Human Connectome Project.

You should check out this NY Times article on the Human Connectome project.

Their goal is to run slice after minuscule slice under a powerful electron microscope, develop detailed pictures of the brain’s complex wiring and then stitch the images back together. In short, they want to build a full map of the mind.

The field, at a very nascent stage, is called connectomics, and the neuroscientists pursuing it compare their work to early efforts in genetics. What they are doing, these scientists say, is akin to trying to crack the human genome — only this time around, they want to find how memories, personality traits and skills are stored.

They are searching the neurobiological basis of all forms of stored information. That is a very difficult task, and will take many decades. Even when you have mapped all the connections, which seems to be the primary goal of the project, the interpretation of the findings is a big issue. How do you translate a bunch of connections back into information? That is the big obstacle. We know that your name is stored inside of your brain, and in a few decades we might know all of your connections. But connecting name with a set of connections is nearly impossible. And let's not forget: they analyse a dead brain, and not time slices of the same brain.

Nevertheless, it is very clear that memories are physically stored in the brain, that we have thousands and thousands of them, that the memories undergo changes, and that they spread from brain to brain.

Phenotype of memes

There are many definitions of memes, and it's all very confusing. Some define all thought processes as memes. Others define as memes those behaviours that are copied.

We define memes as communicable-via-language memories. This definition has the advantage that the meme is a physical entity, i.e. the memory stored in the brain. What are thoughts processes or copied behaviours? These are for us the phenotype of memes. Like with genes, where (part of) the body is the phenotype of specific genes. Memories in interaction with the rest of the body also create phenotypes. Thoughts are the products of long-term memory plus outside influences, biofeedback, and the interaction of previous thoughts. Also, behaviours that are copied are determined by memories: Without memory, no recurring behaviour.

We exclude non-communicable memory like motor code or sensory memory. They might spread to other spreads but not in a direct way, and we view them more like proto-memes.