Compact representations would, presumably, allow for
more efficient processing of incoming stimuli. On the other hand, the more compact nature
of these representations would make new category distinctions more difficult (see “Other
problems with separating representations by orthogonalization at the hidden layer” below)
and also lead to the category brittleness that occurs as people grow older. Finally, highly
compact representations would presumably be more vulnerable to physical damage than
highly distributed representations. This, too, would seem to be consistent with selective
memory loss with aging