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On palimpsests in neural memory: an information theory viewpoint
The finite capacity of neural memory and the
reconsolidation phenomenon suggest it is important to be able
to update stored information as in a palimpsest, where new
information overwrites old information. Moreover, changing
information in memory is metabolically costly. In this paper, we
suggest that information-theoretic approaches may inform the
fundamental limits in constructing such a memory system. In
particular, we define malleable coding, that considers not only
representation length but also ease of representation update,
thereby encouraging some form of recycling to convert an old
codeword into a new one. Malleability cost is the difficulty of
synchronizing compressed versions, and malleable codes are of
particular interest when representing information and modifying
the representation are both expensive. We examine the tradeoff
between compression efficiency and malleability cost, under a
malleability metric defined with respect to a string edit distance.
This introduces a metric topology to the compressed domain. We
characterize the exact set of achievable rates and malleability as
the solution of a subgraph isomorphism problem. This is all done
within the optimization approach to biology framework.Accepted manuscrip
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