Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Memory engrams are hypothetical neural representations that explain the persistence of memory. Finding memory engrams requires the identification and individuation of engram vehicles, which are determinate neural entities or processes bearing memory content. However, not only are there many candidate vehicles for memory engrams, but each candidate is ill-suited for explaining memory persistence due to instability via degradation, turnover, and dynamics. I argue that memory engram models presume the truth of a mere heuristic: that changes in neural activities correspond to changes in cognitive content. As such, explanations of persisting memories are thought to require persisting vehicles. This presumption in turn drives issues with determining exactly what remains stable in the brain to explain how memory persists. But to explain the persistence of memory, all that needs to persist is the capacity of the system to recall a memory. I conceive of engrams according to their functional role as causal motifs for memory recall.