Does Memory Reside Inside the Brain

[Vernon Stewart]

On Jun 2, 2005, NBC Philadelphia had an interesting report. Christina
Santhouse had caught a virus that caused a rare brain disorder known
as Rasmussen's Syndrome at an age of 8. And her doctor had to perform
hemispherectomy, removal of half of the brain, on her. After 10 years,
Christina was about to graduate from high school with honors. After
the surgery, she had a slight limp and her left hand didn't work at
all. She had also lost her peripheral vision, but otherwise, she was
an ordinary teen. A similar case was reported on Telegraph (UK) on May
29, 2002, a girl named Bursa had the same disorder and her left brain
was removed when she was 3, she became fluent in Dutch and Turkish
when she was 7. In 1987, A. Smith reported that one patient with
hemispherectomy had completed college, attended graduate school and
scored above average on intelligence tests. Studies have found no
significant long-term effects on memory, personality, or humor after
the procedure, and minimal changes in cognitive function overall.
The outcome of hemispherectomy is surprising. Neuroscience tends to
suggest memory is stored in the neurons in the brain. If that premise
stands true, removing half of the brain would destroy one's memory if
memory is stored in the network structure of neurons as one school of
cognitive physiology suggests, or at least destroy half of the memory
if bits of memory information are stored in individual neurons in the
brain as suggested by another school of cognitive neuroscience. But it
is apparent that the results disagree with either of the explanations.
Removing part of the brain has been one of the standard surgical
operations for severe epilepsy and has been performed thousands of
times. Many of the results are quite similar to those of
hemispherectomy.
The orthodox explanation for the observation is that information
stored in the infected brain areas is duplicated in the health part of
the brain prior to the surgery. This rationalization is still
inadequate when you take into account how a brain surgery is
performed. Surgeon has to remove the infected area and some
surrounding health tissue, sometimes a much larger tissue than the
infected area, to make sure infection does not spread. If the
information stored in the infected areas is reproduced somewhere in
the brain before surgical procedure, some information is still lost
when surrounding health brain tissue is removed, consequently the
memory would suffer.
This is not observed after the surgery. So it is necessary to assume
that the memory stored in the neighboring health tissue is also
replicated in other parts of the brain. This raises a question: how
does the brain know how much health tissue is going to be taken out?
If the brain does not know, surgeries will inevitable destruct part of
the memory. The belief that memory is stored in the brain (in neurons
or in the network of neurons) apparently contradicts with findings in
brain surgeries.  
In the 1920s Karl Lashley conducted a series of experiments trying to
identify which part of the brain memories are stored. He trained rats
to find their way through a maze, and then made lesions in different
parts of the cerebral cortex in an attempt to erase its original
memory trace. His experimental animals were still able to find their
way through the maze no matter where he put lesions on their brains.
He therefore concluded that memories are not stored in any single area
of the brain, but are instead distributed throughout it. Distributing
the memory of every single event over the whole brain is energetically
inefficient and mathematically impossible. If his reasoning is not
confined to the brain, the logical conclusion should be that memory is
not stored in the brain.
Instincts are obviously inherited and nobody has any slight idea where
the information making up the instincts is stored, and cognitive
memory is thought to be acquired through experience and stored by
changing the signal chemicals in the neurons in the brain.
New research reveals that even cognitive memory can be inherited. A
study by Larry Feig at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston
indicates that mother mice that receive mental training before they
become pregnant can pass on their cognitive benefits to their young
even there is no direct contact among the mothers and their offspring.
It is obvious that the cognitive memory is not acquired by the young
through experience, and there is no apparent way for the young to
store the information in their neurons, then where do the young
retrieve the memory from? Maybe from where they store their instincts
information, a place nobody knows yet.
"Brain areas such as the hippocampus, the amygdala, the striatum, or
the mammillary bodies are thought to be involved in specific types of
memory. For example, the hippocampus is believed to be involved in
spatial learning and declarative learning, while the amygdala is
thought to be involved in emotional memory. Damage to certain areas in
patients and animal models and subsequent memory deficits is a primary
source of information. However, rather than implicating a specific
area, it could be that damage to a pathway traveling through the area
is actually responsible for the observed deficit" (excerpt from
www.wikipedia.com). If one stores all his possessions in a warehouse
connected to his house through a highway, he would not be able to get
anything from the warehouse if the highway is broken down. To infer
that everything is stored on the highway based on the facts he can not
get anything when the highway is interrupted is ridiculous. Even the
connection between the brain and memory is well established, it is
beyond logic to conclude that memory reside inside the brain. 
Wilder Penfield was a pioneer in associating particular type of memory
with specific area in the brain. When he was conducting surgeries to
remove specific types of temporal lobe loci which were causing
epilepsy, he made ground-breaking discoveries by taking notice that
his un-anesthetized patients (with local pain blockers) could listen
and respond to his questions while their temporal lobe was being
operated upon. Indeed, the verbal feedback by the patient was an
essential requirement so that Penfield could determine that he was
excising exact portion of the brain which was the cause of the
neurological symptoms being treated. He would insert an electrode into
patient's brain and provide electrical stimulation to see how the
patient responds.
One of Penfield's patients heard a specific music selection being
performed by an orchestra "when a point on the superior surface of the
right temporal lobe was stimulated after removal of the anterior half
of the lobe." The sound was so clear that the patient believed that
there was a phonograph in the operating room. As the same point was re-
stimulated (without withdrawing the electrode, only stop and re-supply
electrical stimulus) the music began at the same spot in time where it
had previously begun.
When Penfield withheld the electrode, the patient heard nothing. He
found that the patient could not guess what was to happen after the
electrode had been withdrawn. "L.G. saw a man fighting. When the point
was re-stimulated he saw a man and a dog walking along a road." Often
the memory is no longer able to be recalled.
At the beginning of his career in brain surgery, Penfield reasoned
memory must be stored somewhere in the brain and the stimulus opened
the gate of river of memory. His work originated numerous researches
to associate memory and emotion to specific area in the brain.
Penfield's continuous research convinced him that memory can not exist
in the brain. He and his colleague reported that removing more cortex
after injury to the brain raised the Intelligence Quotient. In one
case, he was surprised to find out that his patient's Intelligence
Quotient went from 75 to 80 - 95 after he made extensive bilateral
removal of the prefrontal lobes. William Cone reported similar result
after removing part of his patient's brain. Penfield's continued work,
especially on hippocampus and cortex, had changed his views on brain,
consciousness and memory mechanism. He late suggested that the
interpretive cortex of the temporal lobes acts as a bridge, and the
hippocampus holds "keys of access" to those past recorded experiences
which are located somewhere outside of the brain.
Philosopher William James had a technically different but very similar
view on consciousness as Penfield. He held that consciousness operates
through the brain rather than the brain producing consciousness. The
notion that consciousness is separated from the body has a long
tradition in the west thinkers. Plato portrayed the earthly body as a
limiting factor on conscious experience. Kant insinuated the body as
"an imposition to our pure spiritual life". The idea matured into a
proposition called Transmission Hypothesis --- brain and body serve
not as the originators of consciousness but rather as its trans-
receiver. The cited supporting evidences for this hypothesis are
mostly in the typically considered unscientific fields, such as,
psychedelic research, psi effect, after death experience, etc.. As a
result this hypothesis is ill received within the philosophic and
scientific community. But that does not mean they are wrong, to
separate consciousness from body might a very sensible thing to do in
the light of above facts.  
Since memory does not reside inside the brain, the functions of the
brain need to be reinvestigated. It is possible that the brain acts as
a bridge to consciousness as suggested by Penfield, or a trans-
receiver suggested by William James. The similarity between the two is
obvious, and the brain is the only pathway to consciousness and memory
for both cases. The importance of brain to memory has been supported
by a vast number of critical researches over a long history. But
the evidence to suggest that the brain is the only organ associated
with memory is lacking, on the contrary, some evidences suggest that
the heart might be associated with memory too. 
Does the heart have memory? The question has been around for years.
The question arises anew after years of transplanting the heart or
other organs into human beings and noticing some changes in the
recipients. After having had heart transplants some recipients have
noticed profound changes in their personalities. For some, there is an
overwhelming need to consume quantities of Mexican foods when that
type of cuisine was never a favorite. For others, a sudden love for
football, when sports were previously hated, comes into play.
How can these phenomena be explained? Can the heart actually feel,
think, and remember? The answer could shed light on how memory is
handled by human.
Rollin MacCraty from California's Hearthmath University has devised
tests which show how the heart processes information. His tests showed
that the heart responded before the brain when encountering an
emotional event. He concluded the heart must have the ability to
process emotional data.
To associate heart with memory is a legitimate proposition based on
these findings. But there is no medical evidence indicating that
changing the heart to a mechanical heart leads to memory loss. This
implies memory is not stored in the heart. Could it be because that
heart does not store memory but is a gateway to the memory? What kind
of memory can be accessed through heart? Are other organs gateways to
limited memory too? These questions ask for expanding memory research
to a much wider ground besides the brain.
The inevitable question is, if memory is not inside the brain, where
does memory reside? The short answer is: we don't know. Scientific
pursuit has always been looking for evidence to support a logic
conclusion derived from a general theory. If the general theory is
fundamentally flawed, the progressing of science will stop and wait
for convincing evidence to overturn the general theory. Only from
there, science will flourish again on the new foundation. Materialism
has been very successful for the advancement of living standard and
scientific queries. Recent research in quantum mechanics suggests
reality in a more basic level might not be materialism at all. Memory
might be in a physical form we do not know or reside outside our
physical world. We shall wait for new evidence to emerge.