No subject

(REZA SHADMEHR is one of the authors of the study referred
to in this discussion.)

There is little question among the neuroscientists that
practice only starts a process that continues to progress
long after the presentation of information has stopped. One
only has to consider the fact that the half-life of 
proteins are on the order of minutes to hours, while
memories, which are presumably represented as changes in
protein dependent synaptic mechanisms, may last a life 
time.  How this is done remains a mystery.  Perhaps, as our
study hints, with time there are system-wide changes in
representation of newly acquired memories.  There is much
more evidence for this in memories that rely on the medial
parts of the temporal lobe, the regions where damage causes
amnesia.  We find evidence that memories that do not depend
on the med. temporal lobe structures also show a time
dependent stability property and that this property is
correlated with changes in brain regions of representation.

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