From Laura Sanders at ScienceNews:
Somewhere in the brain is a storage device for memories
What is the physical basis of memory? Somehow, memories get etched into cells, forming a physical trace that researchers call an “engram.” But the nature of these stable, specific imprints is a mystery.
Today, McConnell’s memory transfer episode has largely faded from scientific conversation. But developmental biologist Michael Levin of Tufts University in Medford, Mass., and a handful of other researchers wonder if McConnell was onto something. They have begun revisiting those historical experiments in the ongoing hunt for the engram.
Applying powerful tools to the engram search, scientists are already challenging some widely held ideas about how memories are stored in the brain. New insights haven’t yet revealed the identity of the physical basis of memory, though. Scientists are chasing a wide range of possibilities. Some ideas are backed by strong evidence; others are still just hunches. In pursuit of the engram, some researchers have even searched for clues in memories that persist in brains that go through massive reorganization.
…
Memory clues may also come from other animals that undergo extreme brain modification over their lifetimes. As caterpillars transition to moths, their brains change dramatically. But a moth that had learned as a caterpillar to avoid a certain odor paired with a shock holds onto that information, despite having a radically different brain, researchers have found. More.
Why need memory have a physical basis? If memory is a form of information, storage media may be incidental and productive insights may lie elsewhere.
• When a paper document is shredded, is information being destroyed? Does it matter whether the shredded document is a copy of an un-shredded document and can be replaced?
• Likewise, when a digital picture is taken, is digital information being created or merely captured?
• The information on a DVD can be measured in bits. Does the amount of information differ if the DVD contains the movie Braveheart or a collection of randomly generated digital noise?
• When a human dies, is experiential information lost? If so, can birth and experience create information?
• If you are shown a document written in Japanese, does the document contain information whether or not you know Japanese? What if, instead, the document is written in an alien language unknowable to man?
These questions, even unanswered, help us understand life from the perspective of information theory, as opposed to materialist theory. As Norbert Weiner (1894–1964), the father of cybernetics, once said, “Information is information, neither matter nor energy.” More.
Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics (Marks, Dembski, and Ewert) might be a useful resource. But its implications are not good for business, as the current science establishment understands it. It’s easier to just go on looking for the wrong things in the wrong places and publishing papers about it.
See also: Human brain: Human intelligence linked to shift toward round brain Would Neanderthal art be an argument against the theory? Or is it the sort of theory whose importance is its novelty among a host of competing speculations, whose sheer numbers count for progress?
At Scientific American: “Cocktail of Brain Chemicals” may be key to what makes us human Hmmm. If we fed these cocktails to a gorilla’s brain, what would happen?
and
Data basic: An introduction to information theory
As an AI researcher, I can assure you that memory resides in the 100 million or so cortical columns of the cerebral cortex. In addition, there is pattern memory stored in the thalamus and sensorimotor memory in the cerebellum.
“As an AI researcher, I can assure you that memory resides in the 100 million or so cortical columns of the cerebral cortex.”
Really? Since when does a representation of a memory and/or a representation of information equate to the memory and/or information itself.
There is a transcendent component to memory and/or information that will be forever beyond the scope of reductive materialistic explanations.
As Dr. Egnor noted:
As well, Near Death Experiences also testify that true memories and representation of memories are not one and the same thing:
Moreover, immaterial information is now experimentally shown to be its own distinct physical entity that is separate from matter and energy:
Frankly, denying the reality of one’s own mind is insanity:
bornagain77 @2,
In my opinion, there is physical memory and there is spirit. Consciousness (mind?) requires both. If the brain is not required for consciousness/mind, as you seem to suggest (correct me if I’m wrong), then why do we have a brain?
PS. Quoting others is not an argument. Use your own arguments.
FF, I will quote whomever I want whenever I want so as to drive a point home. Tough luck if you don’t like it!
What part of “immaterial information is now experimentally shown to be its own distinct physical entity that is separate from matter and energy” did you not understand?
It is a direct empirical falsification of your claim that memory, i.e., information, is reducible to a purely material explanation.
There is an elephant in your theoretical room that you are ignoring.
i.e. You are on the wrong theoretical basis.
Perhaps this following video will help you understand a little more clearly where your ‘materialistic’ presuppositions for purely ‘material’ information are ‘not even wrong’ (Pauli):
The following may also give you a little insight for where you are missing the boat as far as information is concerned:
See ya.
A few more notes that call into question FF’s claim that
If memory is stored solely ‘in the brain’ as FF was claiming in response to NEWS’s observation of,,,
,,, if memory is stored solely in the brain as FF holds,, then the following results should be impossible according to FF’s presupposition:
In further comment from the neuro-surgeons in the John Hopkins study:
A few more notes along the same line
The simplest argument against “memory resides” is the fact that most of the protoplasm in the neurons is constantly renewed. Some parts are “turned over” in 48 hours. If the memory is stored as binary states just like cells in a RAM, how is it preserved across the material turnover?
Also, glial cells are constantly wandering the hallways, checking for unused or static neurons and gobbling up the slackers. How is memory stored statically in a system that ruthlessly devours static cells?
FourFaces at 1, can you clarify what you mean by “resides”? As polistra notes at 7, there is often nothing fixed to “reside” in (like a street address).
Where does the number 7 reside? Where does “free trade vs. protectionism” reside?
Our brains mediate between our ideas of the world and the world but it is unclear that the ideas, including memories, reside anywhere as such. They are not corporeal.
That certainly doesn’t mean that ideas don’t matter, only that they are instantiated in the media that work with and express them, as opposed to residing in them.
News @8,
FourFaces at 1, can you clarify what you mean by “resides”? As polistra notes at 7, there is often nothing fixed to “reside” in (like a street address).
There are definitely addresses. There is a reason that the brain has close to 100 billion neurons. They are not there just for grins and giggles.
Where does the number 7 reside? Where does “free trade vs. protectionism” reside?
A word like “seven” has multiple addresses since it is a sequence of many short sounds. There are cause/effect and temporal correlations between concepts that are manifested and recorded physically in the connections between neurons.
Our brains mediate between our ideas of the world and the world but it is unclear that the ideas, including memories, reside anywhere as such. They are not corporeal.
I agree that conscious ideas are not corporeal. Some call them qualia. But I disagree with the concept of mediation, which I take to mean that the brain is just an organ for outputting ideas from the soul/spirit. It is the firing of certain types of neurons that evoke the qualia/ideas. I do agree that the spirit does control what we think about and the behavioral choices we make.
That certainly doesn’t mean that ideas don’t matter, only that they are instantiated in the media that work with and express them, as opposed to residing in them.
I have to disagree. Ideas are dual entities: they are both material and spiritual. As the master once said, the eye is the window of the soul. Signals coming from the retina arrive at the visual cortex where they evoke or activate the color qualia of the soul. The latter give us our various color sensations but there is no question that the sensations were triggered by the activation of the neurons.
FF claims:
And yet there is reason to question: In fact, it is fair to say that the material brain gets in the way of the ‘spiritual’ mind