Great talk! Overall super fascinated by the idea that neuron connectivity houses a combinatorial explosion of possible sequences, and over the lifetime of the organism, these pre-existing sequences are mapped to sensory input sequences. The entropy associated with these patterns is so high, that the brain can probably find a pattern that closely maps to a given input, like a new location or a new kind of tree. A fruit fly has lower mapping entropy than a human, so it makes sense that a fruit fly brain may be unable to find a pattern from the same input as a human, which manifests as having shorter-term sequence prediction (planning) and recall (memory), and lower intelligence.
Question -- I love the notion of flipping Hebbian law upside-down. During the trials, we observe place cells firing (modulated by theta phase), and followup SPW-Rs that "consolidate" or "reward" successful place cell sequences. It makes sense that we'd observe a higher probability of SPW-Rs as the number of trials increases. Wouldn't this indicate that Hebb's law is at least direction-agnostic? The SPW-Rs fire and strengthen the trial's place cell sequence, and during sleep, it makes sense that these sequences have the highest probability of replay (as they are the place cell sequences that resulted in a reward) if you subscribe to reinforcement learning. How can we say one way or another whether the "wiring" came before the "firing" in Hebb's law? It seems like a positive feedback loop, or a chicken-and-egg type situation.
