In a recent issue of Science, I read that for the first time it has been possible to see with a special laser microscope live neurons in slices of brain tissue obtained from adult lab animals.
From this observation I care to present the following hypothesis. But first, let me remind the reader that hypotheses derive from analogical thinking. In the present situation, the analogy is with two sources. One is the computer workings, the other is my suggestion that memories are made from "super-proteins" ('coprots' and 'feprots').
I propose that the filopodia result from biological reactions to experiences. Is it preposterous to think that the thin slice of brain was 'experiencing'? I say, "yes" with not much of a doubt, because there is no alternative explanation and because experiences leave their engrams in the brain in some fashion. The isolated piece of tissue was physico-chemically acting as it does when the experience enters through the senses in a whole animal!
If so, then what is the material that makes up the filopodia? The answer is, "proteins," because they are the primary biological product. In other words, the experience was being imprinted by means of proteins, including the necessary enzymes!
So now I can understand the proposed "memory banks." They are initially dispersed in the filopodia, where they are kept as coprots and feprots. Fast connections must be created with related memories; how this is done, belongs to conjecture. But it is clear the connecting process requires time. Once the process is completed, a neural "search machine" keeps constant activity going on through the neural network. As this machine is made to act by repeated similar experiences, "shortcuts" to the memories are created, whose "library" has remained in the filopodia!
Many of us have lived the unpleasant self-reproach for not having answered immediately to a disgusting challenge. We ask ourselves, "Why didn't I tell her this and that..?" Too late, but, if a very similar situation presents itself later....
It was observed that filaments ('filopodia') appeared in dendrites, evolving to acquire a peculiar end shape...
The explanation is, then, that the search machine had not entrained itself unto the various components of the related memories. Even if enzymes can work in several trillionths of second, and the electrical current has to travel very short distances in the brain structures, a delay of a fraction of a second allows other processes to interfere with the associative process. We are left only with the regret.