It's amazing after all these years we're still so bad at improving an average person's recall, even by 50%. It feels like there's a lot of low-hanging fruit there, and all we can do is spaced repetition systems, the memory palace, strong associative scents, etc<p>Weak.<p>If we had a better understanding of memory perhaps we could give the average person techniques for 10x'ing their recall without jumping through Anki hoops.
> <i>Every memory begins with tiny changes inside the brain</i><p>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:<p><a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/these-decapitated-worms-regrow-old-memories-along-with-new-heads-9497048/" rel="nofollow">https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/these-decapita...</a>
"Every memory begins with tiny changes inside the brain. A discovery that helped explain those changes has earned neuroscientist Oswald Steward one of science’s highest honors.<p>Steward received the 2026 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience, a USD 1 million award and one of science’s most prestigious awards, for research that transformed scientists’ understanding of how the brain learns and stores memories."<p>And that's what it took. One comment on hackernews and the prize was retracted. HN at its best! ;)
Well, it does seem that memories may be embedded in the nervous system as well as the brain, so I don’t think the OP is wrong. You sometimes hear of heart transplant patients having other people’s memories / preferences. So, it’s not good evidence, but it’s a possibility.
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.<p>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.
We found that some kind of gigant unicelular life can remember where was food.
I think the evidence is strong, here. Quite difficult to form new memories without a brain!
I think the most interesting thing is that it took 15 years for people to apparently take this seriously. And another 40 to recognize its impact. The original paper[1] was from 1982...<p>Having been in software development for 45 years, I find this crazy. Maybe it's because in our world, it often takes a month for something to spread from "interesting" to the new technology of the day, or the new way of doing things.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.jneurosci.org/content/jneuro/2/3/284.full.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.jneurosci.org/content/jneuro/2/3/284.full.pdf</a>
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."<p>Go watch Stable Diffusion iteratively transform noise into originality.
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