Molecular information structures in the brain.

Abstract

This paper presents a theory of memory and memory mediated learning based on the manipulation of macromolecular conformations. The main features of the theory are: 1) the brain contains primary and reference neurons; 2) inputs from the external environment produce particular patterns of primary firing; 3) the firing of a primary neuron sensitizes certain of its dendrites; 4) the sensitized primaries are loaded by the reference neuron active at the time and in such a way that they fire when called by this reference neuron, thus reconstructing the original pattern of primary activity. The reference neurons may also be loaded by primaries, thus making it possible for the reconstruction process to be initiated by some feature of the initial input. Each reference neuron loads and calls at most one primary pattern of activity, thereby preventing superposition of memories. If the primaries are loadable by sequences of impulses, this makes it possible to increase the connectivity among the various types of neurons by using party-line organization. The loading and calling processes themselves are mediated by call molecules. These are allosteric enzymes, located in the dendrites of primary and reference neurons, whose states are set either by an impulse or sequence of impulses and which catalyze events leading to impulse formation whenever this input recurs. The call molecules are capable of duplicating their setting (or conformation) using either intra- or interneuronal potentials, thereby ensuring stability of the memory trace. The theory allows for general powers of memory manipulation (by rememorization), for the construction of time ordered, content ordered, and associative data structures, and for computation with global representations of the environment. It makes a large number of testable predictions, provides a natural interpretation for the structure of the cerebral cortex, and accounts for: resistance to cooling, differential effects of chemical agents on short and long term memory, distributed character of memory, accessibility of memories by stimulation of specific brain loci, and also the details of classical conditioning and instrumental learning.