The discovery that changed how scientists think about memory
ibm.com43 points by rbanffy 3 days ago
43 points by rbanffy 3 days ago
> Every memory begins with tiny changes inside the brain
Maybe. But the brain is not the only place where memory is stored. Flat worms remember things (and skills!) after their head has been cut off and they regrew it:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/these-decapita...
Flatworms branched off our side of the animal tree of life very early on. They're on the same side as molluscs, some of whom (cephalopods) are famous for having a more distributed nervous system.
Granted though many/most organs are stateful and somewhat adaptive - in a sense they'll "remember" what happened. Even plants possess that to varying degrees.
At least spinal cord has a kind of memory related to movement, but that's something else than episodic memory obviously.
I think the evidence is strong, here. Quite difficult to form new memories without a brain!
Great result on the biochemistry of memory storage. Then they venture into philosophy: "They still struggle to explain the spark that transforms information into insight."
Go watch Stable Diffusion iteratively transform noise into originality.
i'm sorry, I cannot agree that anything like that can create "originality".
Creativity can be thought of as a combination of two things: A random idea generator, and a nonsense filter. Generate new random results ideas, filter out the nonsense ones, and you’ve generated good ideas.
A massive chasm exists between good, creative ideas and ideas that aren’t nonsense.