examples you gave, both recollections are examples of explicit memory. And we can say nothing more...

So, how would you define or describe "implicit memory", Max, perhaps with an example if that helps to get your point across?

Conscious recall by definition is explicit memory. Trying to claim the 'alarm clock' scenario is an example of 'implicit' memory is incorrect.

Implicit memory is the opposite of explicit memory, there can be no conscious recall of implicit memory, else the recall would be explicit.

An experiment designed to look for implicit memory, is only looking for a non-conscious effect, and they have to be carefully designed to expose such an effect. But, if you did not design an experiment/testing for implicit memory (neither of Linda's examples did), you can't even make a claim about implicit memory.

That depends on the design of the experiment/test... in the house alarm and alarm clock examples you gave, both recollections are examples of explicit memory. And we can say nothing more...

Yes, both are examples of an explicit memory of an event. In one case, the event is a house alarm. In the other case, the event is a dream.

If we focus instead on the event "house alarm", then both are also memories of that event. However, in the first case, the memory is explicit and declarative and the source is known, while in the second case, the memory is implicit and the source is unknown and hidden. A "specially designed test to discover an implicit memory" would ask about dream mentation, not about whether one was awake and heard the neighbor's house alarm (putting aside the recognition that this wasn't a description of a formal study).

Another example of this within the setting of a formal study was a dream study of amnesiacs playing Tetris. They had no explicit, declarative memories of playing Tetris, but they had dreams about falling blocks. Waking the participants and asking them about dream mentation could not represent a test to elicit explicit memory, because the amnesiacs did not have the ability to form explicit memories. Any "affirmative" results would have had to be a search for implicit memories.

https://www.academia.edu/33150155/Replay...d_Amnesics

Linda

Yes, both are examples of an explicit memory...

Yes, both are examples of explicit memory, and then you say...

However, in the first case, the memory is explicit and declarative and the source is known, while in the second case, the memory is implicit and the source is unknown and hidden.

which is incorrect.

You should have written...

"However, in the first case, the memory is explicit and declarative and the source is known, while in the second case, the memory is implicit explicit and the source is unknown and hidden."