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A comment on First-ever human head transplant is now possible, says neuroscientist. Parent comment

Re:First-ever human head transplant is now possible, says ne... by skaevola on Monday July 01, 2013 @05:47PM (#5973804)
Nope, learning physically changes the brain. For example, learning to juggle will increase certain portions of their brain. [1]

It's like running Crysis, and having your video card's capability increase,

1. http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone...

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Re:First-ever human head transplant is now possible, says ne... by Zarel on Monday July 01, 2013 @05:50PM (#5973819)
Yes, and hard drives physically change when they're modified, too.

I think it's more like installing Crysis, and having more of your hard drive devoted to Crysis than before.

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Re:First-ever human head transplant is now possible, says ne... by skaevola on Monday July 01, 2013 @06:03PM (#5973878)
Memories are stored in the hippocampus, the changes took place in the occipito-temporal cortex.

I'm not a neuroscientist, but my understanding is that the changes were directly related to processing, not memory.

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Re:First-ever human head transplant is now possible, says ne... by devindotcom on Tuesday July 02, 2013 @02:04AM (#5976112)
No one knows where memories are "stored," if stored is the proper term. But it is not exclusively in the hippocampus, that much is certain. The hippocampal region is definitely important in the function of memory but it is not where memories are located, and it is doubtful that they are located in any one structure in particular.
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Re:First-ever human head transplant is now possible, says ne... by skaevola on Friday July 05, 2013 @07:38PM (#5997224)
Definitely true, but not really responsive to my point.
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Re:First-ever human head transplant is now possible, says ne... by Zarel on Monday July 01, 2013 @07:32PM (#5974461)
I'd imagine it's the difference between writing to executable code and writing to data files. It's still just the files inside the hard drives that's changed.
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