The neuron, remember, has been around for more than 600 million years. For more primitive animals, losing information might not matter. Frogs, for example, virtually never look at anything in their environment unless it is moving. You can put a frog in a room full of food, and if it is frozen in place, the frog will starve to death. Fortunately for frogs, their food -- flies, mosquitos -- is not frozen. It moves and gets eaten. The frog doesn's need an exact image of its surroundings. Humans use some of the same cognitive pieces as the frog.
Slightly higher on the evolutionary ladder, the reptilian brain is a large tangle of neurons comprising the brain stem (at the top of the spine) and the cerebellum (just behind it). Together they control the body movements required to stay alive -- breathing and body temperature -- and some broad motor responses. It is all the frog has. Early mammals add the limbic system, which controls automatic bodily functions such as digestion and blood pressure. The limbic system also includes new structures that help primitive brains record experience -- the hippocampus and amygdala. They sit atop the reptilian brain. We have them too. Finally, primates add the neocortex, the folds of gray matter that have grown in size to the point that, in humans, the neocortex by mass is about 80 percent of the brain. All three parts are wired together in a variety of what appear to be nearly random ways. Humans have, in effect, hijacked the frog's means of neural communication, the action potential, and plopped a cognition and memory machine on top of it.