On 12/27/2014 12:05 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
I should say that I am not an expert in this issue, however I have found the paper
entertaining. The history of Samuel Butler is quite interesting. Butler in 19th century
held that heredity and brain memory both involved the storage of information and that
the two forms of storage were the same. Now there are even more papers along this line,
see for example the abstract
DNA methylation and memory formation
http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v13/n11/abs/nn.2666.html
"Memory formation and storage require long-lasting changes in memory-related neuronal
circuits. Recent evidence indicates that DNA methylation may serve as a contributing
mechanism in memory formation and storage."
Notice how vague "may serve as a contributing mechanism" is. He starts the paper by
claiming that memory must be at the molecular level because it "lasts a lifetime", BUT the
only molecule that is persistent over that span is DNA. So he's skipped right over the
possibility of structural persistence of neural networks. He might as well have concluded
that memory is in bones, because "the last a lifetime". But then when he tries to imagine
a way of coding information in DNA the only possibility if methylation. Unfortunately for
his theory he finds methylation is "dynamic" (which he would have called "unstable" except
that would make his hypothesis obviously wrong). The whole paper is speculation to
support and conclusion that was assumed at the beginning.
Brent
Although the meaning of the term "long term memory" might not be exactly the
same.
Evgeii
Am 26.12.2014 um 22:06 schrieb meekerdb:
On 12/26/2014 11:56 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
Am 26.12.2014 um 19:55 schrieb meekerdb:
But to say that DNA provides "long term memory" seems like an
abuse of terminology, making a metaphor into a factual
description. DNA provides "memory" only in that sometimes parts
of it get to reproduce. Genes are more persistent units, but
their "memory" is just get copied to not. There's nothing
Lamarckian about it, much less extra-corporeal survival of
memories. Memories are necessarily things that are remembered.
I don't remember any previous life and I doubt that you do
either.
From the paper:
"In the twenty-first century the Hebbian network hypothesis came
under attack and attention returned to storage of specific items of
mental information as DNA (Dietrich and Been, 2001; Arshavsky,
2006a)."
Dietrich, A., Been, W., 2001. Memory and DNA. J. Theor. Biol. 208,
145-149.
Arshavsky, Y. I., 2006a. ‘The seven sins’ of the Hebbian synapse:
can the hypothesis of synaptic plasticity explain long-term memory?
Prog. Neurobiol. 80, 99-113.
Evgenii
I can't get the first paper. The second is nonsense. Arshavsky
claims that long-term memory can't be based on network structure
because it's not stable - but he doesn't provide any empirical
evidence that it's not stable enough. He ignores the fact that very
little information is actually retained in long-term memory (do you
remember what you had for lunch on this day last month?) and
concentrates on the small amount that is. He ignores the studies
finding that recalling memories tends to change them. And he does
nothing to support his DNA theory except to say DNA is more stable.
It would be trivial to look at some brain cells and see whether they
have identical DNA or not - which would blow away his theory.
Brent
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