Neuroscientist Theory Of Memory Essay

Memory as an Epiphenomenal Record Player Memory has two definitions, (1) the faculty and capacity for the mind to store and recall information, and (2) the mental content of that information which has been stored. Over the last century, psychologists, neuroscientist, and philosophers have attempted to explain this phenomenon in a variety of different ways. First, psychologists have reduced memory to simple behavioral states that result from exposure to an experience over the short or long term (Rudy 5). Second, Neuroscientists have attempted to reduce the phenomenon of memory to mechanistic material explanations to show that it is little more than the complex circuitry of the brain, and its relationship to external processes and stimuli. As such, contemporary neuroscientists have gone as far to say that memory is little more than a “theoretical concept used to explain the fact that experience influences behavior” (Rudy 3). Finally, philosophers such as Andy Clark and David Chalmers have argued for an understanding of memory, where memory is equivalent to a notebook. As such, all of these theories have, in varying degrees of success, attempted to explain the primary definition of memory as a capacity for mental …show more content…
According to Jerry R. Rudy, professor of neuroscience at the University of Colorado, the purpose of psychology is to “study only the relationship between experience and behavior” while neuroscience aims at explaining experience’s influence on memory by examining the “brain systems, synapses, and molecules” (5). According to Rudy, memory is reducible from brain systems to synapses and from synapses to molecules and chemistry. As such, the purpose of neuroscience is to “relate the basic facts about memory to events that are happening in the brain” (Rudy