I think the evidence for this should be extraordinary because it is so apparently unlikely.
Why would the brain store multiple copies of a memory? It’s so inefficient.
Why would the brain store multiple copies of a memory? It’s so inefficient.
The reason why animal brains would store multiple copies of a memory is functional proximity. You need memory near the limbic system for neurotic processing and fear conditioning. Long term storage is near the brain stem so that it can eventually bleed into the cerebellum to become muscle memory. There is memory storage near the frontal lobes so that people can reason about with their advanced processors like speech parsing, visual cortex, decision bias, and so forth.
"Our Brains Instantly Make Two Copies of Each Memory" (2017) https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/our-brains-instantly-m... :
> We might be wrong. New research suggests that our brains make two copies of each memory in the moment they are formed. One is filed away in the hippocampus, the center of short-term memories, while the other is stored in cortex, where our long-term memories reside.
From https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201... :
> Surprisingly, the researchers found that long-term memories remain "silent" in the prefrontal cortex for about two weeks before maturing and becoming consolidated into permanent long-term memories.
ScholarlyArticle: "Engrams and circuits crucial for systems consolidation of a memory" (2017) https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aam6808
So that makes four (4) copies of each memory in the brain if you include the engram cells in the prefrontal cortex.
What is the survival advantage to redundant, resilient recall; why do brains with such traits survive and where and when in our evolutionary lineage did such complexity arise?
Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurrent_laryngeal_nerve#Evid...
video data; audio data; title information
or...
images; sounds; emotional state; more?