I am afraid my question wasn't so simple.
From your second link, I would like to quote the following:
"This doesn't mean that scientists have figured out exactly how the system works. They still don't fully understand exactly how you remember or what occurs during recall. The search for how the brain organizes memories and where those memories are acquired and stored has been a never-ending quest among brain researchers for decades. "
"Although a memory begins with perception, it is encoded and stored using the language of electricity and chemicals. "
I was asking you about this strange "language" of electricity and chemicals. What is this language? Can we use the same language grammar to record whatever memories we want in our brains?
To extend the question: say you saw the movie Sholay and you remember each and every line, each and every visual. To correspond that with a typical DVD technology, the language used in the latter is a 650 nanometer wavelength laser diode light. How is your memory of Sholay recorded in your brain? Can anyone walk me through that process?
I cannot Mr. K.
My knowledge is limited and this process is complex. I do not think there is a clear answer to the question you are asking. I will give a summary of what I know. Please check out links at the end.
1- What I know is that when we talk about electricity and chemicals we are talking about neurons. As we discussed before two neurons are connected through a synpase. Axon (tail end of neuron.ends as branches) connects to dendrites (branches on the cell body of following neuron) through multiple synapses. A sensory stimulus pass through a neuron as electricity (exchange of ions) and moves onwards. When it reaches the end of neuron it activates the endings and the neuron releases transmitters into the synaptic space. The transmitters combine to receptors in next neuron (located on dendrites) and channels open, threshold changes, electricity generalted and then current moves on. This is basically how a sensory stuimuls moves on to respective areas in brain and from there to other parts of the brain.
2- Sholay consists of sound, images, movement etc. All this sensory inputs travels from sensory organs ears, eyes etc to their respective processing areas in brain where they are processed and you are able to see and hear "holi ke din dil khil jateein hain, rangoon mein rang mil jateein hain".
3- What is memory? Memory is all about making these connections stronger. There is sensory, short and long term memory. When we repeat a number 10 times you make the pathway taking your action (of repeating a number) to brain stronger. This simply means that syanptic transmission process gets stronger which each repeats. This is not a long lasting memory as you simply made that pathway stronger by repeating.
Usually long term memory is the one where you associate it with another memory which is stored. For example if I have a memory of a song Tujhe Dekha to Yeh Janna Sanam stored. Then there is memory of SRk spreading arms. If were to go to a wedding and listen to Tujhe dekha to ye janna the memory of mr shahruk spreading arms will come into action and this process makes both stronger. The brain stores the long term memory in relation to other.
4- I know this does not answer your question. Yours is what happens at the molecular level. There I will say that it is about making those synapses stronger which conveyed the sensory stimuli. I think and here I can be wrong that there is a specific pathway created or perhaps there is a pattern of firing of neurons that identifies a unique event. This is what is not clear to me i.e. how do we seperate these events in terms of neuronal circuitry. It could be that we have separate dedicated circuits for a memory or just order of same circuitry in different combination for different memories,
Watching Sholay would mean a scene going as visual, audio to your brain through sensory nerves. It moves from neuron to next till it gets to sensory areas where it gives you the perception of image and sound and hence a scene. From there it moves to sorting area concerned with memroy where it is organized as one event. If you keep watchting it again and agin then it is selected as long temr memory. There the issue of repeat, association etc comes in. A long term memory is which where synapse are made stonger by more than just firing. Meaning chemical changes which makes synapses (for this event of course) stronger. This involves protein synthesis, increase in dendrites etc. The concept is called synaptic plasticity. There are trillions of neurons storing trillions of stimuli like that. They are interlinked as well.
This is what I know. I am sure this is still a simplistic view of looking at this as this is intself specialzed field. Some links
I will end this with following quote
"While we do not know exactly where memories are stored -- or even HOW they are encoded -- it does appear that there is some biochemical process involved. Memories associated with learning have structural and chemical changes that can be detected by various brain scans. The need for undisturbed "processing time" (i.e. sleep) further suggests that some biological mechanism is involved. The problem is that we don't know what form of information -- electrical or chemical -- is involved with thinking and consciousness. Human memory appears to be much more complex than computer data, which is stored as binary "1 or 0" codes. It seems to involve more than one region of the brain and the stored data can be altered and combined in ways that we do not yet understand. Memory and consciousness is truly the final frontier for science and may potentially bridge the gap between science, religion and philosophy when it is realized"
What I am trying to highlight is that all of the above results from an input. The real interesting thing would be thinking/thoughts which though is based on from all our input/experiences still comes up with something new. Its like formation of your experiences into something new that was not there before in your brain. Thats fascinates me.lol. ok enough of all this. Hope this was helpful
I concur with most of what you said but if you break it all down into simpler and simpler processes down to the quantum level, it is nothing but chaos there, nothing but randomness. The challenge is to map that disorder into the order that we know and see. The challenge is to understand what is it that is goading the apparent disorder towards orderliness.
Agreed.
Edited by King-Anu - 12 years ago
