Previously, scientists believed that certain memories are located in certain areas of the brain. Thus, in the brain must exist certain structures that store all human memories. It was not known exactly how exactly are these patterns, it may be some connection between neurons may be that some biochemical signals, special molecules or even the information could be stored in DNA or RNA, but, nevertheless, the scientists decided to name these structures by engrams. This name was invented, so to speak, for the future, the scientists hoped that sooner or later the mystery of engrams will be revealed, and yet agreed to call for the convenience between these mysterious structures engrams.

In different experiments that scientists conducted on the brain, theory of engrams convincingly found their confirmation. The scientists also discovered a very amazing property of the brain, it was the fact that the brain is absolutely not sensitive to pain. We add a small local anesthesia on the skin of the head and can operate freely outdoor brain, the patient will not feel any pain.

This is an amazing discovery now, for example, is widely used for the radical treatment of drug addiction. The addict is removed a small area of the brain that is responsible for drug addiction, and during the operation itself addict remains in full consciousness and not feel any pain. The deletion is performed with the help of special cryogenic needle that is inserted into the brain, and then abruptly frozen, then the needle is pulled out together with Pristavkin to it a small part of the brain. After surgery addict how would forget about those feelings that caused drugs and thus returns to the state when he did not know about the existence of the drug and did not use them.

But practice shows, despite the fact that this radical method widely advertised, it is not a cure for this terrible disease. But why? The theory of engrams asserts that all human memories localized in certain parts of the brain, so if we can localize those cells that store memories about drugs and remove them, you can return addict in a healthy condition.

Also such famous scientist as Penfield, conducted a series of experiments on the brain epileptics. He stimulated weak electrical discharges certain parts of the brain, in particular the temporal region. Patients were re-experience all the sensations down to the smallest details that were previously stored in their memories. They felt something like a very plausible hallucinations, as if someone ran before them the film, shot past events in their lives. Based on these experiments, Penfield came to the conclusion that all that we once had or experienced in my life forever and firmly recorded by the brain, even if we do not suspect about it. It turns out that the brain is capable of storing many billions of terabytes of information that is astonishing in itself.

Thus, the theory of engrams received more evidence, until one day scientists are not faced with such facts, which put everything upside the head and it is not consistent with the theory of engrams. When scientists were taught rats to find the shortest path through the maze and then tried to locate and remove from them the part of the brain that was responsible for the memory of the way through the maze, they have nothing worked. Scientists removed completely different parts of the brain and caused rats to go through a maze, rats to the surprise of scientists, coped with this task even when it was removed a significant part of the brain. Thus, the memory of the way out of the maze remained intact. From these experiments, it was possible to draw only one conclusion: the memory is not localized in any place, as it were evenly distributed throughout the brain. Thus, it was convincingly proved that the memory is distributed nature.

Then began the search for a mechanism that could explain the functioning of memory in this way, because if the theory of engrams are defeated, then how can operate memory if memories are not located in certain places, like books on a shelf or files on the hard disk of the computer. It is unclear how you can store private files on your hard disc, so that all these files are distributed evenly across the disk and remove part of the disk, say the appearance of bad-sectors, access to all files and their integrity would remain unchanged. The scientists got up this a very difficult question and they needed him to unravel.