snippyhollow 192 days ago | link

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.)

— MIT discovers the location of memories: Individual neurons

— Hacker News

2012.10.02 Tuesday ACHK