"Behavioral Timescale Synaptic Plasticity" Is Not Any Well-Established Natural Reality

 Quanta Magazine is a widely-read online magazine with slick graphics. On topics of science the magazine again and again is guilty of the most glaring failures. Quanta Magazine often has assigned its online articles about great biology mysteries (involving riddles a thousand miles over the heads of PhDs) to writers identified as "writing interns."  The articles at Quanta Magazine often contain misleading prose, groundless boasts or glaring falsehoods. I discuss some examples of such poor journalism in my posts here and here and here and here.

The latest example of false news in Quanta Magazine is an article with the bogus headline "A New Type of Neuroplasticity Rewires the Brain After a Single Experience." The claim is BS,  pure baloney. Anyone familiar with the structure of the brain should instantly realize what nonsense this headline is. Neurons have fixed positions in the brain. Synapses are like roots in a dense forest, roots that lock trees into fixed positions in the forest (but instead of locking trees into their positions in a forest, synapses help lock neurons into their positions in the brain). Synapses are things almost as slow-changing as the roots of trees in a forest. So physically the idea that a brain could be instantly rewired is nonsense. 

The article starts out with this untrue claim: "Every experience we have changes our brain, the way a ceramicist reshapes a slab of clay." To the contrary, an experience does not change a brain. The analogy that the brain is like a lump of clay onto which impressions are written by experiences (like letters being written by the earliest cuneiform writers in Mesopotamia) is an extremely misleading analogy with no evidence to support it.  The brain has nothing like a stylus that could write such impressions. And no trace of any such impressions can be found. Microscopic examination of brain tissue (which has been done very abundantly) has never produced the slightest trace of anything  anyone learned. 

We have this vacuous attempt to explain memory, not corresponding to any physical reality in the brain: "This plasticity, the quality of being easily reshaped, makes the brain really good at learning — a quintessential process that allows us to remember the plotline of a novel, navigate a new city, pick up a new language, and avoid touching a hot stove." It is not correct that brains are "easily reshaped," and it is not correct to suggest that brain structure changes after learning. Scan a brain before and after 8 hours of school learning, and you will see no difference. 

The writer then tells us a myth with no basis in fact, stating this:

"Recently, neuroscientists described a new form of neuroplasticity that might be helping the brain learn across a timescale of several seconds — long enough to capture the behavioral process of learning from a single experience. In two recent reviews, published in The Journal of Neuroscience (opens a new tab)

 and Nature Neuroscience(opens a new tab), they describe 'behavioral timescale synaptic plasticity,' or BTSP. This type of learning in the hippocampus, the brain’s memory hub, is caused by an electrical change that affects multiple neurons at once and unfolds across several seconds."

The claim that something called  "behavioral timescale synaptic plasticity," or BTSP is a "type of learning" is a claim without any basis in fact. Before looking at one of the reviews cited in the quote above (the one that is not behind a paywall), I must give some prefatory description of the social construction of discovery legends in today's neuroscience. 

Research in cognitive neuroscience research is dominated by low-quality studies. The study here concludes, "Our results indicate that the median statistical power in neuroscience is 21%." This is an abysmal number, an appalling figure. It has long been said that in experimental research, the goal should be a statistical power of 80%, which roughly corresponds to a likelihood of 80% that the result will be replicated.  A study with a statistical power of 21% is a low quality study that is likely to be announcing a false alarm. When a research field has a median statistical power of 21%, that means half of the studies have a statistical power of 21% or less.  If such an estimation is correct, it means the great majority of neuroscience studies report results that are unreliable or untrue. 

A neuroscientist wishing to gain fame and funding may do some low-quality research, and claim his research is a discovery of some new  effect for the first time. The neuroscientist may coin some name for this alleged effect, perhaps using some acronym. Whether that name is forgotten and never repeated may depend on whether other neuroscientists are willing to repeat the observational claim, and whether other scientists are willing to try to replicate the effect.  If a claim of a discovery "presses the buttons" of neuroscientists by claiming something neuroscientists are eager to see, the original observer's discovery claims may be repeated by other scientists. But it will often be the case that there is no sound warrant for either the original observational claim nor similar claims by other scientists. An original low-quality paper reporting some effect may use poor experimental methods, and equally poor experimental methods may be used by others who claim to see the same effect. 

Consequently we should never "take it for granted" that something is true, just because some scientific paper says that scientist X claimed to see such a thing, and that also scientist Y and scientist Z claimed to see it. The social construction of groundless triumphal legends is extremely common in neuroscience literature. The standards for getting a neuroscience paper published are low. Junk research is published every week, and low-quality experimental papers are published every month. So you must always go back to the papers being cited, and look at them critically, and ask: was their ever any decent evidence observed here?

Let's do that with one of the two papers cited by the Quanta Magazine article above, the one not behind a paywall. The paper is an extremely misleading review article entitled "Behavioral Timescale Synaptic Plasticity: A Burst in the Field of Learning and Memory" which you can read here. The paper is short on descriptions of reliable observations of things naturally occurring and very long on triumphal narrations, most of which are groundless boasts hailing supposedly marvelous accomplishments of the most poorly designed and low-quality scientific studies. The paper's chief triumphal narration is the claim that something called behavioral timescale synaptic plasticity (BTSD) was discovered in 2017 by Katie C. Bittner and others. 

We hear these claims by the "burst in the field" paper about this BTSD:

• "It is triggered by occasional dendritic plateau potentials associated with a burst of firing in the soma." Neurons fire unpredictably at a rate between about 1 time per second and 100 times per second, with their firing rates varying unpredictably. So anyone analyzing noisy, variable data on neuron firings might be able to find "occasional dendritic plateau potentials associated with a burst of firing in the soma," even if there is no such thing as BTSP. Similarly, anyone analyzing cloud formations sufficiently will be able to find occasional cloud clumps with this or that shape. 
• "BTSP operates on the timescale of seconds rather than milliseconds and can therefore support associative learning over temporal delays relevant to behavior." If this alleged BTSP occurs quickly, that is no reason at all for thinking it has anything to do with any type of learning. 
• "It leads to large changes in synaptic strength, enabling fast remodeling of neuronal representations that may support one-shot learning." There is no robust evidence for representations in either neurons or synapses.  The size and strength of synapses vary randomly over days and weeks. An increase in the strength of some synapses is never evidence that anything is being represented. And you cannot actually have "large changes in synaptic strength" being produced by anything operating on a timescale of seconds. There is no robust evidence that "large changes in synaptic strength" ever naturally occur on a timescale of seconds. 

The paper claims this: "A different kind of plasticity called behavioral timescale synaptic plasticity (BTSP) has recently been uncovered in area CA1 of the hippocampus (Bittner et al., 2017; Milstein et al., 2021) and has properties that appear to solve many of the aforementioned limitations of Hebbian plasticity (Magee and Grienberger, 2020)."  Bittner's 2017 paper supposedly first observing this BTSP alleged effect is behind a paywall. But we can look at this  2021 paper by Milstein, co-authored by Bittner.   It is a very low-quality paper that you can read here, one with the misleading title "Bidirectional synaptic plasticity rapidly

modifies hippocampal representations." There is no robust evidence for the representations claimed.  

This 2021 paper co-authored by Milstein and Bittner starts out by reciting many an unfounded legend and dubious dogma of neuroscientists. Then we have in Figure 1 some actual fresh observational data. The data is nothing remotely resembling compelling observational data. We have data from a single mouse that was on a treadmill. The graphs are not really hard data, because we have references to "place fields" that are social constructs of neuroscientists. Here the paper makes some claimed observational result that no one should take seriously or pay attention to unless it involved results with at least 15 or 20 animals per study group. But the study group consists of a measly one animal. The study group size is not even 10% of what it should be for reliable evidence to be claimed. 

Figure 2 is just as laughable as evidence. Since it has a caption of "mouse running," it seemingly also is data from a single mouse. Figure 3 fails to mention any study group size larger than 1.  We have a graph mentioning  "synaptic weights," one seeming to show some kind of increase. But the graph has no scale. No actual measurement of synaptic weights is occurring. Why of course -- synapses are things too tiny to be weighed with any accuracy. 

Later in the paper we have an indication that no reliable measurement of synaptic weights was occurring. We read, "We modeled changes in synaptic weights as a function of the time-varying amplitudes of these two biochemical intermediate signals, ET and IS." So apparently something else easier to measure was being measured, and the authors were engaging in the very dubious business of claiming that this other thing was some indication of synaptic weights.  That sounds rather like someone trying to deduce the weight of someone's meals by how much they spent on groceries this week -- not a reliable way of doing things. 

Nothing reliable is being done here to show that this claimed "Behavioral Timescale Synaptic Plasticity" naturally exists, or that it can produce rapid changes in synaptic strength. And even if you were to show such a thing, that would do nothing to explain instant learning, since changes in synaptic strength are not credible explanations of how newly learned information could be stored. For further evidence of the low quality of Wilstein and Bittner's 2021 paper "Bidirectional synaptic plasticity rapidly modifies hippocampal representations,"  we need merely search for whether a sample size calculation was done. The paper confesses, "Sample sizes were not determined by statistical methods."  Why of course. Since laughable, ridiculous sample sizes such as only one mouse were used (rather than decent study group sizes such as 15 or 20 mice per study group), the authors did not do a sample size calculation, which would have revealed some ridiculously low statistical power way, way below 25%. 

By citing Wilstein and Bittner's 2021 very low-quality paper "Bidirectional synaptic plasticity rapidly modifies hippocampal representations," the review article "Behavioral Timescale Synaptic Plasticity: A Burst in the Field of Learning and Memory" has given us another example of what constantly goes on in the dysfunctional world of neuroscience research:  paper authors citing very low-quality research as evidence of some effect they are arguing for, with the authors seeming to apply no critical scrutiny before citing a paper.  

The Quanta Magazine article and some of the papers cited by the papers (mentioned above) refer to a 2015 paper co-authored by Bittner and Jeffrey C. Magee, entitled "Conjunctive input processing drives feature selectivity in hippocampal CA1 neurons." While the study makes reference to a "normative" pool of 21 mice, the study's claims of detecting something are based on a way-too-small study group size of only 6 mice. It's another very low-quality paper failing to provide any decent evidence of "Behavioral Timescale Synaptic Plasticity." The authors confess that "no statistical methods were used to predetermine sample sizes," which is always a damning confession in a scientific paper of this type, kind of a "we were too lazy to act like good scientists" confession. But (paying no attention to quality factors) the Quanta Magazine senselessly treats the study as if was something important, and has a big photo of Magee. This is typical for Quanta Magazine, which seems to never pay any attention to whether neuroscience  studies are meeting the hallmarks of robust, well-designed science. 

The paper "Behavioral Timescale Synaptic Plasticity: A Burst in the Field of Learning and Memory" has graphs from the year 2025 paper "Synaptic plasticity rules driving representational shifting in the hippocampus" that you can read here. That paper mainly refers vaguely to "mice" without mentioning exact study group sizes. But occasionally the paper does mention the exact study group sizes, which were way-too-small study group sizes such as only 4 mice, only 7 mice and only 9 mice. We read, "CA1 recordings were done in 4 mice, CA3 recordings in 7 mice and optogenetic experiments in 9 mice." These study group sizes were way-too-small for the paper to be taken as serious evidence of anything. No paper like this should be taken seriously unless 15 or 20 animals per study group were used. We have the damning confession in the paper that "No statistical method was used to predetermine sample size." If the paper authors had acted like good scientists by doing such a calculation, they would have found out how inadequate were the study group sizes they used. We also read, "Investigators were not blinded to CA1 or CA3 groups." This is a crucial defect for a paper like this. We have here a very low-quality example of a Questionable Research Practices study, one that fails to provide any good evidence for "Behavioral Timescale Synaptic Plasticity." 

So it seems the review article "Behavioral Timescale Synaptic Plasticity: A Burst in the Field of Learning and Memory" (which you can read here) is a paper that fails to cite any convincing studies showing any such phenomenon as "Behavioral Timescale Synaptic Plasticity." I reach this conclusion not based on a readership of all papers cited by that paper, but by looking at the studies discussed above, which were all very low-quality papers very badly guilty of Questionable Research Practices. The paper provides no robust evidence that scientists have demonstrated any such thing as any natural ability by which synapses could be instantly or very quickly strengthened. 

The review article "Behavioral Timescale Synaptic Plasticity: A Burst in the Field of Learning and Memory" is a mere review article, not a systematic review. In scientific literature, systematic review articles are articles following a clear methodology in regard to which papers are to be cited as evidence, a quality filter clearly defined in the paper. A mere review article involves citing any papers that the authors wish to cite, without the papers being subjected to a quality filter stated in the paper. In today's neuroscience literature there is a plethora of misleading review articles citing poor-quality papers. 

We get an indication in the review article "Behavioral Timescale Synaptic Plasticity: A Burst in the Field of Learning and Memory" that what is typically going on in the results it reports are not natural occurrences, but instead artificial occurrences produced by scientists doing special fiddling. In the article we read this: "The main approach, introduced by the Magee lab (Bittner et al., 2017), is to artificially induce BTSP with a long-lasting high–amplitude depolarization of the soma (typically a 300 ms 600 pA current injection) triggering a somatic CS (which is assumed to reflect a dendritic plateau), preceded or followed by synaptic activity within a few seconds time window (Fig. 3B)." 

So mainly what is being reported are artificial results produced by current injections -- experimenters zapping brains with electricity or electrical currents. The paper then says that this can be either done "in vitro" (that  is, using tissue detached from an organism's body) or "in vivo" (observing something inside a living organism). But we are told that the "in vivo" observations require artificial experimenter manipulations such as "current injections" or "optogenetic stimulations." Both are artificial types of brain zapping. Observations requiring such energy injections by experimenters  are not evidence of something naturally occurring in the brain. 

I propose the term "electromisrepresentation" to describe misleading narratives of this type. We can define electromisrepresentation as the artificial production of brain effects by methods such as electrical stimulation, combined with a misleading narrative trying to suggest that the resulting effects can explain natural human capabilities. Electromisrepresentation has massively occurred in discussion of so-called long-term potentiation or LTP. 

The Quanta Magazine article based on this scientific paper is also very misleading bunk, an article that attempts to persuade us of the existence of something for which there is no robust experimental evidence. A very bad example of groundless narration, the paper is full of untrue statements claiming magnificent accomplishments from scientists who actually ran very low-quality studies deserving mainly scorn because of multiple methodological sins such as the use of way-too-small study group sizes, the lack of a blinding protocol,  the lack of pre-registration, and an abundance of unreliable claims about the physical state of things (synapses) too small to have their physical state reliably measured. Occasionally the Quanta Magazine article has an indication of what baloney it is shoveling, such as when it says, "There’s still much unknown about BTSP, especially the mechanism, which Madar said is 'quite speculative.' ”

But that's par for the course in the untrustworthy world of today's neuroscience research, where neuroscientists these days boast like crazy about doing all kinds of wonderful things that were not actually done, because decent scientific procedures were never followed, and the experiments were so poorly designed and guilty of so many defects. 

There are two very strong reasons for rejecting all claims that there is good evidence that there are ever any quick natural increases in synaptic strength:

(1) The intrinsic unreliability of all attempts to measure the strength of synapses, given the incredibly small size of synapses, which makes all attempts to measure their strength dubious and unreliable. The largest parts of synapses (their clefts) are about 500 to 1000 times smaller than the largest part of a neuron (its soma or main body). 

(2) The intrinsic implausibility of any claims that synapses could naturally be quickly strengthened, given the fact that any synapse strengthening would require new protein synthesis, a process that takes minutes or hours. 

Scientists have never produced any credible tale to explain how either instant learning or learning of any type could occur in a brain, which has no components having any resemblance to a system for storing learned information. You would never show information storage or a storage of learned data or experiences by merely showing an increase in the strength of something.  No well-designed and robust scientific studies have ever produced any compelling evidence that learned information has been physically stored in brains. Claims about LTP arose from the type of artificial brain tissue zapping described above, with researchers ignoring that what was occurring did not correspond to natural events in the brain. Microscopic examination of brain tissue has never yielded the slightest trace of anything anyone learned or experienced -- not a single sentence, not a single word, not even a single character or letter or number or even a single pixel of anything anyone saw. 

Scientists have reliably determined that synapses are built of proteins that have average lifespans of only a few weeks, roughly a thousandth (1/1000, that is .001) of the maximum amount of time that humans can remember things, which is about sixty years. Besides utterly failing to explain how a brain could do memory storage, and how memories could persist for decades, scientists have utterly failed to explain how a brain could do instant memory retrieval, or memory retrieval of any type. We know the types of things that allow for instant retrieval of stored information: things such as addresses, indexing and sorting. No such things exist in the brain. The world of neuroscientist claims about memory is a world of fantasy and pareidolia, in which neuroscientists eagerly hoping to see things claim to see the faintest evidence of such things, like some wanderer in the desert eagerly scanning the far horizon five miles away and claiming to see water on the far horizon (although only a mirage is there, or only "see what you yearn to see" pareidolia is occurring). 

For a discussion of the very many ways that scientists have of conjuring up claims of things that don't exist, see my post here entitled  "Scientists Have a Hundred Ways To Conjure Up Phantasms That Don't Exist," and my post here entitled "The Social Construction of Eager Community Mirages."

Dubious Claims in Announcements of the Lundbeck Foundation's Brain Prizes

 In my previous post "Cognitive Neuroscience Is Floundering, So the Kavli 2024 Neuroscience Prize Went to Low-Quality Research," I discussed how the million-dollar Kavli 2024 Neuroscience Prize was awarded to scientists for doing low-quality research work that failed to establish the boasts made in the prize announcement. Let us now look at two other cases of blunder in giving a big neuroscience research prize.

The Lundbeck Foundation issues an annual million-dollar prize in neuroscience research. The foundation blundered in its announcement of its 2023 Brain Prize. My complaint with the 2023 Brain Prize is not with the research done. My complaint is with how such research was sold as having relevance to memory that it does not have. The document announcing the prize made some claims that simply are not true. 

The document announcing the prize goes wrong right at its beginning. We read Professor Richard Morris making these erroneous claims:

"In order to establish appropriate neural connections during development or to adapt to new challenges in adulthood through learning and memory, brain circuits must be remodeled, and the new patterns of connectivity maintained; processes that require the synthesis of new proteins for those connections. The Brain Prize winners of 2023, Michael Greenberg, Christine Holt, and Erin Schuman have revealed the fundamental principles of how this enigmatic feature of brain function is mediated at the molecular level. Together, the Brain Prize 2023 winners have made ground-breaking discoveries by showing how the synthesis of new proteins is triggered in different neuronal compartments, thereby guiding brain development and plasticity in ways that impact our behavior for a lifetime.”

We have here a statement of untenable neuroscientist dogma, the claim that learning and memory occurs when brain circuits are remodeled. There is no evidence for such a claim, and no one has any understanding of how a change in brain circuits could cause a memory to be stored. There are quite a few strong reasons why the claim above cannot be correct. One of the strongest is the speed at which humans can create new memories, which is a speed way, way too fast to be explained by some idea that brain circuits are being remodeled. Humans can learn new things instantly. If someone walks in and tells you that your father just died from a heart attack, you instantly form a permanent new memory of how your father died. It doesn't take minutes to form such a new memory, as it would take if it required a modification of brain circuits. 

Beginning on page 12 of the 28-page document, we have long statements by each of the prize winners extolling themselves and their work. The first is a long statement by Michael Greenberg, who gives lots of nerdy jargon-filled discussion of the details of his work. Despite dropping a few little hints here and there weakly trying to insinuate that his work had something to do with memory, his long discussion fails to explain how his work had any real relevance to explaining how a brain could store or retrieve a memory. There is then a similar long discussion by Christine Holt, describing her life journey. She fails to explain how her work had any relevance to explaining how a brain could store or retrieve a memory. There is then a similar long discussion by Erin Schuman, describing her life journey. She fails to explain how her work had any relevance to explaining how a brain could store or retrieve a memory. 

What went on here can be summarized like this:

(1) Some scientists made a little progress in understanding protein synthesis that goes on in synapses.

(2) Clinging to the untenable assumption that protein synthesis can explain human memory, such minor progress has been wrongly passed off as being progress in understanding how brains could store memories. 

It's kind of like some scientists making a little progress in understanding cloud formation, and then some other scientists claiming this explains how extraterrestrials are constructing cloud bases in the sky.  No, it sure doesn't. 

There are several giant reasons why protein synthesis cannot explain memory formation. The first is that protein synthesis is a sluggish process typically requiring at least a few minutes, and often requiring many minutes. But humans can learn new things instantly. If someone announces to you how your child or your parent died, you will instantly form a vivid new memory that you will probably remember for the rest of your life. Memory formation could never occur instantly if it required protein synthesis in the brain or remodeling of brain circuits. The second reason why protein synthesis cannot explain memory formation is that memories can last for 60 years or more, but proteins in the brain are short-lived. The average brain protein has a lifetime of less than two weeks, as do synapse proteins. So the length of time that humans can remember is 1000 times longer than the average lifetime of brain proteins. Then there's the fact that no one has any understanding of how some fattening up of synapses or remodeling of synapses could ever be a process storing memories. The idea is no more logical than thinking that memories are stored when wind and snowfall jiggle around the shapes of snow drifts. 

See my post "They Memorized Many Times Faster Than a Brain Could Ever Do" for many well-documented cases of humans memorizing at astonishingly fast speeds, speeds far too high to be explained as examples of protein synthesis. One example is the man who memorized a full deck of 52 playing cards in 14 seconds. 

An equally great blunder of the Lundbeck Foundation occurred in the announcement of its 2016 prize. The announcement made this false  claim: "The Brain Prize for 2016 was awarded to Timothy Bliss, Graham Collingridge and Richard Morris for 'their ground-breaking research on the cellular and molecular basis of Long-Term Potentiation and the demonstration that this form of synaptic plasticity underpins spatial memory and learning." No such demonstration has ever occurred. 

The 2016 announcement page has no document justifying the award. We merely have the display of the video. At the start we have some dumb reasoning by one of the winners. Asked to describe his field of research, Timothy Bliss states this:

"Well, what I would say is, a simple question: how does the brain store information? How are memories stored in the brain? Given that we know the brain consists of a huge number of nerve cells and the connections between them, what happens to those connections when you lay down a memory? Something must happen, the brain must change in some way, because it now has this memory that it did not have before. Tomorrow I will look back on this day and remember this interview with you.  And my brain has changed in some way, there has to be a physical change. So the question is: what is that physical change? And Long Term Potentiation is that physical change, a change in the efficiency of the connections between cells in a subset of cells which are stored in this memory."

What we have in this quote is circular reasoning, vacuous hand-waving,  and a false claim. We do not know that memories occur by means of brain changes, and there are the strongest reasons for thinking that such an idea cannot be correct.  The claim "something must happen, the brain must change in some way, because it now has this memory that it did not have before" is saying that the brain must be storing memories because it stores memories. No, we do not know that the brain stores memories; we merely know that people acquire and hold memories. If we are souls or spirits (and there are innumerable reasons for believing that we are), then memory may be a spiritual phenomenon or a psychic phenomenon rather than a brain phenomenon. 

The term "long term potentiation" is a misleading term neuroscientists have long been using. What was called "long-term potentiation" in the first years of using that phrase is actually a very short-term phenomenon. Speaking of long-term potentiation (LTP), and using the term “decays to baseline levels” (which means “disappears”), a scientific paper says, "potentiation almost always decays to baseline levels within a week," while noting that even after considering LTP "we would be at a loss for a brain mechanism for the storage of a long-term memory." Another scientific paper says something similar, although it tells us even more strongly that so-called long-term potentiation (LTP) is really a very short-term affair. For it tells us that “in general LTP decays back to baseline within a few hours.” “Decays back to baseline” means the same as “vanishes.” 

Neuroscientists have long been guilty of profoundly misleading behavior in trying to persuade people that so-called so-called long-term potentiation (LTP) is a "mechanism for memory." Experimentally inducing LTP requires artificial electrode stimulation which synapses do not naturally receive.  Also, human memories can last for sixty years, but LTP is a very short-lived thing.  So why do neuroscientists keep doing LTP experiments, and why do they keep mentioning LTP as if it had something to do with memory? There are two reasons:

(1) It always sounds better if you have some sound bite or catchphrase you can mutter when someone asks how something occurs, rather than saying, "I haven't the slightest idea how it occurs." When scientists can mutter the phrase "LTP" when asked about how memories are created, it makes them sound more knowledgeable, rather than sounding like people who have no understanding of a topic. 

(2) LTP research is an easy-to-conduct "no way to fail" line of research that provides an easy way for a neuroscientist to add to his total of published papers. Scientists love these kind of "no way to fail" research opportunities. Similarly, theoretical physicists keep grinding out speculative papers about string theory or primordial cosmic inflation.  If you have learned how to write such a papers, doing another such paper is a relatively easy and safe way to get another published paper. 

There was "definition creep" in regard to the term LTP (long-term potentiation).  Erroneously claiming that LTP originally referred to a long-lasting increase, a science paper describes how the term changed:

"Originally, LTP referred to a long-lasting increase in the synaptic response (potentiation) resulting from stimulation at high frequency (Bliss and Lomo, 1973). Over the years this term became fuzzy as it has been applied to pretty much any increase in synaptic strength regardless of the specific induction procedure."

The claim made by Bliss in the quote above is nonsensical. There are no signs that memories are written to brains, and if learned knowledge were to be stored in the brain, it would require some almost infinitely complex mechanism almost infinitely more involved than a mere "change in the efficiency of the connections between cells."  Synapse strengthening cannot be memory storage. Complex and very detailed information cannot be stored by a mere strengthening of something. 

The type of evidence typically given for an LTP involvement in memory is bad, unconvincing evidence. An animal's brain will be scanned; the animal will be taught something; and then the animal's brain will be scanned again; and (using a looser definition of LTP as merely "synapse strengthening") some scientist will claim that some synapse was strengthened, and that this was memory storage. But the fact is that many synapses strengthen while many other synapses weaken, with this occurring all the time, regardless of whether you are learning anything. So showing some synapse strengthening occurring somewhere when an animal learned does nothing to show that such strengthening was memory formation. Similarly, my front-yard germaniums can grow while I learn about some type of scientific research; but that sure doesn't show that my geraniums stored such new learning. In a PhD thesis, a scientist says, "While LTP is assumed to be the neural correlate of learning and memory, no conclusive evidence has been produced to substantiate that when an organism learns LTP occurs in that organism’s brain or brain correlate."

Bliss later in the video (at the -2:48 mark) makes the untrue claim that if you block an NMDA receptor, an animal "learns much more slowly, and cannot remember what it has learned." The statement is false.  A 2014 study was entitled "Hippocampal NMDA receptors are important for behavioural inhibition but not for encoding associative spatial memories." And a 2011 study found this:

"We found that inducible knockout mice, lacking NMDA receptor in either forebrain or hippocampus CA1 region at the time of memory retrieval, exhibited normal recall of associative spatial reference memory regardless of whether retrievals took place under full-cue or partial-cue conditions. Moreover, systemic antagonism of NMDA receptor during retention tests also had no effect on full-cue or partial-cue recall of spatial water maze memories. Thus, both genetic and pharmacological experiments collectively demonstrate that pattern completion during spatial associative memory recall does not require the NMDA receptor in the hippocampus or forebrain."

A 2024 study states that it "failed to demonstrate a role for NMDARs [NMDA receptors] in excitatory CA1 and DG neurons in learning about temporal information." A 2011 study tells us that rodents without NMDA receptors are "impaired in a variety of habit-learning tasks, while normal in some other dopamine-modulated functions such as locomotor activities, goal-directed learning, and spatial reference memories."

We have in the video no true statements convincingly backing up the claim that so-called long term potentiation has anything to do with memory. What we mainly have are false claims, hand-waving,  and circular logic. 

The 2011 Brain Prize of the Lundbeck Foundation was announced with the false claim that Gyorgi Buzsaki had discovered that memories are replayed while you sleep by means of "hippocampal sharp wave ripples." This is an example of what is abundant in modern neuroscience research: the spread of groundless achievement legends. The claims made in the video on this announcement page are speculations not well grounded in observations.  

A look at Buzsaki's main paper on this topic (the 2015 paper "Hippocampal Sharp Wave-Ripple: A Cognitive Biomarker for Episodic Memory and Planning") shows a very long paper that has a long discussion of experiments with rodents, but never mentions any decent study group sizes. Alas, it's another example of Questionable Research Practices low-quality science. Mostly Buzsaki just vaguely refers to "mice" or "rodents" without telling us how many mice were tested (whenever this happens you can be 90% sure the study groups sizes were way-too-small). Rarely Buzsaki does tell us how many mice or rodents were used, and in such cases we learn of way-too-small study group sizes such as only 4 rodents or 9 rodents. We have no mention in the text of any blinding protocol being used in these experiments. No robust evidence is provided of memory replay or memory consolidation. 

Buzsaki defines a sharp wave-ripple as a little brain-wave blip lasting less than a tenth of a second. With this definition describing no pattern of any decent length, he is able to see "sharp wave-ripples" under innumerable  conditions, attaching all kinds of deep significance to these fleeting blips. What is mainly occurring is runaway pareidolia. It's like someone assigning deep explanatory significance to every time he has the slightest skin itch. 

Similar Questionable Research Practices occur in a 2017 paper by Buzsaki on sharp-wave ripples, in which the study group is a way-too-small size of only five rodents. And it's the same deal in his 2024 paper on this topic, in which the study group size is a way-too-small size of only six animals. The paper used no blinding protocol. 

In the video on the page Buzsaki makes groundless boasts that tiny fragments of memories are replayed in the brain over and over again in the brain, claiming to have identified this. Such a boast is unfounded, and his research on this topic did not follow sound research practices. Many of the main claims made by the narrator in the video are groundless or untenable claims.  The claim of Buzsaki that these tiny tenth-of-a-second ripples are the tiniest memory recall fragments (rather like individual frames from a 24-frames-per-second movie) is a groundless claim that is not credible.

I will give you a quick look at how claims of a relation between sharp wave ripples and memory consolidation involve appeals to junk science. The paper "Hippocampal ripples and memory consolidation" tells us this:

"More recently however, several studies have revealed a

correlation between SPWRs [sharp wave ripples] and memory. Ripple occurrence rates were shown to increase during the hour

following a training session on an odour-reward association task [51]. A similar increase was observed in rats

learning a radial maze task, concomitant with a significant

improvement in performance [52]. Also, the intrinsic

ripple frequency increased after a change in the task

contingency, such as a variation in the minimum delay

to receive a new reward by lever pressing [53]."

Every one of the references is to a low-quality science paper guilty of Questionable Research Practices. Reference 51 is to a paper "Sustained increase in hippocampal sharp-wave ripple activity during

slow-wave sleep after learning." The paper used way-too-small study group sizes such as only six rodents, and failed to use any blinding protocol.  Reference 52 is to the paper " Reference 52 is to a paper "Hippocampal Sharp Wave/Ripples during Sleep for

Consolidation of Associative Memory."  It's another piece of Questionable Research Practices shlock that uses way-too-small study group sizes such as only four or five rodents; and again we have a complete failure to follow a blinding protocol.  Reference 53 is to a paper "Frequency of network synchronization in the hippocampus

marks learning."  This is also low-quality research with study group sizes such as only 3 rodents or 9 rodents, without any blinding protocol being followed.  None of these studies provide any good evidence for any relation between memory and sharp-wave ripples; they merely provide evidence for how low are the publication standards these days for journals publishing neuroscience research. No rodent-using experimental neuroscience research trying to establish correlations should be taken seriously unless it followed a blinding protocol and also used at least 15 or 20 subjects per study group. 

Poor research practices are the norm in 

today's dysfunctional world of neuroscience

Brains have a great deal of signal noise of many types, and the abundance of such noise is one of many reasons for disbelieving that the brain is the source of human thinking and recall which can occur with incredible accuracy, such as when people perfectly recall very large bodies of text and perfectly perform extremely difficult math calculations without using tools such as computers, pencils or paper. Claims about sharp-wave ripples are made by brain wave analysts analyzing EEG readouts. The analysis of brain waves obtained by EEG devices is an area of science where bad methods, pareidolia and junk analysis is very abundant.  There is an abundance of people trying to use fancy statistical methods to try to extract identifiable "signals" or "signs" from data that is very noisy and polluted. Muscle movements abundantly contaminate EEG readings. Unless a study is very carefully designed and includes things such as a blinding protocol and adequate study group sizes assuring good statistical power, you will typically have some junk paper that is suitable only for tasks such as lining bird cages and wrapping fish. 

A junk-quality  article "How the Brain Decides to Remember"  in Wired Magazine recycles an article on the Quanta Magazine web site, a site notorious for its credulous puff pieces parroting unbelievable boasts by scientists.  In a misleading puff piece about Buzsaki, we have all kinds of claims about scientists establishing grand things they did not actually show, such as the claim that "In 2009 and 2010, two papers, including one led by Zugaro, showed that sharp wave ripples were involved in consolidating memories to endure over the long term."  One of the references is to a low-quality  science paper "Disruption of ripple-associated hippocampal activity during rest impairs spatial learning in the rat" that used only a study group of only five rats. The other reference is to an equally low-quality paper using only seven rats. 

 It is frequently pointed out to neuroscientists that experimental studies involving mice are generally worthless unless they use at least 15 or 20 subjects per study group; but neuroscientists keep senselessly continuing to use ridiculously low study group sizes.  Why do they do that? Because it allows them to "mine noise," and report false alarms that would vanish if a decent study group size was used. It's rather like someone trying to prove his prophetic powers by publishing a test in which he correctly predicted whether merely four consecutive coin flips were "heads" or "tails," conveniently failing to publish a larger test of his powers involving how well he predicted 15 consecutive coin flips.  You can get all kinds of false alarms when you use tiny sample sizes. 

See the paper "The Case Against Memory Consolidation in REM Sleep" for a rebuttal of claims that REM sleep has anything to do with memory consolidation. The paper states, "We believe that the cumulative evidence indicates that REM sleep serves no role in the processing or consolidation of memory."

The awarding of neuroscience prizes plays a large part in the social construction of groundless achievement legends claiming that neuroscientists did grand things they did not actually do. Often the judges who award such prizes are people who did similar research as the research being awarded, and the judges are often doing themselves favors by helping to legitimize poor quality work similar to the work that the judges themselves are performing. 

The Lundbeck Foundation announces its annual Brain Prize on some page with a video. Since the page will have no link to a scientific paper, it then becomes a bit difficult for anyone to dive into the relevant research papers, to find out what whether the research followed good practices. But with some work, you can find when the prizes were awarded foolishly. You can look at the video, find the main scientists mentioned, find the research topic, and look up the authors and the topic on Google Scholar. You can then read the papers and see whether they were merely more examples of the low-quality schlock that is so predominant in today's neuroscience research. 

LTP Research Has Done Nothing to Show Any Neural Basis for Memory Creation

In the English language "lost in the woods" is a phrase meaning "to be confused, bewildered or helpless." Neuroscientists trying to explain how human beings create memories have always been very much lost in the woods. Such scientists have no credible tale to tell on this topic. The problem is that nothing in the brain bears the slightest resemblance to some apparatus for storing learned information. Humans create various types of devices for writing information, things such as pens, pencils, paint brushes, typewriters, laser jet printers, offset printers, and the read/write heads used by a computer hard drive. Nothing in the brain bears any resemblance to such things. 

So what do you if you are a neuroscientist trying to fool people into thinking that neuroscientists like yourself have some kind of understanding of how a human could form a memory? What such people normally merely do is to senselessly repeat the same old clueless charade that neuroscientists have been doing for about fifty years: they zap a tiny bit of brain tissue, creating some tiny change that lasts about as long as a suntan or the morning dew, and they try and pass off that little change as something like information storage, even though no information was stored. This is the witless nonsense of LTP experiments. 

What is misleadingly called “long-term potentiation” or LTP is a not-very-long-lasting effect by which certain types of high-frequency stimulation performed by scientists (such as stimulation by electrodes) produces a fleeting increase in the strength of synapses. The main part of synapses are gaps between nerve cells, gaps which neurotransmitters can jump over. The evidence that LTP even occurs when people remember things is not very strong, and in 1999 a scientist stated (after decades of research on LTP) the following:

"[Scientists] have never been able to see it and actually correlate it with learning and memory. In other words, they've never been able to train an animal, look inside the brain, and see evidence that LTP occurred."

In 2007 a scientist said on page 120 of her PhD thesis, "While LTP is assumed to be the neural correlate of learning and memory, no conclusive evidence has been produced to substantiate that when an organism learns LTP occurs in that organism’s brain or brain correlate."

So-called long-term potentiation is actually a very short-term phenomenon. Speaking of long-term potentiation (LTP), and using the term “decays to baseline levels” (which means “disappears”), a scientific paper says, "potentiation almost always decays to baseline levels within a week," while noting that even after considering LTP "we would be at a loss for a brain mechanism for the storage of a long-term memory."

Another scientific paper says something similar, although it tells us even more strongly that so-called long-term potentiation (LTP) is really a very short-term affair. For it tells us that “in general LTP decays back to baseline within a few hours.” “Decays back to baseline” means the same as “vanishes.” 

Neuroscientists have long been guilty of profoundly misleading behavior in trying to persuade people that so-called so-called long-term potentiation (LTP) is a "mechanism for memory." Inducing LTP requires artificial electrode stimulation which synapses do not naturally receive.  Also, human memories can last for sixty years, but LTP is a very short-lived thing.  So why do neuroscientists keep doing LTP experiments, and why do they keep mentioning LTP as if it had something to do with memory? There are two reasons:

(1) It always sounds better if you have some sound bite or catchphrase you can mutter when someone asks how something occurs, rather than saying, "I haven't the slightest idea how it occurs." When scientists can mutter the phrase "LTP" when asked about how memories are created, it makes them sound more knowledgeable, rather than sounding like people who have no understanding of a topic. 

(2) LTP research is an easy-to-conduct "no way to fail" line of research that provides an easy way for a neuroscientist to add to his total of published papers. Scientists love these kind of "no way to fail" research opportunities. Similarly, theoretical physicists keep grinding out speculative papers about string theory or primordial cosmic inflation.  If you have learned how to write such a papers, doing another such paper is a relatively easy and safe way to get another published paper. 

In a recent article in Knowable Magazine, we have a very bad article repeating "hook, line and sinker" the groundless legend that LTP research did something to show a neural basis for memory storage. The author (Tim Vernimmen)  is a freelance science journalist who as far as I can see has little history of writing on topics of cognitive neuroscience or human memory.  The article has the extremely misleading title "It began with a rabbit: Unraveling the mystery of memory" suggesting the utterly groundless boast that scientists have done something to unravel the mystery of memory -- something that is still a hundred miles over their heads. 

We read about a 1973 paper by Bliss and Lomo in which some rabbits had their brains artificially zapped after "stimulating electrodes were constructed from electrolytically sharpened tungsten wire insulated with several coats of varnish." We have a claim that the paper is "now considered a turning point in the study of learning and memory." No, it was only the opening of a dead end that has led nowhere.  Very many similar papers have been done, but LTP research has done nothing to show any credible neural basis by which memories could be formed. Vernimmen then makes this false claim: " Bliss and Lømo had discovered something momentous: a phenomenon called long-term potentiation, or LTP, which researchers now know is fundamental to the brain’s ability to learn and remember." No, researchers do not know any such thing, and LTP research has done nothing to show any neural basis for learning or memory. 

Vernimmen then makes this untrue claim: "By the early 1970s, neuroscientist Eric Kandel had demonstrated that some simple forms of learning can be explained by chemical changes in synapses — at least in a species of sea slug." No, Kandel did not show any such thing. Vernimmen is repeating one of the many groundless legends of neuroscience. We hear this myth sometimes stated as a claim that Kandel won a Nobel Prize for showing that sea slugs can learn by changes in synapses.  The official page listing the year 2000 Nobel Prize for physiology states only the following: "The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2000 was awarded jointly to Arvid Carlsson, Paul Greengard and Eric R. Kandel 'for their discoveries concerning signal transduction in the nervous system.' " The Nobel committee did not make any claim that synapses had been discovered as the basis of memory. 

The paper in question can be read here. The paper fails to mention a testing of more than a single animal, thereby strongly violating rules of robust experimental research on animals (under which an effect should not be claimed unless at least 15 subjects were tested).  We have no reliable evidence about memory storage from this paper. If the paper somehow led to its authors getting a Nobel Prize, that may have been a careless accolade.  The Nobel Prize committee is pretty good about awarding prizes only to the well-deserved, but it may occasionally fall under the gravitational influence of scientists boasting about some "breakthrough" that was not really any such thing.  In some cases the Nobel Prize committee awards science Nobel Prizes it should not have awarded. A notable case (the case of Christian Anfinsen) is discussed in my post here, which notes misstatements in one year's press release for a Nobel Prize. 

Vernimmen then spends several paragraphs discussing techniques of Bliss and Lomo, and then makes the following laughable statement:

"After a few brief periods of high-frequency stimulation, the oscillations would become more pronounced for up to 10 hours, indicating that neurons in the rabbit’s hippocampus responded more strongly — an enduring change that would later become known as long-term potentiation. This looked a lot like the kind of activity many scientists suspected to be at the root of learning and memory."

There are three things very laughable about this statement: 

(1) The attempt to claim that some utterly artificial technique involving zapping a rabbit with electrodes might be "the kind of activity many scientists suspected to be at the root of learning and memory." People are not zapped with electrodes when they learn. 

(2) The misleading use of the word "enduring" to describe a very short-term effect lasting only "up to ten hours."

(3) The attempt to insinuate that this very short-lived effect had some relevance to explaining memories, which in humans can last for 60 years. 

Vernimmen then makes another incorrect statement, saying, "Neuroscientist Richard Morris showed that giving rats a drug that blocks the NMDA receptor impairs their ability to learn how to navigate a maze that untreated rats can easily figure out." No, he did not show that. A 2014 study was entitled "Hippocampal NMDA receptors are important for behavioural inhibition but not for encoding associative spatial memories." And a 2011 study found this:

"We found that inducible knockout mice, lacking NMDA receptor in either forebrain or hippocampus CA1 region at the time of memory retrieval, exhibited normal recall of associative spatial reference memory regardless of whether retrievals took place under full-cue or partial-cue conditions. Moreover, systemic antagonism of NMDA receptor during retention tests also had no effect on full-cue or partial-cue recall of spatial water maze memories. Thus, both genetic and pharmacological experiments collectively demonstrate that pattern completion during spatial associative memory recall does not require the NMDA receptor in the hippocampus or forebrain."

Vernimmen then goes into a discussion of chemical events occurring in synapses. He fails to provide any reason for claiming that any of the chemistry he discusses has anything to do with memory. Vernimmen gives us an extremely misleading visual showing four steps of synaptic transmission, the process by which chemicals pass over a synaptic gap.

His four-part visual is showing the same thing as depicted below:

Synaptic transmission

Misleadingly, Vernimmen's  visual is labeled "How memories form: the steps of LTP." Synaptic transmission is not memory formation. All of the chemicals involved in synaptic transmission are extremely short-lived chemicals that do not even last a day, and have average lifetimes of less than an hour. 

Vernimmen seems to have got very badly confused here. The groundless hand-waving claim made by neuroscientists about memory and synapses is that a memory can form by a strengthening of synapses, something requiring at least hours.  But the strengthening of a synapse is not synaptic transmission, the passing of chemicals over a synaptic gap, which occurs instantly. Also, synaptic transmission is a natural event occurring throughout the brain, while the LTP produced by electrode stimulation (as in the experiment of Bliss and Lomo) is an artificial event produced by inserting manufactured electrodes into a brain.  So for Vernimmen to have a visual describing natural synaptic transmission and to label that as "How memories form: the steps of LTP" is a very bad example of bunk and baloney. Natural synaptic transmission is neither LTP nor memory formation. Neuroscientists do not claim that synaptic transmission (the passing of chemicals across synaptic gaps) explains memory formation.  Vernimmen's diagram has a bungling caption in which a synaptic gap (the gap between two synaptic clefts) is labeled as an example of a "strong connection." When neuroscientists are talking about a strengthening of connections in brains, they mean more synapses between neurons and stronger synapses, not anything in a gap between synapses. 

Vernimmen then makes the claim that LTP causes dendritic spines to grow. The claim is irrelevant to explaining how memories form, both because dendritic spines are too-shorted lived to explain memories lasting for decades, and also because LTP produced by electrode stimulation (as in the experiment of Bliss and Lomo) is an artificial event produced by inserting manufactured electrodes into a brain, not a natural occurrence.  See my post "Imaging of Dendritic Spines Hint That Brains Are Too Unstable to Store Memories for Decades" for the evidence about the short lifetimes of dendritic spines. 

Vernimmen then gives us this passage:

" Bear and his team at MIT, for example, were the first to show that LTP is involved in the formation of fearful memories in mice. In a 2006 experiment, they trained mice to avoid a dark area where they’d previously received an electric shock to the feet. Meanwhile, they used an electrode to record how neurons in the hippocampus responded. 'Sure enough, there was LTP,'  says Bear:"

The reference is to the low-quality paper here, which does not qualify as robust research, because it used a study group size of only seven mice. And you don't show that something explains memory by showing that it exists when a memory is formed. There are endless thousands of things going on in the brain and body while a memory is formed. 

Vernimmen ends with a groundless self-serving quote by Bliss that "The weight of evidence suggests that LTP is central to the physiology of memory storage."  No neuroscientists do not have any understanding of any such thing as a "physiology of memory storage." Nothing in Vernimmen's article has substantiated the claim that LTP has anything to do with human memory.  From the standpoint of actually doing something to credibly explain human memories that can last for 50 years, research on LTP has been the deadest of dead ends. 

It seems that whoever is in charge of quality control at Knowable Magazine isn't doing a good job. Vernimmen's article had lots of false information, and at its bottom we ironically see the sight below. First, there is a link to an article with the ludicrous title "Making the case against memories as evidence." Then there is a plea for donation to the magazine, with the claim that this will "fight misinformation." Oops, it seems that our self-described "misinformation fighters" are guilty of spreading some very bad false information of their own. And clearly these guys are really, really bad at understanding memory, as they have made the utterly goofy claim that memories should not be counted as evidence. If you followed that principle, then half of the murderers in prison would be set free, basically everyone convicted because of the testimony of a witness. 

Below are some of the very many reasons for rejecting claims that human memories are formed by any neural mechanism:

• Although it is claimed that memories are stored in the brain (specifically in synapses), there is no place in the brain that is a plausible storage site for human memories that can last for 50 years or longer. The proteins that make up both synapses and dendritic spines are quite short-lived, being subject to very high molecular turnover which gives them an average lifetime of only a few weeks or less. Both synapses and dendritic spines are a “shifting sands” substrate absolutely unsuitable for storing memories that last reliably for decades.
• It is claimed that memories are stored in brains, but humans are able to instantly recall accurately very obscure items of knowledge and memories learned or experienced decades ago; and the brain seems to have none of the characteristics that would allow such a thing. The recall of an obscure memory from a brain would require some ability to access the exact location in the brain where such a memory was stored (such as the neurons near neuron# 8,124,412,242). But given the lack of any neuron coordinate system or any neuron position notation system or anything like an indexing system or addressing system in the brain, it would seem impossible for a brain to perform anything like such an instantaneous lookup of stored information from some exact spot in the brain.
• If humans were storing their memories in brains, there would have to be a fantastically complex translation system (almost infinitely more complicated than the ASCII code or the genetic code) by which mental concepts, words and images are translated into neural states. But no trace of any such system has ever been found, no one has given a credible detailed theory of how it could work, and if it existed it would be a “miracle of design” that would be naturally inexplicable.
• If human brains actually stored conceptual and experiential memories, the human brain would have to have both a write mechanism by which exact information can be precisely written, and a read mechanism by which exact information can be precisely read. The brain seems to have neither of these things. There is nothing in the brain similar to the “read-write” heads found in computers.
• We know from our experience with computers the type of things that an information storage and retrieval system uses and requires. The human brain seems to have nothing like any of these things. 
• As discussed here, humans can form new memories instantly, at a speed much faster than would be possible if we were using our brains to store such memories. It is typically claimed that memories are stored by “synapse strengthening” and protein synthesis, but such things do not work fast enough to explain the formation of memories that can occur instantly.
• Contrary to the idea that human memories are stored in synapses, the density of synapses sharply decreases between childhood and early adulthood. We see no neural effect matching the growth of learned memories in human.
• There are many humans with either exceptional memory abilities (such as those with hyperthymesia who can recall every day of their adulthood) or exceptional thinking abilities (such as savants with incredible calculation abilities). But such cases do not involve larger brains, very often involve completely ordinary brains, and quite often involve damaged brains, quite to the contrary of what we would expect from the “brains make minds” assumption.

• For decades microscopes have been powerful enough to detect memories in brains, if memories existed in brains. Very much brain tissue has been studied by the most powerful microscopes: both brain tissue extracting from living patients, and brain tissue extracted from someone very soon after he died. Very many thousands of brains have been examined soon after death.  Microscopes now allow us to see very clearly what is in the tiniest brain structures such as dendritic spines and synapse heads. But microscopic examination of brain tissue has failed to reveal any trace whatsoever of learned information in a brain.  No one has found a single letter of the alphabet stored in a brain; no has found a single number stored in a brain; and no one has ever found even a single pixel of something someone saw a day or more before.  If memories were stored in human brains, microscopes would have revealed decisive evidence of such a thing decades ago.  But no such evidence has appeared. 
• There is nothing in the brain that looks like learned information stored according to some systematic format that humans understand or do not understand. Even when scientists cannot figure out a code used to store information, they often can detect hallmarks of encoded information. For example, long before Europeans were able to decipher how hieroglyphics worked, they were able to see a repetition of symbolic tokens that persuaded them that some type of coding system was being used. Nothing like that can be seen in the brain. We see zero signs that synapses or dendritic spines are any such things as encoded information. 
• Many humans can remember with perfect accuracy very long bodies of text, but synapses in the brain do not reliably transmit information. An individual chemical synapse transmits an action potential with a reliability of only 50% or less, as little as 10%. A recall of long bodies of text would require a traversal of very many chemical synapses. A scientific paper says, "In the cortex, individual synapses seem to be extremely unreliable: the probability of transmitter release in response to a single action potential can be as low as 0.1 or lower."

Postscript: The visual below helps clarify the fallacy that occurred when research into LTP began. Scientists were using artificial fiddling to zap the brains of mice with electricity, and then wrongly claiming that this shed light on what naturally occurs in the brain. The claims were fallacious, because when people learn and recall, they do not have electrodes or wires attached to their heads.