Are memories stored in brains?

After more than a hundred hours of private conversations on Zoom, Rupert and physicist turned neuroscientist Alex Gómez-Marín meet in person to discuss some of their favourite themes.

In this installment, they address the problem of memory localization. Rather than taking for granted that memories are "stored" inside our heads and rushing to speculate about where and how, they instead entertain the idea that memories could be both everywhere and nowhere in particular -- memories are in time, not in space. To make such thoughts more thinkable, they discuss the recurrent historical failures to find actual memory traces in brains and bring forth some of the pioneering ideas of the French philosopher Henri Bergson in the context of current neuroscience. They also discuss concrete experiments to test such hypotheses and reflect more widely on the nature of form and the idea that the laws of nature may be more like habits than eternal edicts. They end by discussing the need for scientific pluralism.

0:00 Questioning the question
0:55 Back to Bergson & James
3:02 Metaphors we think by
5:42 But haven't we already found them?
7:03 Finding the engram: a successful failure
10:03 From localization of function to dynamical patterns
14:41 Putting ideas to test
15:42 The Morphic Resonance hypothesis
19:31 Where are the laws of nature, then?
21:22 A landscape of everyday anomalies
26:01 Wordle, rats, and worms
27:43 A plea for scientific pluralism
31:10 A gift to the world

You can listen to a former Sheldrake & Gomez-Marin encounter on The Future Scientist conversation series here:
... and a plea for a Bergsonian neuroscience here :

This conversation was held on December 8th 2022 at Sheldrake’s house in London.

Spanish transcript by Esbed Cavazos

[jasonwilcox]

He is a reminder that true science thinks outside the box. I love this man.

[SorayaAzizSouleymane]

Mr Sheldrake is such a nice person. I love the way he shares knowledge.

[foxdenham]

Well done chaps. Wonderful stuff. I'm a simple artist and have been thinking similar thoughts all my life. Discussing them with my scientific friends has always been problematic, as it's usually stuck in the woo woo category. Although I am not from a scientific background myself (son of a signal man), I approach the artistic endeavour through first principles and my work is very much informed by the mysteries that science examines. I particularly want to thank Mr Sheldrake for his encouragement. My life would have been a lot more problematic and unfulfilled, if it were not for the bravery and joy he has shown, when experimentally approaching the wonder of life. Thank you.

[mortalclown]

My brain - whatever it does or does not do - is fairly tingling with wonder after listening to this.

Thank you both for the conversation that makes this happen.

Paz y luz, everyone.💫
🎄💙💫

[nothinhappened]

I like the idea that memory is retrodiction it is a 'prediction of the past'. And this is why we remember everything slightly differently, because we are remodeling the event. Trying to predict what happened.

The guy goes onto say how we are constantly trying to predict every moment by modeling it. This is why being in an unfamiliar place or space has us feeling anxiety, because we havnt modeled it to a level where can comfortably predict what might happen. And why we feel comfortable after we have explored it sufficiently

[brianbanks]

I read him in the 1980s, loved his clear thinking with little nuggets from elsewhere, a very pleasant shock he is still here at his best. Thanks for upload

[duyoungjeong]

I love listening to Rupert Sheldrake's ideas. Thank you!

[johnbrown]

It is often the case that the most innovative concepts are developed outside of a University environment. Thank you Rupert for your continued and important work.

[fiestacranberry]

Rupert Sheldrake has been blowing my mind ever since he did his talk on _Is the Sun Conscious?_ The man is a planetary treasure. I am so glad he exists.

[gregorious]

Good discussion. I remember first reading about Morphic resonance, Rupert and Karl Pribram's holographic theory of memory in the late Michael Talbot's book The Holographic Universe. Seems as relevant as ever.

[currentlyidentifyingasfrom]

What a great conversation. I was only discussing this very idea of how the brain couldn't possibly store all of our memories just last week with my mother. I have forwarded this to her, I think she will find it most interesting. I have also recently become aware of thoughts appearing in frozen water and of holograms in the blood. Of course to the closed minded (most of the poplace) this all sounds preposterous. Indeed it would have sounded preposterous to mysefl not that long ago, but these last 4 or 5 years have led to a real awakening within me and I'm far happier for it. Thank you Rupert. I read Merlin's book recently too and found that facinating.

[martynb]

I'm an avid follower of Rupert Sheldrake and I really believe he's on to something - but something occurred to me listening this, to do with memory being everywhere and nowhere rather that inside ourselves. If that were so, why don't we access other people's memories just as easily as our own?

[DavidGoben]

When I worked as a software engineer, it was my job to make the impossible possible. I was a savant at looking at things differently, consistently from "outside the box", so to develop a solution for the problem, making it possible. The interesting thing about this was that after it was known that I had provided a solution, other engineers who could not solve the problem could suddenly solve it, not by seeing how I came to my solution, but by simply knowing that this presumed impossible thing was actually possible.

[johnwoodhead]

It’s refreshing to listen to someone who’s thinking, I find very exciting and alive

[Giatros]

In a way all those scientist who searched for the trace memory and didn't find it, paved the path for us to consider alternative options. Their failure in our "memory" enables the next step to be taken easier.

Thank you for such a fascinating conversation! I feel a sense of wonder and excitement after watching.

[arturos_ideas]

Great! Thank you so much to both of you! You guys did a great talk! Can't wait for the next Sheldrake-&-Gómez-Marín talk!

[halfacanuck]

Anyone who says an idea is "unthinkable" because it's outside their current paradigm isn't a scientist but a bureaucrat.

[jayeff]

A breath of fresh air to have a critical thinker speak who truly follows the scientific method wherever it may lead, and doesn't kow-tow to the (usually wrong) consensus. If nothing else, quantum mechanics should have taught us that humans are not mere observers of an external universe, but in fact have a conscious will which is capable of changing that very universe just by the very act of making a decision (whether to observe the double slit experiment or not, for example), and even further than that, that thought itself has primacy over matter - as evidenced by the fact that before anything at all whatsoever of real consequence is done in the world, it first existed as a thought or thoughts in one or many people's minds. But having said this, personally I still maintain that quantum mechanics is a bit of an illusion, or at least smoke and mirrors, and that Einstein's assessment of the situation will eventually be vindicated as the true one.

[derstoffausdemderjoghurtis]

Thank you for your work Dr. Sheldrake!

[futurecaredesign]

This is great! Please do one with Monica Gagliano; the innovative Plant Consciousness researcher that has proven the Pavlov effect in plants.