Functional Brain Anatomy for AIs

System 03 Memory & Plasticity.

Perhaps the biggest thing our brain does for us after action and homeostasis is remembering the past ( Memory ) which is mediated by changes through time ( Plasticity ). Both are important for our survival and presumably will be required in some form for advanced AIs ( like CAIs and AGIs ) and so this is a brief summary of what the brain does in those fields along with related structures, we’ll also look at contrasting them with current AIs and highlight things that are not there yet or could be eventually ported.

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Memory

The life story of a basic memory from a systems point of view goes something like this, it starts by you perceiving the environment through specialized receptors and encoding some aspects of it, for we are limited into how much information we can process at any given time.

Like many things in neuroscience there are knowledge gaps and conflicting theories, memory and plasticity are no exceptions and so I'll try sticking to the consensus I think there is and focusing on emulating rather than recreating as this might be a more fruitful route.

We both experience and retain this information by means we don’t fully understand, in different time frames with different retention rates and variable fidelity* but for this memory we can use something we haven’t seen or experienced; now what happens with this information seems to depend on some factors, if it’s very relevant, novel or shocking it might stick immediately, last a long time and be clear, but if it is mundane, inconsequential or you know boring it might not last more than a few seconds and be stored at a very low fidelity.

* Relevant here is the understanding that we don't perceive with 100% fidelity or detail but rather we compose and fill in the blanks both as we experience the environment and as we store and recall it.