From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Mon Jun 09 2003 - 08:13:28 MDT
Science Daily is pointing out that scientists can now
monitor "changing cells" in the hippocampus as they
actually form memories.
See:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/06/030609012454.htm
Interesting stats that at least in monkeys it takes a dozen trials
to establish a memory and that 2-4 new associations were formed
during a recording session (presumably perhaps a few hours).
Sets some interesting constraints if one applies the concepts
to human learning unless we "train" much faster than monkeys.
Also makes me wonder -- if the hippocampus is responsible for memory then
what the heck is the rest of the brain doing? Of course Calvin's theories
could be valid -- if so then one may be dealing with a neuronal
thought-to-memory ratio (in terms of neurons required) of what 100-to-1,
1000-to-1? If so, then we have a really long way to go with computers
because the memory growth vector (be it hard drives or RAM) seems to be
significantly faster than the growth vector for processing power. That
suggests that for at least the short term future computers are going to be
significantly weighted towards memory capacity over computational capacity
while humans may be exactly the inverse.
Robert
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