So-Called "Brain Computer Interfaces" Do Nothing to Show That Mind Uploading Is Possible

The concept of "mind uploading" is the entirely fallacious notion that a human might achieve a radically different form of existence by some process in which his mind and memories are transferred into a computer or robot. The concept is completely erroneous because your brain is not the source of your mind, and the brain is not the storage place of human memories. So there is nothing in a brain that could be transferred to some machine to transfer your mind to a machine. 

You should not have an ounce of regret after reading of facts about brains that debunk the idea of mind uploading. The very reasons why it is will always be impossible to upload your mind into a computer or a robot are the same reasons why you won't ever need to do any such thing.  Your mind and memory cannot be explained by anything in the brain, and that means you must have a mind and memory because you have something like a soul. Having such a soul that is not a product of your brain, you need not worry about your existence ending when your brain dies. Bodies and brains die, but souls do not.  The massive evidence for paranormal phenomena such as out-of-body experiences, deathbed visions and near-death experiences provide independent reasons for thinking your mind will survive death. 

There is a rather recent paper on this topic of mind uploading, a paper with some false claims. The paper is published by something called "The World Journal of Advanced Research and Reviews," which does not seem to be an established and respected scientific journal, but one of the many "scientific journals" that make money from authors paying to get their papers published. Entitled "The Digital Afterlife: AI Cloud Consciousness as the New Immortality," the paper is by someone named Dhruvitkumar V. Talati, who seems to have no higher academic credentials such as a master's degree or a PhD.  Looking at Talati's achievements, as listed on the page here, we seem to see lots of good  experience with computers and technology. But the page says nothing about any training in neuroscience or psychology, nor does it mention any writings on such topics. Based on this page and the articles of Talati I see on Google Scholar, Talati does not seem like a very deep and serious scholar of either brains or minds; and his paper makes some false statements on these topics. 

Before discussing his misstatements, let me discuss the "brain-computer interfaces" which Talati frequently appeals to. Such things are unimpressive affairs, which do nothing to raise any hopes of mind uploading. The simplest thing that could be called a "brain computer interface" is simply an EEG device connected to a computer. Such a thing looks rather like this:

All that is going on in such an affair is that brain waves from a person are being read by use of an EEG head cap, with the brain wave data going to some computer. The data is extremely noisy data consisting of squiggly lines with lots of ups and downs. It looks like what we see below:

By analyzing such data, nothing can be understood about what a person is thinking or remembering. No one has ever been able to discover any "neural code" allowing someone to figure out what a person is thinking or remembering from analyzing such lines. Traces of muscle movements sometimes show up in such lines, and detection of such muscle movements may be misleadingly depicted as "thought reading." 

There is another type of "brain-computer interface" that is more invasive.  Electrodes may be implanted inside someone's brain. That does not offer much of anything more than what you get from an EEG cap that does not require opening up someone's skull. 

Recently some organizations have gone one step further, by implanting into someone's brain some tiny chip. Such a thing does nothing to create any real connection between a brain and a computer. Still the only thing that is occurring is the reading of electrical activity from the brain. 

It is important to clarify what is NOT occurring under these so-called "brain computer interfaces":

• No one is actually reading thoughts. A paralyzed person with such an invasive "brain computer interface" may be able to control a cursor (a little symbol on a computer screen) by moving such a cursor in different directions. But this occurs not by the reading of thoughts from the brain, but by the system picking up indications of muscle movements. Typically such systems include eye readers that can pick up tiny movements of the eye and eye focus, and cause a screen cursor to move in a corresponding way. And even if the eye is not directly tracked, because muscle movements cause blips in the lines of brain waves, it is rather easy to analyze brain waves and pick up things corresponding to tiny muscle movements or intended muscle movements. 
• No actual thought-deciphering of brain waves is occurring.  You cannot pick up what a person is thinking from brain waves. So if I silently think "Abraham Lincoln was a good leader," you can never pick up any such thought from analyzing brain waves. 
• There is no reading whatsoever of synapse states. 
• There is no reading whatsoever of neuron states. 
• There is no reading whatsoever of memories stored in a brain. Microscopic examination of brain tissue has never revealed any trace of learned knowledge or episodic memories by examining brain tissue. Microscopic examination has occurred abundantly with electron microscopes very many times larger than anything going on in a so-called brain-computer interface.  

Now lets look at some of the misstatements in Talati's paper. 

Talati: "The rapid advancements in neuroscience and brain mapping, coupled with the development of brain-computer interfaces, have paved the way for the potential transfer of human cognition into a digital medium." 

Reality: There has been no such progress -- no such way has been paved.  Claims of "mind reading" by insertion of brain chips are misleading. No actual "mind reading" is occurring, and the very meager results come from tricks such as eye-tracking, in which eye movements are used to guide a cursor.  The primitive "brain-computer interfaces" created thus far (described above) offer no reason for hoping that there could ever occur a "potential transfer of human cognition into a digital medium." 

Talati: "At the core of the concept of AI cloud consciousness lies the idea of transferring human cognition, thoughts, memories, and personality into a digital medium. This process involves the use of brain-computer interfaces and advanced neuroscience techniques to map and replicate an individual's neural patterns and cognitive processes (Campbell et al., 2002). With the proliferation of cloud computing and the ever-increasing capabilities of artificial intelligence, the storage and simulation of human consciousness within a virtual realm have become a tangible possibility."

Reality:  No one has done any work making the idea of mind uploading anything like a "tangible possibility." The progress of cloud computing and artificial intelligence is merely progress in computer programming and data processing.  There has been no neuroscience progress that should make anyone believe in the possibility of mind uploading. To the contrary, the more we learn about the physical shortfalls of brains, the less confidence we should have in the possibility of mind uploading. As discussed above, the "brain-computer interfaces" developed thus far are crude affairs offering no sound basis for suspecting a possibility of mind uploading. 

Talati: "Researchers in the field of neuroscience have made significant strides in mapping and understanding the complex neural patterns and cognitive processes that underlie human consciousness. (Campbell et al., 2002) (Goh, 2021) Through the use of advanced neuroimaging techniques, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography, scientists have been able to identify and analyze the neural correlates of various cognitive functions, including memory, decision-making, and self-awareness."

Reality: The description of a human mind as mere "consciousness" is a profoundly misleading word trick of many modern writers, a trick I call "consciousness shadow speaking," in which something of oceanic depth (the human mind) is made to look like the faintest shadow of what it is. Human minds, human mental capabilities, and human mental experiences are a million times more complex than mere "consciousness." No progress has been made in explaining brain causes of the main facets of human mental activity. Scientists are utterly unable to explain how a brain could produce any such things as thinking, personhood, imagination, insight, learning, or recall. When scientists try to explain such things, they give us only the most vacuous hand-waving, such as incoherently trying to explain the formation of memories as "synapse strengthening."  

Excluding all of the "lying with colors" diagrams that mislead us by depicting tiny "1 part in 200" differences as if they were big differences, the search for neural correlates of mental functions has done nothing to substantiate claims that mental functions such as thinking, imagination, learning and recall are brain processes. As discussed here, here, and here, such studies typically show only tiny differences such as 1 part in 200 between resting brains and the brains of people engaging in mental activities.  As such differences are merely the type of differences we would expect from chance variations, they do nothing to support claims that mental activities are brain functions. 

Talati: "The field of brain-computer interfaces continues to evolve, with researchers working to overcome the complexities of neural dynamics and the potential impact of psycho-neurophysiological fluctuations on brain signals (Saha et al., 2021) (Maiseli et al., 2023) (Mak & Wolpaw, 2009). The advancement in neuroscience and the development of brain-computer interfaces form the scientific foundation of AI cloud consciousness (Mak & Wolpaw, 2009) (Rao et al., 2012) (Saha et al., 2021). BCI [brain-computer interfaces] serve as a critical bridge, enabling the translation of neural signals into digital commands that can be used to transfer and simulate human consciousness within a virtual environment."

It is rather obvious what is going on in the statement above. Talati is just repeating over and over again the phrase "brain-computer interfaces" or BCI, a phrase he uses 16 different times in his paper.  The references do nothing to establish any possibility of mind-uploading, because all so-called "brain computer interfaces" are very crude affairs which do little other than than analyze the noisy ups and downs of brain wave lines. While continuing again and again to appeal to "brain-computer interfaces,"  Talati is making some false statements. Specifically:

• It is very false that "the advancement in neuroscience and the development of brain-computer interfaces form the scientific foundation of AI cloud consciousness."  No work in these fields provide any basis for thinking that computers or artificial intelligence will ever be conscious. 
• It is utterly false that "BCI [so-called brain computer interfaces] serve as a critical bridge, enabling the translation of neural signals into digital commands that can be used to transfer and simulate human consciousness within a virtual environment."
• It is utterly false that "brain-computer interfaces...which serve as a critical enabler for mind uploading."  None of the work done in so-called brain-computer interfaces provide any realistic hope that a mind could ever be uploaded into a computer. 

We can tell the lack of any theoretical foundation for mind uploading by how infrequently Taliti refers to memory.  He makes no substantive references to memory. His paper's two uses of the word "memory" are both vacuous passing references, mere statements in which he claims that there are "neural correlates of various cognitive functions, including memory, decision-making, and self-awareness."  There is actually no good evidence that brains look or behave any different when you are learning, deciding or recalling.  Taliti's paper also makes no uses of the word "synapse" or "synaptic," and its only reference to neurons is the incorrect statement that humans have trillions of neurons (the actual number is something like 86 billion). It rather seems that when he wrote this paper on mind uploading, Taliti was neither a very deep and serious scholar of human brains, nor a very deep and serious scholar of human minds.  An excellent knowledge of computer technology does not qualify you to write a paper claiming that mind uploading will be possible. The more you objectively study brains and their many physical shortfalls which exclude them as a source of the human mind, the less you will tend to believe in the possibility of human minds being  uploaded into computers. And the more deeply and thoroughly you study human minds and human mental experiences and human mental capabilities in all their strange and spooky diversity, and the best examples of human mental performances, the less you will tend to believe in the possibility of human minds being  uploaded into computers.

No one should take seriously the notion of uploading minds into computers unless there is ever announced the electronic reading or microscopic reading of memories from human brains.  Such a thing has never occurred, and it never will occur. If human memories existed in human brains, scientists would have been able to read such memories around the year 1960, when microscopic technology advanced far enough to scan the tiniest components in brains. Around that same year of 1960, scientists were able to discover that there is genetic information in DNA, and were able to figure out the coding system by which such information is represented. 

LA Times Writer Falls "Hook, Line and Sinker" for the Groundless Legend of Neuroscientist Memory Manipulation

 "Exaggerated claims and low levels of reproducibility are commonplace in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, due to an incentive structure that demands 'newsworthy' results."  -- Psychologist Richard Ramsey (link). 

When a writer is not a careful scholar of the innumerable shortfalls, bad research methods and Questionable Research Practices so very abundant in today's neuroscience research, such a writer may be a pushover for the groundless boasts of a glory-hounding researcher. Such a writer may write a "puff piece" that signals the writer's lack of critical scrutiny when reporting on weak scientific research. The latest example of such a writer is Corinne Purtill, a staff writer for the LA Times, who has written a very misleading puff piece about the neuroscientist researcher Steve Ramirez. It has the nonsensical title "‘Memory manipulation is inevitable’: How rewriting memory in the lab might one day heal humans." 

We have from Purtill this entirely false claim with no basis in fact: "But over the last two decades, neuroscientists have found mind-bending ways to control this process (in mice, at least): implanting false memories, deleting real ones, resurrecting memories thought lost to brain damage, detaching the memory of an emotional reaction to one event and attaching it to the memory of another." These claims have been made in neuroscience papers, but none of those papers described robust research. All of the studies described by such papers were examples of very low-quality research, guilty of multiple types of Questionable Research Practices, such as the use of way-too-small study group sizes. 

We have in the article boastful quotes from neuroscientist Steve Ramirez, quotes boasting that scientists can manipulate memories by fiddling with brains.

Purtill gives us this account, which is not justified by what the paper reports:

'Three years earlier, a University of Toronto team identified the neurons that lit up when a mouse was exposed to a scary stimulus — in this case, a sound that earlier accompanied a shock. The Toronto researchers then injected the mice with a toxin that killed only those brain cells that lit up when they heard the sound. The result: The treated mice no longer demonstrated a fear response when the sound was played. Essentially ,the scientists had erased a specific memory."

No, they did not do any such thing. The link Purtill has given is to  the 2012 paper "Selective Erasure of a Fear Memory," a bad example of low-quality neuroscience research, guilty of multiple forms of Questionable Research Practices. Reliable neuroscience research requires study group sizes of at least 15 or 20 subjects per study group, but that did not go in this research. 

In Figure 1 of the paper we see a larger-than average sample size was used for two groups (17 and 24), but that a way-too-small sample size of only 4 was used for the corresponding control group. For reliable rodent neuroscience research, you need a sufficiently high number of animals in all study groups, including the control group. The same figure tells us that in another experiment the number of animals in the study group were only 5 or 6, which is way too small. Figure 3 tells us that in other experiments only 8 or 9 mice were used, and Figure 4 tells us that in other experiments only 5 or 6 mice were used. So this paper is guilty of using way-too-small study group sizes. No mention is made in the paper of any blinding protocol, a necessity for a study of this type to be taken seriously as reliable research.  The paper relies heavily on judgments of fear in rodents, made by the utterly unreliable technique of judging "freezing behavior." All rodent research studies using this unreliable technique are examples of junk science, for reasons explained at length in my post here. 

Next Purtill gives us this account:

"For their experiment, the pair identified brain cells in a mouse hippocampus that activated when the animal received a startling shock. Then they took the mouse out of the enclosure where the shock occurred and placed it in a new box with no sights or other sensory cues associated with the memory of its old environment. Next, using millisecond-long pulses of light, they activated those same brain cells — without the physical shock of the earlier stimulus.

The mouse acted exactly as it had when the shock happened, even though no shock occurred. You can’t interview a mouse about its memories. Researchers base their conclusions on the animal’s behavior. And in this case, it appeared that they’d turned a memory on."

The link is to the paper “Optogenetic stimulation of a hippocampal engram activates fear memory recall,” which is another low-quality paper guilty of multiple types of Questionable Research Practices.  We see in Figure 3 of that paper that inadequate sample sizes were used. The number of animals listed in that figure (during different parts of the experiments) are 12, 12, 12, 5, and 6, for an average of 9.4. That is not anything like what would be needed for a moderately convincing result, which would be a minimum of 15 or 20 animals per study group. The experiment relied crucially on judgments of fear produced by manual assessments of freezing behavior, which were not corroborated by any other technique such as heart-rate measurement. Such attempted judgments of "freezing behavior" are not a reliable method for judging whether a rodent is afraid or whether a rodent remembers anything. The study does not describe in detail any effective blinding protocol, The study involved stimulating certain cells in the brains of mice, with something called optogenetic stimulation. The authors have assumed that when mice freeze after stimulation, that this is a sign that they are recalling some fear memory stored in the part of the brain being stimulated. What the authors neglect to tell us is that stimulation of quite a few regions of a rodent brain will produce freezing behavior. So there is actually no reason for assuming that a fear memory is being recalled when the stimulation occurs. We have no robust evidence that any such thing as an activation of fear memory recall has occurred. 

It is laughable to hear Purtill's narrative about "a mouse" here, as if a reported response of "a mouse" was good evidence. As a general rule, experiments with rodents don't count for anything unless an effect is shown with at least 15 or 20 subjects, and almost always 15 subjects is too small a study group. 

We then have a quote from Sheena Josselyn claiming that "when you can do those sorts of things to memories, you know you have found the neural basis of a memory." Josselyn is not to be trusted on this matter.  If you look up Josselyn's papers on Google Scholar, you will fail to find any original research by her or anyone else that provides robust evidence to support her claims about memories being found in rodent brains. What you will be most likely to find are bad examples of low-quality research guilty of Questionable Research Practices, such as way-too-small study group sizes, and the use of unreliable techniques for judging whether a mouse recalled, typically the utterly unreliable method of trying to judge whether "freezing behavior" occurred. An example is her low-quality 2024 paper here, which used way-too-small study group sizes such as only 8 or 9 rodents, and also used the utterly unreliable method of trying to judge recall in rodents by judging "freezing behavior." Another paper by her (the 2023 paper here) has the same defects, and is just as poor quality. 

We then have in the LA Times article by  Purtill another grand account of neuroscientist work, one that ends with the claim "the scientists had created a false memory, another seminal feat."  The claim is as untrue as her previous narratives of groundless scientist boasts. The link is to this paper by the MIT memory lab, with the grandiose title “Creating a False Memory in the Hippocampus.” When we look at Figure 2 and Figure 3, we see that the sample sizes used were paltry: the different groups of mice had only about 8 or 9 mice per group. Such a paltry sample size does not result in any decent statistical power, and the results cannot be trusted, since they very easily could be false alarms. No convincing evidence has been provided of creating a false memory. Once again, we have a study that is completely dependent upon an unreliable technique for attempting to measure memory in rodents, the technique of trying to judge "freezing behavior." All neuroscience studies relying on that technique are junk science, for reasons explained at length in my post here. 

Finally, Purtill tells us another narrative glorifying Ramirez, citing as her source the paper "Activating positive memory engrams suppresses depressionlike behavior." It's another example of low-quality research work from Ramirez and his co-authors. The study group sizes used are mostly much smaller than 15, and no experimental neuroscience paper using fewer than 15 subjects per study group should be taken seriously. We read of way-too-small study group sizes such as only 3, only 5, only 12, and only 9. You may realize how low-quality this research is when you consider that it is research involving mice. Any claim to have suppressed  "depressionlike behavior" in mice is laughable, because of the difficulty of reliably verifying or gauging sadness in mice. You can reliably detect fear in mice, by measuring heart rates, which spike very dramatically when mice are afraid. Rather than using this very reliable technique for measuring fear in mice, neuroscientists senselessly prefer the unreliable technique of trying to judge "freezing behavior," probably because unreliable measurement techniques increase the chance of false alarms that can be leveraged to help get "publishable" results. 

Writing in this article like a pushover cheerleader science journalist fawning over a boasting scientist, and believing his unfounded boasts "hook, line and sinker," Purtill has apparently failed to apply any critical scrutiny to the low-quality research she is citing. Instead of producing this type of misleading puff piece, she should study the characteristics that distinguish high-quality neuroscience research from low-quality research guilty of Questionable Research Practices. One of those characteristics is the presence of a sample size calculation, in which a researcher does a calculation to justify that the sample size and study group sizes that he used were adequate to provide a decent statistical power. None of the papers that Purtill has referenced has any sample size calculation. That's a big "red flag" that Purtill ignored. 

"Articles published during the past decade bemoaning the inability of mainstream neuroscience to generate replicable or even reproducible outcomes are too many to count.......If we weren't living it, it would be hard to imagine how a research culture could have strayed so far from the path of rationality as has the culture of neuroscience. Fundamental problems in theory and method have long been flagged (e.g. Teller, 1984; Jonas & Kording, 2018; Brette, 2019), but critiques have left barely a trace on the hard-beaten track of routine, mainstream practice" -- A vision scientist, 2023 (link). 

Appendix: Let us look at the "Freezing Percentage" graph typically shown in studies of this type. The graph will typically look like this:

What is being graphed here? The graphs are made after observing mice during some arbitrary short time period such as 30 seconds or 60 seconds or 90 seconds or 2 minutes or 3 minutes, and simply trying to record what percentage of the time the mouse was immobile. The label "freezing behavior" is a loaded, subjective term. You cannot tell from mere non-movement whether a mouse was afraid or whether a mouse recalled anything. 

Contrary to minimal standards of good scientific research, such graphs typically fail to mention the length of time over which this non-movement occurred, as if the researcher were trying to hide something.  If graphs of this type were decently done, they would be labeled like this:

Can we tell anything about whether a mouse was afraid or whether he remembered better or worse from the percentage of time that the mouse stays immobile during such short time period such as 90 seconds? We cannot. The assumption that such graphs tell us anything about mouse recall or mouse fear is a silly, erroneous assumption. Living for many years in a New York apartment in which I would many times see a mouse and shriek loudly, I never once saw a mouse "freeze in fear" upon experiencing this fearful stimulus. Inevitably the mouse just ran away. You cannot tell anything about whether a mouse remembered or was afraid from the percentage of time the mouse is immobile during some time interval. 

When "freezing behavior" judgments are made, there are no standards in regard to how long a length of time an animal should be observed when recording a "freezing percentage"  (a percentage of time the animal was immobile). An experimenter can choose any length of time between 30 seconds and five minutes or more (even though it is senseless to assume rodents might "freeze in fear" for as long as a minute).  Neuroscience experiments typically fail to pre-register experimental methods, leaving experimenters to make analysis choices "on the fly." So you can imagine how things work. An experimenter might judge how much movement occurred during five minutes or ten minutes after a rodent was exposed to a fear stimulus. If a desired above-average amount of immobility (or a desired below-average amount of immobility) occurred over 30 seconds, then 30 seconds would be chosen as the interval to be used for a "freezing percentage" graph. Otherwise,  if a desired above-average amount of immobility (or a desired below-average amount of immobility) occurred over 60 seconds, then 60 seconds would be chosen as the interval to be used for a "freezing percentage" graph. Otherwise,  if a desired above-average amount of immobility (or a desired below-average amount of immobility) occurred over two minutes, then two minutes would be chosen as the interval to be used for a "freezing percentage" graph. And so on and so forth, up until five minutes or ten minutes. If the researcher still has no "more freezing" effect he can report, the researcher can always do something like report on only the last minute of a larger time length, or the last two minutes, or the last three minutes, or the last four minutes. Because there are 10 or 12 different ways in which the data can be analyzed, each with about a 50% chance of success, the likelihood of the researcher being able to report some "higher freezing level" is almost certain, even if the tested interventions or manipulations had no real effect on memory. Such shenanigans drastically depart from good, honest, reliable experimental methods, and any researcher engaging in such shenanigans should be ashamed of himself. 

In order to give a little bit of reassurance that such shenanigans are not occurring in the worst way, it is essential that every scientific paper providing a "freezing percentage" graph should always at least tell us what the time interval used was when such an estimation of "freezing behavior" was made. Astonishingly, most papers providing such "freezing behavior" charts fail to even specify the time interval corresponding to such charts.  So we will get again  and again charts claiming that some percentage of "freezing behavior" occurred over some time interval, but we are usually not even told what the time interval was. This is experimental science at its clumsiest and most dysfunctional. Of course, by failing to specify the time interval used, a researcher makes it easier to hide his malfeasance if he arbitrarily uses different time intervals in different places in his analysis, in order to gin up more convincing "freezing behavior" charts, or if the researcher uses some arbitrary time interval (chosen to yield more pleasing results) different from the time interval most commonly used when such "freezing behavior" judgments are made. And the more researchers fail to specify the time interval used when making such "freezing behavior" judgments, the harder it is to tell that researchers are not following any research standard, but are simply analyzing using whatever time interval leaves them with the result that produces the more convincing freezing-behavior charts. 

"Freezing behavior" charts are a sign of junk science. Every paper relying on such charts should be dismissed as junk science.  There are reliable ways to measure whether a mouse recalled or feared something. One way is to measure heart rate, which very reliably increases dramatically when mice are afraid. Another reliable way to measure recall or fear in mouse is to use a fear stimulus avoidance method, illustrated in the chart below. 

For more than 12 years, it has been very easy for almost anyone to create hour-long videos, and upload them to www.youtube.com. It would be very easy for any scientist  claiming "different percentages of freezing behavior" in two groups (an experimental group and a control group) to document such a claim by creating an hour-long video and uploading that video to Youtube.com, so that anyone could check by looking at a Youtube link provided in the paper. Such a video would simply show how each mouse in the experimental group responded during some two-minute or 90-second period matching the displayed "freezing behavior" chart, and also how each mouse in the control group responded during some two-minute or 90-second period matching the displayed "freezing behavior" chart. Although such videos would be very easy to make and upload to Youtube.com, we never see neuroscience papers providing such links. This is probably because those producing such papers with "Freezing %" charts do not want independent observers to be able to check on their work in making such charts, which will not hold up well to scrutiny. Claims in "big boast" science papers of greater or smaller "freezing behavior" should never be trusted unless such a Youtube.com link (or an equivalent link) is provided. Similarly, you should never trust any person today who claims the ability to levitate, if the person does not even provide a video showing this claimed ability.  

The Neuroscience News Has Lots of Science Slop

 A scientific paper entitled "Laser Ablation of Human Guilt" gives us an example of poor work by neuroscientists. The title is nonsense, and the authors did nothing to credibly document that there occurred any such thing as a reduction of guilt by surgery or laser treatment. The paper seems to have some  embellishment and claims about what a patient experienced that are not justified by any data presented. 

Here is the narrative presented by the paper (I will later explain why some of these claims are probably embellishments not to be trusted). 

(1) A 14-year-old girl "began to notice brief but distinct episodes of guilt and distress."

(2) The patient had a seizure. 

(3) Electrodes were inserted into the patient's brain, and regions of the brain were electrically stimulated. In one area such electrical stimulation produced "feelings of intense guilt and distress."

(4) A tumor was discovered, and the girl underwent laser ablation treatments. But "after a few weeks the guilt episodes returned."

(5) Additional laser ablations treatment was directed at the tumor. "Five years later, the patient remains free of these guilt episodes or any other seizure phenomena and is off anti-seizure medications."

The authors try to suggest a narrative that the tumor was causing the girl's guilt, and that by zapping the tumor, the guilt episodes were fixed. Under the neuroscientist's belief that the brain is the source of the mind, the idea that a brain tumor might cause guilt makes no sense. Guilt requires high levels of cognition. First there is the recall of some action that a person took. Then there is an insight into ethics, a realization that the action you took was morally faulty. In guilt there is often the subtle mental faculty of empathy, in which you "put yourself into the shoes" of someone who was harmed by your bad deed. The idea that the advanced cognition involved in guilt would be caused by a brain tumor makes no sense. You might as well believe that a brain tumor would cause you to originate a new physics theory or cause you to solve some math problem you could not solve. 

The paper seems to have various examples of untrustworthy statements suggestive of embellishments or misstatements. The paper claimed the girl "began to notice brief but distinct episodes of guilt and distress." It provides no data supporting this claim in any convincing fashion. The data that it provides fails to back up such a claim. The only data it provides backing up this claim is found in its Supplementary Table 1, which looks like this in the paper (I won't correct the misspellings):

Supplamentary Table 1: Patient’s description of events associated with guilt episodes

 

No.	Patient’s description
1	"Maybe I’ve offended someone […] something that happened in class […] maybe fighting with someone"
2	"I didn’t like the person I talked to […] I didn’t really listen"
3	"I was taking a photograph of a large group, and felt I am at a place I am not supposed to be"
4	"After I argued with my mother"
5	"I was supposed to meet somebody but did not"
6	"I said goodbye to my brother before a long journey"
7	"I felt I was getting punsihed for lying, usually in the context of "white lies""

 

Notice the carelessness in which both "Supplementary" and "punished" are misspelled. Can we have any confidence in scientists writing so carelessly?

As it happens, none of these statements is a description of guilt. There is a header mentioning "guilt episodes," but we have no statements by the girl referring to guilt. Second-hand statements about a person's emotions have no value as evidence unless they are backed up by observations of facial expressions or first-hand reports coming directly from the person having such emotions. Guilt has no unique facial expression. So for us to have any reliable evidence that this girl was experiencing guilt, we would need to have quotations coming from her, in which she describes guilt. No such quotations have been provided by the authors. 

The authors tell us that "for nearly a year the patient kept these episodes to herself." So the claims that there were these episodes of guilt are based on a 14-year-old girl's recollections of what emotions she was feeling a long time ago. That does not qualify as good evidence, particularly given the emotional turmoil that adolescents so often experience. We do not even have evidence that were such recollections, as we are not given quotes by the girl describing such experiences. 

We have no reliable evidence provided in this paper that the girl was naturally experiencing "distinct episodes of guilt." Also no reliable evidence is provided that the girl experienced "feelings of intense guilt and distress" after having parts of her brain electrically stimulated. We have a Supplementary Table 2 in which once again the word "Supplementary" is misspelled.  We have a two-column table. The first column lists regions of the brain stimulated. The second column is labeled as "Patient Response."  We have words in quotation marks, but it is unclear whether the words actually are words spoken by the girl having her brain electrically stimulated. Among these alleged "patient responses" are many phrases that sound like something a 14-year-old girl would never say, but a neuroscientist might say. These include phrases such as "beginning of detachment, without other sensations" and "detachment, distress, a light nausea." 

We can rather safely assume that this Supplementary Table 2 is a mixture of quotes coming directly from the girl being brain zapped, and also statements written by observers summarizing what she said. But such summaries may be inaccurate, written by observers eager to report some evidence of emotional effects from brain zapping. 

Referring to five years after the laser ablation treatment of a brain tumor, the paper claims, "Five years later, the patient remains free of these guilt episodes or any other seizure phenomena and is off anti-seizure medications." But it provides no data backing up such a claim. How do the authors know that the subject has experienced any less guilt in those five years than before? They don't. In order for the quote above to have any value as evidence,  you would need to have quotations from the subject backing up such a claim. No such quotations are given. 

Needless to say, no decent evidence has been provided for any such thing as a "laser ablation of human guilt." The paper gives us another example of what is super-abundant these days in neuroscience papers: scientists writing titles that are groundless boasts not backed by any reported data. 

Looking at the discussion of this paper by other neuroscientists, I found another example of how neuroscientists embellish, embroider and exaggerate. In an interview neuroscientist Christof Koch discusses the "Laser Ablation of Human Guilt" paper, and stretches its story beyond anything the paper authors stated. Discussing the paper, Koch incorrectly describes the results of brain-zapping the girl. He states, "Every time you stimulate in the brain of this girl you invoked intense feelings of guilt." No, that is not at all what was reported in Supplementary Table 2 of the paper, which mentions "guilt" as a response in only 3 out of 26 brain stimulations, and never mentions "guilt" as the only response, giving us 3 responses such as "guilt, nausea, distress." We get in that table no mention of "intense guilt" as a response. Any mention of guilt might have been the result of someone asking leading questions such as "Did you feel some guilt when I did that?"

Koch says this:

"Furthermore then they did the resection. They removed the tumor and … the girl never had these episodes of guilt again. … So here you have a you have a really nice causal study where a social emotion that is often associated with religious practice — feeling guilty about a sin you committed or something that you did or didn’t do inappropriate — that seems to have a very concrete correlate in a particular brain area of the brain."

The truth is this:

(1) No solid evidence was provided in the paper that the girl ever naturally had "episodes of feeling guilt," because the paper failed to provide any quotations from the girl backing up such claims. The paper made a claim that the girl had episodes of guilt (without describing such episodes as intense), but failed to back up such a claim with any relevant quotation by the girl. Reliably documenting the claim that there were such episodes would require statements by someone recorded when the feelings occurred, not someone recollecting emotional states they had kept secret for a year. 

(2) No evidence was provided in the paper that the girl felt guilt less frequently after the surgery. We merely have a claim by the authors that "Five years later, the patient remains free of these guilt episodes," which is not backed up by any evidence or quotations from the subject. 

(3) Under the theory that the brain makes the mind, it is ludicrous to attempt to explain guilt (a subtle cognitive effect) as something that might be produced by a brain tumor. Conversely, if you showed that a lack of guilt was produced by a brain tumor, that might support such a theory. 

(4) No robust evidence has been provided that the brain-zapping produced any guilt, because (a) the quotes in Supplementary Table 2 seem to be a mixture of quotes from the subject being brain-zapped and notes taken by some observer who might have been motivated to report a guilt response, and who may have asked leading questions designed to get a response that could be recorded as a response mentioning guilt, and (b) none of the responses are listed as guilt alone. 

(5) Were you to show a case in which there was a reduction of guilt after some brain operation, that would do nothing to show that brains produce guilt. You never establish a causal relation between one thing and something else that preceded it by showing a single case. For example, I may cut a flower in the morning and then start to feel sick in the evening; but that does nothing to show that cutting flowers makes people sick. A scientific study never shows a causal relation unless it has a large sample size. For example, if you do a scientific study showing that 25 subjects who lived near a factory got cancer, at a rate 300% higher than average, than might establish a cause and effect relation. But doing a case study documenting only one person getting cancer after living near some factory does nothing to establish a causal relation between the factory and cancer occurrence.

(6) There is no good evidence from the work of other scientists that guilt can be caused by brain stimulation. Wilder Penfield's book The Excitable Cortex in Conscious Man discusses at great length his experiments in electrically stimulating all different parts of the brain. The book makes no mention of any subject reporting guilt as a response to such electrical stimulation, nor does his paper here on the effects of brain stimulation. 

Once again, we have here evidence that many neuroscientists cannot be trusted to give reliable accurate titles to their papers, and that many neuroscientists cannot be trusted to accurately describe research done by other neuroscientists. The term "AI slop" is being used nowadays to describe poor outputs from AI programs. We can use the term "science slop" for low-quality research efforts, which are super-abundant these days in the world of neuroscience. 

Why Memory Reactivation Cannot Explain Memories Lasting Decades

Neuroscientists typically claim that memories are stored in synapses, but this claim makes no sense. Very long-term memories cannot be stored in synapses, because synapses don't last long enough. Below is a quote from a scientific paper:

"A quantitative value has been attached to the synaptic turnover rate by Stettler et al (2006), who examined the appearance and disappearance of axonal boutons in the intact visual cortex in monkeys.. and found the turnover rate to be 7% per week which would give the average synapse a lifetime of a little over 3 months."

You can read Stettler's paper here. A 2019 paper documents a 16-day examination of synapses, finding "the dataset contained n = 320 stable synapses, n = 163 eliminated synapses and n = 134 formed synapses."  That's about a 33% disappearance rate over a course of 16 days, suggesting an average synapse lifetime of less than three months.

You can google for “synaptic turnover rate” for more information. We cannot believe that synapses can store-long memories for 50 years if synapses only have an average lifetime of about 3 months. The paper here says the half-life of synapses is "from days to months."

Synapses often protrude out of bump-like structures on dendrites called dendritic spines. But those spines have lifetimes of less than 2 years.  Dendritic spines last no more than about a month in the hippocampus, and less than two years in the cortex. This study found that dendritic spines in the hippocampus last for only about 30 days. This study found that dendritic spines in the hippocampus have a turnover of about 40% each 4 days. This 2002 study found that a subgroup of dendritic spines in the cortex of mice brains (the more long-lasting subgroup) have a half-life of only 120 days. A paper on dendritic spines in the neocortex says, "Spines that appear and persist are rare." While a 2009 paper tried to insinuate a link between dendritic spines and memory, its data showed how unstable dendritic spines are.  Speaking of dendritic spines in the cortex, the paper found that "most daily formed spines have an average lifetime of ~1.5 days and a small fraction have an average lifetime of ~1–2 months," and told us that the fraction of dendritic spines lasting for more than a year was less than 1 percent. A 2018 paper has a graph showing a 5-day "survival fraction" of only about 30% for dendritic spines in the cortex.  A 2014 paper found that only 3% of new spines in the cortex persist for more than 22 days. Speaking of dendritic spines, a 2007 paper says, "Most spines that appear in adult animals are transient, and the addition of stable spines and synapses is rare." A 2016 paper found a dendritic spine turnover rate in the neocortex of 4% every 2 days. A 2018 paper found only about 30% of new and existing dendritic spines in the cortex remaining after 16 days (Figure 4 in the paper). 

Furthermore, it is known that the proteins existing between the two knobs of the synapse (the very proteins involved in synapse strengthening) are very short-lived, having average lifetimes of no more than a few days. A graduate student studying memory states it like this:

"It’s long been thought that memories are maintained by the strengthening of synapses, but we know that the proteins involved in that strengthening are very unstable. They turn over on the scale of hours to, at most, a few days."

A scientific paper states the same thing:

"Experience-dependent behavioral memories can last a lifetime, whereas even a long-lived protein or mRNA molecule has a half-life of around 24 hrs. Thus, the constituent molecules that subserve the maintenance of a memory will have completely turned over, i.e. have been broken down and resynthesized, over the course of about 1 week."

The paper cited above also states this (page 6):

"The mutually opposing effects of LTP and LTD further add to the eventual disappearance of the memory maintained in the form of synaptic strengths. Successive events of LTP and LTD, occurring in diverse and unrelated contexts, counteract and overwrite each other and will, as time goes by, tend to obliterate old patterns of synaptic weights, covering them with layers of new ones. Once again, we are led to the conclusion that the pattern of synaptic strengths cannot be relied upon to preserve, for instance, childhood memories."

Research on the lifetime of synapse proteins is in the June 2018 paper “Local and global influences on protein turnover in neurons and glia.” The paper starts out by noting that one earlier 2010 study found that the average half-life of brain proteins was about 9 days, and that a 2013 study found that the average half-life of brain proteins was about 5 days. The study then notes in Figure 3 that the average half-life of a synapse protein is only about 5 days, and that all of the main types of brain proteins (such as nucleus, mitochondrion, etc.) have half-lives of 15 days or less.  The 2018 study here precisely measured the lifetimes of more than 3000 brain proteins from all over the brain, and found not a single one with a lifetime of more than 75 days (figure 2 shows the average protein lifetime was only 11 days). 

The paper here states, "Experiments indicate in absence of activity average life times ranging from minutes for immature synapses to two months for mature ones with large weights."

When you think about synapses, visualize the edge of a seashore. Just as writing in the sand is a completely unstable way to store information, long-term information cannot be held in synapses. The proteins in between the synapses are turning over very rapidly (lasting no longer than about a week), and the entire synapse is replaced every few months.

Well aware of some of the difficulties discussed above, neuroscientists sometimes speculate that maybe the idea of memory reactivation can explain how people can remember things for so long.  It is sometimes suggested that maybe a person can remember something for decades because he keeps reactivating the memory at periodic intervals, causing the old memory to be refreshed. So, for example:

• It might be that if an old man never thought of his first boyhood sweetheart, he might be unable to remember that person. But maybe every year that man thought of his boyhood sweetheart, causing the old memory to be periodically refreshed and reactivated. 
• It might be that if an old man never read again some fact he learned in high school such as the fact of Abraham Lincoln's assassination, he might have forgotten such a fact long ago. But maybe what happens is that every year the man reads some mention of Abraham Lincoln's assassination, which causes the old memory to become refreshed and reactivated. 
• An old man might remember the meaning of rarely-used words he learned as a boy, because he continues to speak those words occasionally or occasionally reads the words or hears the words, causing his memory of their meaning to become refreshed or reactivated. 

However, this reactivation theory does not work to explain the marvel of the lifelong preservation of memories. The fact is that even without memory reactivation, people can remember things for decades (as long as 50 or 60 years), even trivial things. I will now cite personal observations and experimental data which shows the truth of my claim in the previous sentence. 

A scientific study by Harry Bahrick was entitled “Semantic memory content in permastore: Fifty years of memory for Spanish learned in school.” It showed that “large portions of the originally acquired information remain accessible for over 50 years in spite of the fact the information is not used or rehearsed.” The same researcher tested a large number of subjects to find out how well they could recall the faces of high school classmates, and found very substantial recall even with a group that had graduated 47 years ago. Bahrick reported the following:

"Subjects are able to identify about 90% of the names and faces of the names of their classes at graduation. The visual information is retained virtually unimpaired for at least 35 years...Free-recall probability does not diminish over 50 yr for names of classmates assigned to one or more of the Relationship Categories A through F."

The scientific paper "Extremely long-term memory and familiarity after 12 years" documents an ability of some people to remember trivial sensory experiences after many years, experiences they should have forgotten under neural theories of human memory. In 2016 the study authors rounded up 25 subjects who had been briefly exposed to some very forgettable images in a scientific experiment done between eight and fourteen years earlier: thumbnail-sized images such as a little drawing of a coffee cup and a little drawing of a hen.  The subjects were tested with a set of images, half of which were the original images, and half of which were decoy images designed to be similar to the original images. The subjects were asked to guess whether or not they had seen the images before, when they were tested many years earlier. The authors expected the subjects to make guesses no more accurate than chance. But they found that the subjects were able to guess with about 55% accuracy.  We read this:

"In this study we found that our group of test participants was able to recognize simple colored pictures seen for a few seconds between eight and 14 years earlier. Our best performer, who had been exposed to the pictures at most three times, was able to identify 15 pictures more than the 84 pictures expected by chance. Note that no instruction to learn the stimuli was ever given to the subjects, even at initial encoding, which makes this performance even more remarkable." 

While researching tests of very long-term memory, I found a 1989 scientific paper ("On the Course of Forgetting in Very Long-Term Memory") on an interesting experiment that tested people by asking which of four titles was an actual title of a TV show. All of the actual TV shows were ones that only ran for one year. This is a good technique for testing very old memories never reactivated, because in the 1970's and 1980's in the US if a TV show ran for only one year it would almost never be shown in other years, and there would tend to be no references to it in popular culture. (This was before services such as Netflix, which might allow a program running only one year to be re-watched by many.)  Here is an example of some of the questions asked to the experiment's subjects:

1974

 Which of the following was a T.V. show? (a) Mandrake, (b) Shipmates (c) Private Nelson, (d) Lucas Tanner 

1978

 Which of the following was a T.V. show? (a) Gaslight Alley, (b) Cutting Corners (c) Black Knight, (d) Kaz 

1981

 Which of the following was a T.V. show? (a) Dateline Miami, (b) The Conductor (c) Discovery, (d) McClaine 's Law 

In these tests the tested subjects (231 in all) scored as shown below (25% is the result expected by chance, if no recall occurred).

We see here a good retention of trivial information that was learned between 7 and 15 years ago, with people scoring about 60% correctly, much higher than the 25% expected by chance. There would have been no reactivation of this trivial information. In the 1970's and 1980's if a TV series ran only one year, it was almost never mentioned again in the press, and would not appear on TV again. 

In my case in late August, 2025 not only did I recall that Lucas Tanner was an old TV show, but I also recalled the name of the show's star (David Hartman), and that the show was about a teacher.  At the time I had not watched this 1974-1975  show or read or heard any mention of this show in the past 50 years, nor had I ever thought about the show in the past 50 years. Similarly, in November 2025 I was watching a video about unsuccessful TV shows from the year 1974. There was a mention of the TV show "Get Christie Love," which was cancelled after a single year. I recalled that the star was Teresa Graves. Graves basically had no presence in TV or movies after 1975, and in 1983 retired from show business. At the time I recalled her name (November 2025), I had not watched this 1974-1975  show or read or heard any mention of this show or Graves in the past 50 years, nor had I ever thought about the show or Graves in the past 50 years.

In a similar vein, in the year 2025 I was watching a video on the most unpopular TV shows of 1973-1974. As soon as they mentioned the show The New Perry Mason, I remembered the star of the show was Monte Markham.  The show ran for only 15 episodes, and was never run in repeats after 1974, with there being virtually no mentions of it in the press since about that year. When the video mentioned  the TV show Adam's Rib without showing any of its actors, I remembered that it starred Blythe Danner and a tall blonde person named Ken, who played Thomas Jefferson in the movie 1776. I remembered both of their faces well. I was right about all of those details. The male actor's name was Ken Howard.  The TV show Adam's Rib ran for only 13 episodes, and never ran in repeats after 1974. When the same video mentioned the TV show Bob and Ted and Carol and Alice, I remembered that one of the stars was a short red-haired actress with the last name of Gillette. I was correct. The show ran for only 12 episodes in 1973, and never was seen after then. 

Similarly, while watching in 2025 one of these videos about the least popular TV shows from long ago, I saw a screen merely listing a title of It's About Time, a series that ran from 1966 to 1967, and was never syndicated after then. I correctly remembered that the show was about astronauts who traveled back in time into the Stone Age. I also remembered the melody and most of the first two lines of the show's theme song, remembering that it went like this: "It's about time, it's about space, __ __ __ __ __ __ __ place." In 2025 I had an equally good recollection of the melody and lyrics of the theme song of the 1965 TV series Hank, cancelled after a single season. 

Similarly, while watching in 2025 one of these videos about the least successful TV shows of 1970, there was mention of a show about young people in the American Revolutionary War. I instantly remembered the show was called "The Young Rebels." The show was canceled after 15 episodes. I am rather sure that there was never any reactivation of any memory involving the show, the show being basically unmentioned since 1970. 

In December 2025 I had a dream of Meredith MacCrae, in which she stated, "Mark, this is Meredith MacCrae." After awaking, I lay in bed trying to place the name. Soon I recalled that she had been in the 1960's TV show Petticoat Junction, one I had not watched in more than 50 years (and probably not heard mentioned substantively in more than 50 years). An internet search confirmed my recollection. I had not thought of Meredith in more than 50 years, and the press hardly mentioned her after the early 1970's. 

A test an old person can try is to remember some street names in cities or towns he lived in very long ago. Trying this test I correctly remembered the street name of a school that my children last attended 16 years ago, in a small town we moved away from 16 years ago. I had no sensory experiences refreshing the memory of this street name during the past 16 years, and I cannot recall ever thinking of the address in the past 16 years. Similarly, I remembered an avenue near my senior high school in a major city, an avenue with a name I have not remembered in about 50 years. 

So it simply is not true that to remember something for decades, you need  periodic reactivations every few years that recharge or reactivate a memory that won't last years without being strengthened.  You can learn trivial little things and remember them decades later, as much as 50 years later, even with no reactivations of the memory. 

An experience I had shortly before writing this post further showed this. Someone in my family had recently got a teapot, which caused me to recall the beginning of a children's song I had heard only a few times, only in a house I have not lived in for about 25 years. I remembered the first line: "I'm a little teapot, short and stout." I tried to remember the second line, but at first I could not. Later I remembered both of the first two lines of the song I had not heard or sung or remembered in about 25 years:

I'm a little teapot, short and stout

Here is my handle, here is my spout

In 2025 (as I noted at the end of the post here) I had a recollection which proved the ability of the mind to recall very old memories that have not been recalled in 50 years. For some reason I recalled a book I had read about 50 years ago, and never since: the science fiction book "Galaxies Like Grains of Sand" by Brian Aldiss. I remembered some lines from the book. I wrote them down on paper like this:

"The mirror of the past lies shattered. The fragments you hold in your hand."

After I wrote this recollection of something I had not read, thought of or heard quoted in fifty years, I borrowed the book on www.archive.org.  I see that the lines were these (almost exactly as I remembered them)

"The long mirror of the past is shattered...Only a few fragments are left, and these you hold in your hand." 

Below is a quote on the same topic from an earlier post discussing why brains cannot be the storage place of very old memories:

"I know for a fact that memories can persist for 50 years, without rehearsal. Recently I was trying to recall all kinds of details from my childhood, and recalled the names of persons I hadn't thought about for decades, as well as a Christmas incident I hadn't thought of for 50 years (I confirmed my recollection by asking my older brother about it). ...Upon looking through a list of old children shows from the 1960's, I saw the title 'Lippy the Lion and Hardy Har Har,' which ran from 1962 to 1963 (and was not syndicated in repeats, to the best of my knowledge). I then immediately sung part of the melody of the very catchy theme song, which I hadn't heard in 53 years. I then looked up a clip on a youtube.com, and verified that my recall was exactly correct."

One day in 2025 while lying in bed there strangely popped into my mind "out of nowhere" the name Toby Tyler, which I remembered was some circus movie I had seen as a child, in a theater. Looking up the name, I found it was the title of a circus movie that came out in 1960 (the title was Toby Tyler, or 10 Weeks With a Circus). I never saw the movie in a theater or on TV after 1960, and I never heard any mention of it on TV or in anything I ever read. Here we have an example of the remembering of a trivial memory from 65 years ago, a memory that was never reactivated after 1960. 

In late 2025 I was watching a Youtube.com video about the 10 least popular television shows of 1966.  I performed these wonders of memory recall relating to TV shows or TV personalities I have not seen or heard mentioned in about 60 years or more:

(1) Upon hearing the name of the 1966 TV show "Captain Nice" (canceled after a single season), I recalled its star was William Daniels. 

(2) Upon seeing an unlabeled photo of Judy Carne (an actress I have not seen on TV in 60 years and probably not heard mentioned in 60 years), I instantly identified her as Judy Carne. 

(3) Hearing mention of an "Occasional Wife" TV show I once watched in 1966, and seeing an unidentified image of its star, I first guessed the person's name as William Calley. Later (still having heard no mention of the star's name) I thought to myself something like, "No, I think it was maybe Michael Calley." The actor (who did no famous work after 1966) was named Michael Callen, a name identical to my final guess, except for a single character. 

Later I watched a YouTube video of the least popular TV shows of 1969. All of the shows mentioned were cancelled after one year or less, and none ever appeared in repeats after 1970. Hearing the name of the show "My World and Welcome To It," I remembered exactly the star was the obscure actor William Windom.  I also remembered that the main character's daughter would wear a noticeable orthodontic retainer.  The video soon confirmed that these 55-year-old memories were correct.  

In late 2025 I read an article claiming that the 1960's song "Yummy, Yummy, Yummy" was the worst song of the 1960's. Before playing a video of the song, I tried to recall the song, which I had not heard or recalled in more than 30 years. I successfully recalled the lyrics and melody of the first line of the song ("Yummy, yummy, yummy I got love in my tummy"), and also recalled the lyrics and melody of the song's middle refrain ("Ooh, love to hold you, ooh, love to kiss you"). 

Collectively all of these examples in this post show it is false that remembering something for decades requires periodic reactivations of the memory. Many people can remember trivial things for 30, 40 or 50 years, without any reactivations of the memory. Such abilities cannot be explained through any credible theory of brain activity, given the very high molecular turnover and synaptic turnover in the brain.