Does Memory Reside in the Brain? Contrary Evidence and Anomalous Cases
No one has been able to find any dramatic difference in the brains of those who have highly superior autobiographical memory. People like Jill Price who can remember almost everything that happened to them in adulthood have brains that are 99% identical to people who can remember only a small fraction of what happened to them in adulthood.
Damaged Brain, Enhanced Memory
People with damaged brains sometimes show types of memory recall superior to those of people with ordinary brains. Theoretically, according to common sense, we should expect people with a defective brain to be worse at remembering things. Although this is sometimes true, there are some dramatic cases of people who had a defective brain but much superior memory.
The HK Case
A dramatic case is that of HK, who was born after only 27 weeks, that is 13 weeks premature. Yet HK had dramatically superior autobiographical memory. As can be seen in Figure 6, for dates between this first memory and his 10th year of life, HK shows a relatively constant increase in accuracy for autobiographical events. Accuracy makes a notable jump to almost 90% in 2001 at age 11. From that moment on, HK's recall of autobiographical events is almost perfect. He reports being able to relive memories in his mind as if they had just happened. HK stated that everything about his memory, including sounds, smells and emotions, are relived vividly when he remembers a particular event in time. He stated that there is no difference in the vividness of his memory between events that occurred when he was five years old and events he experienced in the last month.
However, volumetric analysis reveals a significantly reduced total tissue volume in HK and volumetric analysis of subcortical structures shows a general reduction of subcortical volumes in HK (1019mL) compared to controls (124929mL). So the person with this miraculous memory had a brain about 20% smaller.
Drugs and Retrograde Amnesia
If the brain stored memories, we would think it would be quite easy to create a drug that produces temporary retrograde amnesia. Such a drug could simply mess up some chemical elements in the brain that would be used if the brain were retrieving memories. But there is no drug that can cause retrograde amnesia. There is no drug that can cause even temporarily that a person stops remembering knowledge acquired at school, or stops recognizing friends and family members.
Memories that Survive Brain Destruction
There are many cases in the parapsychology literature that suggest that human episodic memories can survive long after the decay and destruction of a brain. The most important researcher of past-life accounts was Ian Stevenson, a professor and psychiatrist who documented many cases of children who reported memories of past lives, with details that often correspond to details of previous lives that were discovered. Cases like these do not by themselves refute the claim that the brain stores memories. But such cases are a point against such a claim. If there is evidence suggesting that some memories can survive an individual's death and brain decay, this suggests that human memories are not only stored in the brain, but somehow accumulated in some way that may allow memories to survive beyond a person's death and the decay of their brain.
Conclusions
In this series of articles we have listed a series of provocative arguments and concrete problems that cast doubt on the synaptic theory of memory. Some of these problems may be solved with other solutions, such as genetic theories...