4 ms·
A neuron "could" store a generalized memory (the amount of information it stores is gigantic, w/o pendantically considered the DNA). However, it's more complex
by snippyhollow 15y ago
A neuron "could" store a generalized memory (the amount of information it stores is gigantic, w/o pendantically considered the DNA). However, it's more complex than that (there are many types of memories and many means of retrieval). Basically, memories are sets of synaptic connections, and a neuron has many synapses (average ~7,000 synaptic connections/neuron to multiply by our 10^11 neurons/brain). As you said, it may be a "key", but it should be seen more like the memory _is_ a complete list of hashes. Not {"key": memory} but {"key1": {"key2": {"key3": {...} } }, {...}, {...}, ...} and the set of {key1..keyN} is the memory. So if you removed whichever keyI in the middle, you lose the information. (That's not really true because there is high redundancy, but there are keys/synapses/nodes less redundant than others. The fact is, they don't fire on only "one" neuron, they fire at a very precise region but the light still goes through a population of neurons.)
- bigiain 15y agoFascinating, thanks! Have you got some links or keyphrases I should feed Google or Wikipedia to learn more (at a "curious but not neuro-science trained dilettante" level of understanding)?
- snippyhollow 15y agoI'm in this lab http://www.lppa.college-de-france.fr http://www.lppa.college-de-france.fr and mostly learned through colleagues (I'm doing CS/AI/ML, not neuroscience). I've read some parts of "Neuroscience 3rd edition, Purves et al., Sinauer Eds." which has nice pictures but I think there are better books and better advices than mines on this. Perhaps start with Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocampus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocampus // https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_consolidation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_consolidation
- bigiain 15y agoThanks again! stuck in the reading queue for the weekend. (Phear my curiosity, people waiting for a table in my café!)
- bostonpete 15y agoThis complexity make my head hurt. Who created this mess of complexity anyways without leaving so much as a code comment or design document to help us sort this all out? Intelligent design my ass.