General Constraints on the Architectures of Functionally Complex Learning Systems: Implications for Understanding Human Memory

The human brain is a functionally complex system. It can be demonstrated both on theoretical grounds and from design experience with functionally complex electronic systems that practical considerations such as the needs to limit information recording and processing resources and to be able to make functional changes without excessive undesirable side effects place severe constraints on how information is stored and processed in any such system. A system which must heuristically define its own functionality (i.e. learn) is constrained within a set of architectural bounds called the recommendation architecture. The processes by which information from the environment is recorded and used to generate behaviour in a system with the recommendation architecture are shown to provide an explanation for a range of observations of relatively simple human memory and skill learning capabilities. It is concluded that the recommendation architecture is a potentially valuable approach to understanding more complex human memory phenomena.