[MayeulC]

While there might be other mechanisms at play, plasticity is a form of memory: If each synapse can store weights, read them, and change them, it could be seen as a memory.

For me, an analogy that is quite adequate in computer science would be LUTs in an FPGA: they are memory+compute units, and can be used as both.

To go a bit further, any memory could indeed be considered a computation unit, or vice-versa: consider a results cache, for instance. The difference I see between memory and computation is that memory accesses are, if not instantaneous, at least constant-time. If you want more precision, this can be computed: the necessary memory footprint is extended trough time as well as space (if you only use a results LUT, you'd have to make it bigger to gain precision).