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Engrams emerging as the basic unit of memory:
Though scientist Richard Semon introduced the concept of the "engram" 115 years ago to posit a neural basis for memory, direct evidence for engrams has only begun to accumulate recently as sophisticated technologies and methods have become available. In a new review in Science, Professors Susumu Tonegawa of The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT and Sheena Josselyn of the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) and the University of Toronto describe the rapid progress they and colleagues have been making over the last dozen years in identifying, characterizing and even manipulating engrams, as well as the major outstanding questions of the field.
Experiments in rodents have revealed that engrams exist as multiscale networks of neurons. An experience becomes stored as a potentially retrievable memory in the brain when excited neurons in a brain region such as the hippocampus or amygdala become recruited into a local ensemble. These ensembles combine with others in other regions, such as the cortex, into an "engram complex." Crucial to this process of linking engram cells is the ability of neurons to forge new circuit connections, via processes known as "synaptic plasticity" and "dendritic spine formation." Importantly, experiments show that the memory initially stored across an engram complex can be retrieved by its reactivation but may also persist "silently" even when memories cannot be naturally recalled, for instance in mouse models used to study memory disorders such as early stage Alzheimer's disease.
(Score: 2, Informative) by barbara hudson on Saturday January 04 2020, @11:04PM (10 children)
So they've just "discovered" that memory is holographic (information is stored in various areas that when combined make up one memory) . Come off it, we knew that decades ago.
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(Score: 4, Informative) by hemocyanin on Sunday January 05 2020, @12:49AM
As an additional point, don't scientologists use the phrase engram to mean some BS? Using this label, even it was co-opted by scientologists and has deeper roots, lends some superficial credence to the cult. Just use a different word that means the same thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engram_(Dianetics) [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 5, Informative) by NickM on Sunday January 05 2020, @01:16AM (3 children)
That is pretty awesome and creepy: artificial aversion or repulsion to a smell the mouse never experienced ! I can accord you that the linked press release is kind of thin but the source material is quite dense in information. Also to those who don't have acces remember about sci-hub.tw !
I a master of typographic, grammatical and miscellaneous errors !
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Sunday January 05 2020, @03:45AM
Well, I may never have smelled 3-week-old dead cow, but I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't need to have a false memory implanted to experience revulsion to it.
For proof, we'd need to test for something the animal was normally attracted to.
Thought of the day: "After you stop using social media and online videos long enough you no longer have the free time for them."
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by Mer on Sunday January 05 2020, @07:10AM (1 child)
And just with that, we can put total recall on the list of things that are indefinitely twenty years away.
(minus the mars colony bit, that's indefinitely ten years away).
Shut up!, he explained.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 06 2020, @08:47PM
Only ten years between them? Weren't some of the poor martian locals supposedly born there?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 06 2020, @07:35AM (4 children)
Citations please? AI examples don't count.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday January 07 2020, @01:12AM (3 children)
So the same nerves and neurons can participate in storing multiple memories.
Thought of the day: Thanks to systemd, even linux isn't linux any more.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 07 2020, @10:40AM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday January 07 2020, @09:09PM (1 child)
They are stored in both the neurons and the way the neurons are connected. Neither can exist without the other and still store useful information. That this is not blindingly obvious is a failure of both curiosity and basic cognition (bad neural net??? :-).
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(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @08:53AM
There are alternate possible explanations. For example memories could be stored in a neuron/computer but how accessible a memory/computer is or how it's accessible to other neurons/computers can be dependent on how it's connected to them, and how good the connections are.
Yes an isolated computer may not be as useful as a connected computer but that's just moving the goal post. It's not about usefulness or ease of recall, it's about where those memories are stored.
So what makes you so sure that memories are stored as relations between neurons? Where's your proof? Saying it's blindingly obvious isn't proof, especially when there are alternate explanations that haven't been disproven. Not saying those alternate explanations are true, but have they really been eliminated as possibilities?