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Memory: What Is Arranged and Where?

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Evolutionary Bioinformatics

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Abstract

Despite fascinating studies on the input (acquisition) and output (recall) of human mental information, we know not how or where that information is stored for prolonged periods (long term memory). Storage in digital or analog forms could be chemical (e.g. like DNA) or physical (e.g. vibrations), and either molecular or submolecular. In the absence of evidence for localized or delocalized storage in our brains, the brain ‘cupboard’ must be deemed bare. Alternative locations are elsewhere in our body (corporeal), or outside our body (extra-corporeal). Evidence on location is quite fragmentary and usually of negative nature: 1. Since brain cells have the same amount of DNA as other tissues, the storage form is unlikely to be DNA, and no comparable macromolecule has yet emerged. 2. Surgical interventions that delete parts of the brain do not remove specific information, the storage of which appears delocalized. 3. Brain size is not necessarily greater in those with phenomenal memories (savant syndrome). 4. Some of those with greatly decreased brain tissue volume can display normal or even advanced intelligence (see next chapter). These observations are consistent with extra-corporeal location. Drawing parallels from the internet – with desktop computers storing their information in a remote location (“cloud computing”) – researchers from various disciplines are looking to physics for support of this strange idea.

You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.

Francis Crick 1994 [1]

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  1. Department of Biomedical and Molecular Sciences, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada

    Donald R. Forsdyke

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Forsdyke, D.R. (2016). Memory: What Is Arranged and Where?. In: Evolutionary Bioinformatics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28755-3_19

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