The Forgetting Machine

The Hopfield model offers us a plausible mechanism of the way the brain stores memories—as patterns of neural activations.

Similarly, the wiring between neurons that tend to fire at different times is weakened.

if two neurons tend to fire at the same time, it is quite likely that this is because they encode similar information, and thus it makes sense that they are connected, and that their connection is reinforced.

each of your neurons were a grain of sand, you would have enough to fill a cargo truck

This increased difficulty in recognizing someone results from the difference between the pattern of activation generated by seeing the person and the one we have used to “store” this person in our memory.

Roy Batty’s words perfectly illustrate how memory relates to questions about who we are—about what it means to be human, and what makes up our identity

as long as my mind and memories remain intact, I will continue to be the same person, no matter which part of my body (other than the brain) is replaced