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Thank you for the links and the excerpt! They were both interesting.

This evidence supports Gerald Edelman's contention that memories are're-constructed' each time we remember them and do not exist as separate entities stored in a mythical filing cabinet.

That statement speaks to the process of memory rather than whether the mind is an epiphenomenon of the physical brain. IOW, the trial suggests that the process of recall is more like a hologram than an access of a database - each slice giving the whole view but from a different aspect. I believe the trial may eliminate a networked database structure but I do not see where it has eliminated either a relational or a hierarchical structure or has establish a holographic type structure.

Moreover, it does not settle whether the mind is an epiphenomenon of the physical brain or whether the physical brain is the mechanism of mind (like a transmitter/receiver). I know of no clinical test which could falsify either worldview.

This evidence supports Gerald Edelman's contention that memories are 're-constructed' each time we remember them and do not exist as separate entities stored in a mythical filing cabinet.

RE js1138's statement: If memories have to be reconstructed everytime we think of them, I would think that this would make thinking an enormously inefficient process. Yet in general, Nature is "parsimonious" -- inefficiency is not rewarded and is often penalized.

I'd also like to point out that the way an experiment is designed -- especially regarding its basic assumptions which may not be explicitly clarified -- can have an effect on the conclusions that can be reached by means of that particular experiment. FWIW

Plus I visit the old "filing cabinet" all the time, whenever I need a piece of information useful to solving a problem I'm working on. I literally can execute a "file search" and get a timely response with the memories I need in order to reason and analyze current problems. Based on such experiences, I strongly doubt that the "filing cabinet model" is "mythical."