Do memories occupy a physical space in the brain?
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This is a fundamental question in psychology – the touchstone paper was written by Lashley in 1950 called “In Search of the Engram” – here are the two big takeaways:
(1) memories are not localized but are instead distributed within functional areas of the cortex and
(2) memory traces are not isolated cortical connections between inputs and outputs.
A couple of related works:
“Shadows of the Mind” by Roger Penrose, which is less about memory and more about consciousness (the entire field pivoted in the same way).
If that scratches an itch, you should check out “The Self and the Brain” by Karl Popper.
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