Data Compression in the Brain

This article, “How the brain assigns objects to categories“, describes a great example of how multiple, segmented neural networks accomplish the fine art of “data compression”. Evolutionarily speaking, this is a “cheap and dirty trick”, but it works!

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-07-brain-assigns-categories.html

Once the generic category is formed in the prefrontal cortex, the straitia are free to focus on other details.  The first few exemplars of a category may linger in memory, somewhere, but new exemplars are likely ignored.

What if the straita could not forget?  What if the prefrontal cortex was not present to absorb recurrent exemplars?

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