Theory and hypothesis are not interchangeable. Hypothesis precedes theory. Always. Had he said "theories" he would be saying something completely different. It's another stage of scientific process altogether. In order: Hypothesis, empirical observation, theory, demonstration, new theoretical stage or field.

The bizarre CS idea of using "plain English" as a propagandic thrust to infantilize complex scientific theory is suspect. Let's eschew the idea. "Plain English" is Orwellian dumbing down.

There is a general agreement which links ontogeny and phylogeny, details working memory, its relationship to the allocortex, and subsequent episodic memory. So the neural correlates have been worked out.

The working memory and episodic memory papers in the last few years have isolated the correlates, we a have a fairly empirical neurobiological description of memory function and process.

What we're lacking now are the molecular mechanisms.

▲

aGHz a day ago | parent [-]

> The working memory and episodic memory papers in the last few years have isolated the correlates, we a have a fairly empirical neurobiological description of memory function and process.

Would you kindly provide some references? I'm very interested in this research as an armchair enthusiast, but in my own reading I've yet to find anything this confident.

▲

mallowdram a day ago | parent [-]

My favorite molecular mechanisms paper

https://bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12915-02...

In terms of NCC of memory, the papers beginning around the mid 2000s are seismic. The encoding and retrieval are subtly varied depending on the lab.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17425535/

Also the cohort studies are immensely helpful, dementia, Down's syndrome let us see the impairment.

	▲	aGHz 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Thank you very much, this is exactly the starting point I needed. I'll keep following the citations trail into more recent years, but your second link from 2007 reinforces my feeling that we're still very far from understanding the mechanisms: > Second, within LIPC, we found a gradient in which a more dorsal-posterior region was involved in SR, a mid region was involved in both SR and EE, and a more ventral-anterior region was involved in EE, but only when SR was high. To me, these are merely clues about how the high-level pieces fit together, and there's a long road to actually understanding the neural correlates of memory.