The Binding Problem is how do all the separate neurons in the brain, join together in making a representation of an object when they are not necessarily physically linked.
I have been working on a theory of how implicit memory works, that suggests that the Anterior Cingular Cortex (ACC), has a role in linking together widespread activations of the cerebral cortex into clusters (called functional clusters) according to their activation at the same time. Activation of the ACC during errors would be an attempt to adjust these connections by biasing the strength of the cluster constituents.
At a certain stage in implicit memory these active functional clusters are translated into lists of active neurons called chunks. The chunks can then, being lists, be edited for content, and addressed by location, allowing segregation of individual objects. Functional Clusters because they are content addressable cannot be edited merely adjusted. Chunks being addressable by location can be edited.
The binding problem becomes how does the ACC monitor the activities of the whole cerebral cortex a much simpler problem to solve.
From our vantage point of trying to understand the most complex nervous system on this planet we seem to be facing a binding problem. How to conncet all these neurons so that we have this connected experience. If we want to understand that we have to understand how such system evolved and all the little bindings over the multiple nervous system layers. Nervous system are binding animal bodies together so they interact with their envitonment. The so-called binding problem is not a particular problem but the whole problem and this problem can only be understood along the parth of its solution i.e. the path of the evolution of animal bodies. What is binding at the highest level are the mode of action, the mode of behavior. The nervous system is about actions of the body and these actions are structure into hiearchies of mode of actions.
Simultaneity is not synchronicity or not always at least.
What matters to implicit memory is the fact that neurons fire at the same time, or within a set period of each other, and so form a cluster that is closely linked. At the implicit level, it doesn't matter whether the neurons are visual, auditory, or somatosensory. What matters is that they are linked together into a cluster that can be translated into a chunk.
It is chunking and then sub-chunking that determines what elements will be severally addressable. This is probably achieved by the belt areas in the brain where modal data is compared to other modal data, and new links formed.
I don't think it is a game of inclusion exclusion, but a process whereby if all the steps are done, memory can be achieved at the chunk level, but if not, the presence of memory can't be confirmed.
This is why implicit memory is so difficult to prove, It is likely that priming takes place, long before confirmation is possible, and it might seem that this is a game, because the choices which things get confirmed is not as direct as which things get primed, but that is merely because memory is more complex than it first seems.
We are so used to computer memory, where when we put something in it, it stays, and there is no question that it is there, that a multiple stage memory like we have in humans seems unnecessarily complicated. But it consists because of the nature of the technology in which our neurons are designed.
Dissociation on the other hand is something different. It is more loss of coherence of personality than loss of coherence of memory. It is loss of the narrative associated with ego, not loss of memory, although it may interfere with the laying down of memory. Where that memory is dependent on the narrative. if memory is laid down even at the implicit level, it can be recovered eventually if not in exactly the form it was laid down in. In fact one of the reasons why priming is possible is because at the implicit level, memory exists long before it can be confirmed.
While it is no doubt true that neurons can increase their weights relatively quickly, There is a further role of the reticulating system in dealing with habitation. Essentially a neuron that fires too often habituates and loses its strength of signal. In order to stay active a neuron must overcome this by facilitation, a mechanism that increases the chloride ions in the axonal bud, and thus increases the potential for production of Neurotransmitter. One of my theoretical topics is the idea that the H ion channel, responds to gamma stimulation by increasing the C-Amp secondary signal and thus increasing chloride ion absorption in much the same way that the NMDA ion channel does in the hippocampus. Since H ion channels are found in more neurons this increases the number of neurons that can facilitate.
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