Mark Rosenzweig is a very well known learning and memory researcher. He is
at UC Berekeley, I believe. You can search at:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/
under the name: Rosenzweig MR
But what he is saying there I do not believe is referring to a specific
piece of research. This is just a commonly held belief among memory
researchers that memory is essentially unlimited. Various models posit
that the networks that store memory have an essentially unlimited
capacity. This is usually achieved because elemental representations are
re-used in many episodic representations (or something to this effect).
So whereas a computerized memory of you seeing a cat and then the next day
seeing it again would have complete copies of the representation of the
cat and yourself (and the room, etc.) which are unconnected, the brains'
memory would use the same representation of the cat and yourself and room
for both memories; these would be seperated by some additional time
representation.
The only problem with this kind of storage is that it is subject to
massive interference (of course, this isn't necessarily a problem... since
it would lead to "spreading of activation" which isnt necessarily a bad
thing).
I'm not sure where you can find a discussion of this, except maybe in a
book on parallel distributed processing, or in an introductory text on
memory
Good luck!
Stephan
In article <19990104110231.01054.00005707 at ng-fs1.aol.com>,
socratisa7 at aol.com (Socratisa7) wrote:
> >
> >Can anyone here answer a question I have.
> >
> >I was wondering what would happen to the brain if a way was found to halt
> >the ageing process. By this I mean prolonging life for ever, barring
> >accident, murder or suicide. I am not in any way knowledgeable about the
> >science of the brain, so forgive me for my mistakes, but I believe that the
> >brain cannot keep learning forever and also that brain-cells die and are not
> >replaced, while other cells are. This being the case it seems to me that if
> >we could 'live forever' after a long enough time we would simply become
> >vegetables as our brains lose their ability to think.
>> I have been researching a parallel question. One, from my reading, it would
> take centuries, maybe even a few millennia, of constant learning before brain
> space would be used up.
> I myself would like to know the basis behind this conclusion, since only this
> conclusion stated in comparable ways is what I've found, not the research to
> back it up.
>> It is the research that I am particularly interested in. One interesting
> quote, the most promising I've found is:
> "...we now know, through the work of Dr. Mark Rosen[z]weig in Paris, that even
> if your brain were fed 10 items of data (each item being a simple word or
> image) every second for 100 years, it would still have used less than
one-tenth
> of its storage capacity."
> --Buzan, Tony. "The Mind Map Book." p56.
>> Does anyone know how I could get Dr. Rosenzweig's research, either in a book,
> findable in a medical library (I live near Albany, NY. What would be the best
> place to go around here for medical research?) or online without having to go
> through a bajillion misses?
>> Also, I remember reading in the newspaper a while ago that the old "truism"
> that neurons don't grow more is a mistake; there was evidence of increased
> amount of neurons I think in the hippocampus, but please don't quote me here,
> my memory is tentative on the details.
>> A tentative hypothesis: even if at a given point of time all room for making
> synaptic connections in the brain are used up, does the brain have a mechanism
> of automatically "rewiring" old, hardly used, and weak synaptical connections
> in response to present learning/attention?
>> If anyone has information on how to get Rosenzweig's research or other
research
> (I'm looking for specifics!) about the information capacity of the brain,
> please email me:
>Socratisa7 at aol.com>> Socratisa