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Hi Richard,

Given that we have a very low idling bit-rate and also forget things at a certain rate (or rather we seem unable to access at will, associations of many things that stimulate the re-creation of a pattern of connection leading to the activation of a memory) is it conceivable that the overall bit-rate summed at the interface could be negative ? or maybe negative at times ? For example the day after a memory test, how many of the memory wizards can repeat the sequence they just remembered ? Similarly students who cram for an exam rapidly forget what they have learned after an exam. Maybe i'm mixing up stored data or more accurately potential data with data rates but there must be a rate for memory loss. (This is a different argument to the huge loss at any one time of data that is dumped internally that leads to our latency of awareness)

I suppose as one gets older the rate fluctuates with deeper negative excursions than positive ones compared with our youth. Also what do you reckon is our 'idling' bit-rate when we are, say day-dreaming, rather than actively trying to remember something.

I'm not suggesting this is a bad thing because I don't think these arguments are acounting for the vast network of connectivity in the brain and the rich inner experience of awareness, irrespective of how much that is an illusion of what lies beyond the interface. The other contribution to a net negative rate is of course cell death which occurs all the time. If we lose 10% of our brain cells that still leaves ~ 10^ 10 cells and more importantly given that one cell can be wired to up to 10,000 others the connectivity is an impossibly large number ( eg for n neurons the net sum of different patterns of connection taking two at a time, three at a time etc = 2^(n(n-1)/2) - 1 ie only 7 brain cells leads to over 2 million possible patterns of connection (assuming complete plasticity of all cells ie connectable to all others)

Cheers,

Rioja

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