I mean an LLM (bad example, but good enough for what I'm trying to convey) doesn't need any sort of "memory" to be able to reconstruct something that looks like intelligence. It stores weights, and can re-assemble "facts" from those weights, independent of the meaning or significance of those facts. It's possible the brain is similar, on a much more refined scale. My brain certainly doesn't store 35,000 instances of my mum's image to help me identify her, just an averaged image to help me know when I'm looking at my mum.
The brain definitely stores things, and retrieval and processing are key to the behaviour that comes out the other end, but whether it's "memory" like what this article tries to define, I'm not sure. The article makes it a point to talk about instances where /lack/ of a memory is a sign of the brain doing something different from an LLM, but the brain is pretty happy to "make up" a "memory", from all of my reading and understanding.
The brain definitely stores things, and retrieval and processing are key to the behaviour that comes out the other end, but whether it's "memory" like what this article tries to define, I'm not sure. The article makes it a point to talk about instances where /lack/ of a memory is a sign of the brain doing something different from an LLM, but the brain is pretty happy to "make up" a "memory", from all of my reading and understanding.