Scientists at Skoltech have created a new mathematical model to better understand how memory works.
Their study, published in Scientific Reports, might help improve artificial intelligence, robotics, and even give us new ideas about how the human brain stores and uses information.
The researchers looked at how memories—called “engrams”—are formed and stored in the brain. An engram is like a small group of brain cells that work together to represent a memory. Each engram is made up of features that describe a concept. For people, these features come from our senses.
For example, if you think of a banana, your brain might recall what it looks like, how it smells, how it tastes, and how it feels. These different sensory details help you build a full picture of the banana in your mind.
In this study, the team treated each memory as a multi-dimensional object, meaning it has many sides based on the different senses used to describe it.
Right now, humans have five main senses: sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell. But the model suggests something surprising—the ideal number of “senses” or features to remember things might actually be seven.
This doesn’t mean humans are missing senses, although the researchers admit it’s an interesting thought. Maybe in the far future, people could develop new senses like detecting magnetic fields or radiation.
But for now, the idea has more practical use in technology. For example, if robots or AI systems used seven types of input to describe and store objects, they might learn and remember better.
The model showed that when each memory uses seven features, the brain—or the artificial system—can store the largest number of different memories.
This happens because the “concept space,” or mental storage area, is used in the most efficient way when it has seven dimensions. If there are fewer or more dimensions, memory capacity actually goes down.
The scientists used advanced math to show that memory settles into a stable pattern over time. At first, memories come and go as we learn and forget, but eventually, a balance is reached. In this steady state, the number of distinct memories is highest when each one is made up of seven different features.
Interestingly, this number—seven—didn’t depend on the fine details of the model. Whether the sensory input was simple or complex, or the space for storing memories had different properties, seven always seemed to be the magic number. This makes the finding even stronger.
The researchers also noted that if multiple memories are very similar, they are treated as one to avoid confusion. This helps improve memory storage and organization, both in the brain and in AI systems.
Understanding how memory works is a big step in learning more about the human mind. It could also help scientists build smarter machines that think more like people. This study adds a new piece to that puzzle and raises an exciting question: What if having seven senses is better than five?
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The study is published in Scientific Reports.
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