How are we able to memorize different senses? Is the process any different? For example, remembering a picture (sight) vs a taste.
In: Biology
Memory is a hot topic in neuroscience, but we don’t have any solid big picture concepts. For all senses, you have receptors. Photoreceptors for sight, olfactory receptors for smell, gustatory receptors for taste, all sorts of mechnoreceptors for haptic or touch sense, and hair cells for sound.
Photoreceptors are divided into groups, some for just intensity so black and white. Some for the three fundamental colors. An image reaching your retina imprints itself spatially meaning it activates receptors spatially scattered like the shape of the image. The spatial organization of these receptors is preserved in the brain, meaning the neurons processing signal from receptor are actually spaced about similar to the receptors position relative to each other. So in essence you imprint an image on your brain that is faithfully captured like in the physical world. How do you store this? I’m not sure, but memory is thought to be stored as synaptic connections. So you allocate some neurons to represent something, and strengthening their connections with each other makes you remember it. Next time you see the object, those same neurons fire and you strengthen them more. When you imagine the object, you fire through these neurons too.
Olfactory and taste receptors are different. Olfactory you have countless types, for the many many odor molecules. Each specific to a molecule. Taste we have a handful. Food you eat and odors you smell are made up of many compounds with variable proportion. The combination of activation signals from multiple receptors gives a pattern, a fingerprint for a given stimulus. You remember that pattern. Presumably in a similar way as above with synaptic strength.
Hearing is a bit similar to sight. The receptors are arranged spatially in a way that different sound frequencies activate different receptors. They’re sort of like sitting on a membrane whose thickness is gradually decreasing. Depending on the frequency of the sound, a given thickness oscillates, so only one part of the membrane oscillates activating the receptors in that location. And you perceive the signal also as combinations of frequencies and their intensities. So it’s patterns again.
Mechnoreceptors, we have a bunch. Some for vibration some for pressure some for soft touch etc.
But the main concept remains. You have neurons representing certain things. And you strengthen their connections making them easier to activate and therefore the concept they represent more memorable.
Edit: hot not joy lol
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