The emergence of Miller's magic number on a sparse distributed memory.
Human memory is limited in the number of items held in one's mind--a limit known as "Miller's magic number". We study the emergence of such limits as a result of the statistics of large bitvectors used to represent items in memory, given two postulates: i) the Sparse Distributed Memory; and ii) chunking through averaging. Potential implications for theoretical neuroscience are discussed.
Getulio Vargas Foundation/EBAPE, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. alexandre.linhares@fgv.br
Alexandre
A
Linhares
Daniel M
DM
Chada
Christian N
CN
Aranha
D006801:Humans; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D008959:Models, Neurological; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009488:Neurosciences / Q000379:methods*
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