A columnar model explaining long-term memory

A hologram provides a useful model for explaining the associative memory of the brain. Recent advances in neuroscience emphasize that single neurons can store complex information and that subtle changes in neurons underlie the process of memorization. Experimental results suggest that memory has a localized character. This finding is inconsistent with the characteristics of holographic memory, because this memory has a delocalized, uniform distribution of refractive index in the recorded medium. The recently proposed columnar memory model has a discrete distribution of refractive index. In this study, we first examined the performance of columnar memory and found that it was comparable to holographic memory. Secondly, we showed that this model could explain the above-mentioned experimental results as well as associative memory.