Do memories occupy a physical space in the brain?
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As someone who develops AI, this is my take on it.
There are neurons and axons in the brain.
Neurons are like switches and axons are like cables.
A neuron is “switched” when a certain amount of electricity is collected at its input. Just like a real switch will turn on lights when we press it hard enough.
The electricity a neuron outputs will go through an axon to the input of another neuron. A real switch could turn on a light or a small machine which will press another switch using a cable to connect them.
You could actually make a ring out of 3 switches pressing each other. If you press switch A, it will press switch B.
B will switch C and C will switch A again.
Then A will switch B and B -> C.
This will loop forever and this is how our brain might memorize something.
So we would think our memories wouldn’t take up space, right? Kind of.
The amount of electricity going to the other neuron will depend on the thickness of an axon. Just like huge cables are used to transmit gigantic amounts of electricity from one city to another, bigger axons will give space for more electricity to pass.
As our body can grow when we eat enough food, our axons can also grow when we use them a lot.
A short example of why this is interesting:
We have 2 switches:
– Switch A
– Switch B
and 2 cables:
– Cable A
– Cable B
Switch A is connected to a lamp via Cable A.
Switch B is connected to the same lamp via Cable B.
If cable A was too thin, Switch A couldn’t turn on the light, because no electricity would fit through the cable, while Switch B could.
This could impact the circle we talked about earlier.
The switches will only flip each other if the cables are thick enough.
Thus our memory depends on the thickness of axons and they occupy physical space.
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