in the writings of my books and blog posts I have addressed how specified information with meaning is transmitted along synchronous synaptic networks within encoded wave forms of action potentials. it is a complex mechanism which is becoming better understood with advancing technological capabilities. that the process has more than a material basis within the brain is frequently discounted from discussion since dualist interaction between the immaterial mind and the synaptic networks of the physical brain is not considered when there is a commitment to materialist reductionism. However, dualist interaction is becoming increasingly accepted and addressed in more current neurological postings.
memory is increasingly explained by encoded neural activity within specific parts of the brain that is accessed in an associative manner. Though dualism is not mentioned, i am referring to an article by lukas kunz et al in nature neuroscience, vol. 27, march 2024. the authors show how multiple regions of the brain are active in retrieving selected memories. it is a process referred to as associative memory that “enables the encoding and retrieval of relations beween different stimuli.” the authors “investigated whether associative memory involves temporally correlated spiking of medial temporal lobe neurons that exhibit stimulus-specific tuning. . . . the individual stimuli contributing to particular associative memories are encoded by separate sets of functionally specialized neurons and . . . these neurons interact transiently when individuals encode and retrieve the memories.”
here i question to whom or what the authors are referring by the word “individuals.” in their study the neural basis of associative memory was “in the setting of object-location associations.” they asked “whether the encoding and retrieval of such object-location memories is correlated with the simultaneous activation of object cells, which represent specific objects, and place cells, which code for particular spatial locations. [they] predicted that these coactivatons would occur in a temporally confined manner during hippocampal high-frequency oscillations, termed ‘ripples,’ which are considered important for synchronizing neural activity across brain regions. such ripple-locked coactivity of object and place cells could potentially underlie the encoding and retrieval of associative object-location memories by inducing and (re)activating synaptic connections between the object and place cells that represent the memory elements.” in both animals and humans “hippocampal ripples are relevant to various cognitive functions. neural recordings in patients with epilepsy revealed that ripples correlate with memory encoding, retrieval and consolidation. . . . ripple-locked coactivity of stimulus-specific neurons provides a neural mechanism for the formation and retrieval of associative memories and, more broadly, consititutes a key property of information processing in the human brain.”
hippocampal ripples are defined by the authors as “neural events with brain-wide effects that are considered beneficial for establishing or strengthening synaptic connections.” the authors reasoned that “hippocampal ripples could support associative memory by triggering brain states in which otherwise separate neural representations become linked.”
that a cognitive process of an immaterial mind was involved in this process is suggested by the following statement: “we hypothesized that coactivations of associative object and place cells during retrieval would indicate that the participant remembered a particular location given a specific object, whereas their coactivations during re-encoding would indicate that the participant aimed at (re)learning or updating the correct location of a given object.” I question how the “participant’s” remembering, (re)learning or updating could be reduced solely to the activity of the material brain of the study patient.
i recommend this article to the interested reader of this blog post. information (which can only be generated by a mind, as has been pointed out in previous blog posts) may, according to the authors, propagate from the hippocampus to extra-hippocampal regions during retrieval along synchronous neural pathways, a process that would involve associative, interpretive coordination by an immaterial, cognitive mind.