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Estimating the energy requirements for long term memory formation

Girard, Maxime; Jiang, Jiamu; van Rossum, Mark CW

Authors

Maxime Girard

Jiamu Jiang

Prof MARK VAN ROSSUM Mark.VanRossum@nottingham.ac.uk
Chair and Director/Neural Computation Research Group



Abstract

Brains consume metabolic energy to process information, but also to store memories. The energy required for memory formation can be substantial, for instance in fruit flies memory formation leads to a shorter lifespan upon subsequent starvation (Mery and Kawecki, 2005). Here we estimate that the energy required corresponds to about 10mJ/bit and compare this to biophysical estimates as well as energy requirements in computer hardware. We conclude that while the reason behind it is not known, biological memory storage is metabolically expensive.

Citation

Girard, M., Jiang, J., & van Rossum, M. C. Estimating the energy requirements for long term memory formation

Working Paper Type Working Paper
Deposit Date Jan 21, 2023
Publicly Available Date Jan 24, 2023
Public URL https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/16230907
Publisher URL https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.16.524203v2
Additional Information Preprint in BioRXiv

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