Connectome

Over the ages, philosophers came up with a list of principles by which associations can be learned. At the top of the list is coincidence, sometimes called contiguity in time or place.

In a nutshell, neuroscience has been saddled with a dilemma: The ideas of phrenology can be empirically tested but are simplistic. Connectionism is far more sophisticated, but its ideas cannot be evaluated experimentally.

The other self is much more stable. It retains memories from childhood over an entire lifetime. Its nature—what we think of as personality—is largely constant, a fact that comforts family and friends.

all four R’s—reweighting, reconnection, rewiring, and regeneration—are

every stream has a bed.

This tradeoff has been named the “stability–plasticity dilemma”

Today maps are practical items for me, not magical objects. As my childhood memories grow faint, I wonder whether my fascination with maps helped me cope with a fear of the world’s vastness. Back then, I never ventured beyond the streets of my neighborhood without my parents; the city beyond seemed frightening. Placing the entire world on a sphere

a feeling of difficulty often accompanies the experience of memory, while perception usually feels effortless.

A second factor is repetition.