Topic: crypto-hash function

The brain's extraordinary abilities are often associated with its ability to learn and adapt. But memory and plasticity, in general, have their limitations, especially when faced with the tasks such as retrieving hundreds of thousands of items, such as in the case of scatter-hoarding animals. Here, we present a brain mechanism that works by utilizing cryptographic principles in lieu of plasticity. Rather than memorizing the locations of their caches, as previously suggested, we propose that cache-hoarding animals use a single cryptographic-like mechanism for both caching and retrieval. The mod