What (little) we are beginning to understand of this functioning is that our entire brain operates on the basis of a collection of traces of the past left in the synapses that connect neurons. Synapses are continually formed in their thousands and then erased—especially during sleep, leaving behind a blurry reflection of that which has acted on our nervous system in the past. A blurred image, no doubt—think of how many millions of details our eyes see every moment that do not stay in our memory—but one which contains worlds.
