[lutusp]

At the top of the article, memristors[1] are mentioned -- as artificial synapses they play a key part in the process of adding/removing weight (influence) to various pathways between neurons. This isn't strictly speaking a digital scheme -- a given weight is an analog level that's compared to analog levels from other competing artificial synapses.

The properties of the memristors can be controlled electronically, and by having programmable and persistent resistance to current flow, they play the part of biological synapses.

This entire scheme relies on our gradually improving insight into how biological brains work. As these systems evolve to higher levels of complexity, they become a practical research basis for understanding the human brain.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor

[anigbrowl]

Quite. It's instructive to examine modular analog synthesizers, in which it's easy and fun to model such behavior. You can build strange loops with them, which offers the possibility of hysteresis from which much else flows. Also worth boning up on integrated information theory.