Star Trek and Personal Identity

Originally posted by kyngj
Good work Mike, you got in there before me.. to throw into this too, while it is true that there are new brain cells born every day, many of them remain the same throughout our life

Joe

and that whould explain why people have memory😀

Originally posted by UncleAdam
and that whould explain why people have memory😀

That's not strictly true Adam - one of the brain areas where new neurons are formed most actively is known as the hippocampus, which is vitally important in the formation and consolidation of new declarative (facts, events) memories in humans.

Originally posted by kyngj
That's not strictly true Adam - one of the brain areas where new neurons are formed most actively is known as the hippocampus, which is vitally important in the formation and consolidation of new declarative (facts, events) memories in humans.

Ah! I believe I've spied a fellow neuroscientist. It's true that the hippocampus is vital in formation of new memories, but how those memories are stored is still primarily a mystery. Some people believe that it's in the number and orientation of the synaptic connections between neurons that are already there, some believe that it's the way those connections can alter the frequency of their firing rate, others believe that there are more molecular substrates within those neurons that change a particular aspect of their makeup that determines what a memory is. A very interesting topic to study, I personally study the formation and retention of motor memory, which is actually stored in a separate place in the brain, called the cerebellum.

-mike

Originally posted by legionnaire
Ah! I believe I've spied a fellow neuroscientist. It's true that the hippocampus is vital in formation of new memories, but how those memories are stored is still primarily a mystery. Some people believe that it's in the number and orientation of the synaptic connections between neurons that are already there, some believe that it's the way those ...[text shortened]... mory, which is actually stored in a separate place in the brain, called the cerebellum.

-mike

Well, I would have thought that the quote and avatar might have given it away Mike, but never mind eh! Your topic of study is also really interesting, I study memory at the toy neuroscience (systems) level, using such infallible techniques as fMRI... All good fun, but a long way off from molecules and synapses, I think luckily, because that stuff is too damn hard!

send a game my way if you're up for a nerdy chat!

Joe