The professor pointed out the brain's ability to remember better when using the seven senses.

Scientists from Skoltech created a mathematical model and conducted an analysis, the results of which showed that the human brain works better with seven senses compared to using five of them. This is reported by Science Daily magazine.

"Our conclusion, of course, is very controversial when applied to human feelings, although who knows: perhaps in the future people will develop a sense of radiation or a magnetic field. But in any case, our findings may have practical implications for robotics and artificial intelligence theory. It seems that when each concept stored in memory is characterized by seven features, rather than, say, five or eight, the number of individual objects stored in memory is maximized," said Nikolai Brilliantov, a professor at the Skoltech Institute of Artificial Intelligence and co—author of the study.

According to a well—established approach that emerged at the beginning of the 20th century, the team models the main building blocks of memory - memory engrams. They can be considered as a sparse collection of neurons in different areas of the brain that are activated simultaneously. The conceptual content of an engram is an ideal abstract object characterized by several features.

In the context of human memory, signs correspond to sensory inputs, so the concept of a banana will be associated with the visual image, smell, taste of a banana, and so on. This leads to the creation of a five-dimensional object that exists and develops in such a space filled with all the other concepts stored in memory.

The evolution of engrams refers to the process when concepts become clearer or blurred over time, depending on the frequency of activation of engrams by external stimuli through the senses, evoking the memory of the corresponding object. This simulates learning and forgetting as a result of interacting with the environment.

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"We have mathematically demonstrated that engrams in the conceptual space tend to evolve to a stable state, that is, after a certain transition period, a "mature" engram distribution appears, which is then preserved over time. Considering the maximum capacity of a conceptual space of a given number of dimensions, we were somewhat surprised to find that the number of individual engrams stored in memory in a stable state is the largest for a conceptual space with seven dimensions. Hence the statement about the seven senses," said Brilliantov.

In other words, let the objects existing in the world be described by a finite number of features corresponding to the dimensions of a certain conceptual space. Suppose the intention is to maximize the capacity of the conceptual space, expressed by the number of different concepts associated with these objects. The bigger it is, the deeper the overall understanding of the world. It turned out that the maximum capacity is reached when the dimension of the conceptual space is seven. From this, the researchers conclude that seven is the optimal number of senses.

The authors believe that this number does not depend on the details of the model — the properties of the conceptual space and stimuli that create sensory impressions. It is noted that the number seven seems to be a solid and stable characteristic of memory engrams as such. The only thing to note is that several engrams of different sizes existing around a common center are considered to represent similar concepts, therefore they are considered as one when calculating memory capacity.

The memory of humans and other living beings is a mysterious phenomenon associated with consciousness, among other things. The development of theoretical memory models will contribute to the acquisition of new knowledge about the human mind and the creation of human-like memory in artificial intelligence (AI) systems.

Psychologist and neuropsychologist Maria Todorova told Izvestia on October 8 about the effects of emotions and sleep on long-term memory. The specialist noted that the conscious mindset activates the executive functions of the brain — attention, control and internal motivation. According to her, a simple command "I want to understand and remember this" becomes a tool for building the necessary neural connections.

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