How Spacious Is Our Memory?

A person's memory is incredible, it contains millions of things that are important to an individual and many other relatively insignificant things. So if we think of each cell as a small container that contains the memory of a particular point or scene, the ten billion cells in the cerebral cortex are not enough to store it. They would all be "full" in a week due to the constant flow of information that reaches the brain through its various senses, mainly the eyes.

However, the brain contains trillions of trillions of protein molecules (one followed by twenty zeros). Each of these molecules can undergo many changes in its structure and therefore retain the modified form. This modified structure can give a new memory impression. When molecules are replaced by wear, they are duplicated, so the replacement molecules are the same. But that's not all. The increase in the number of nerve cell branches with greater memory creates millions of new combinations through its larger "touch". In this way, the possible number of memories becomes unlimited. There also seems to be others unknown to further multiply the number.

To illustrate how one factor, namely the different combinations of the ten billion cells in the cerebral cortex, can produce an unimaginably large number: in a card game with only 52 cards, there are more than 635,000,000,000 possible cards. different on thirteen cards each. However, this is nothing compared to billions upon billions of additional combinations that are multiplied in the brain.

What further reinforces this is how memories seem to be stored. When we look at something, such as a mountain scene, it is not stored as an intact image in our brain. It is divided into several parts, electrically or chemically coded pieces that form a kind of coded "mosaic". So when we see another scene, some parts of one scene are compared to another. Cross-comparisons help the memory and allow the mind to "experience" these comparisons and contrasts. It can be a comparison of sizes, shapes, colors, parts of conversations, writings, ideas and principles. This greatly expands and strengthens the memory. It also leads to imagination, reasoning, the arrival of new ideas and conclusions. In this process, the mind does not do the mechanical work or "hard work" of mere memory, but something that the person really likes.

George Leonard, author of Education and Ecstasy, was amazed at the incredible possibilities of the brain's neural interactions and said, "Of course, a brain made up of such nerve cells can never be filled." "Some researchers say that everything you've seen, heard or experienced is somewhere in your memory. Others say that you're throwing away 90% or forgetting: things of little importance, things that you only see once or that you consider insignificant. Your eyes can see a building. The details are there: the number of windows, the names on the desk, etc. But your mind does not try to remember these details. But the mind sometimes does what seems to contradict this forgotten idea. For example, you may remember a store you saw in a small town that you went to on vacation.You can clearly see the store, a car in front, even if you did not care then.

Yet the mind seems to register impressions in general, not only to be a good archive of facts, but primarily to be useful for future needs. John Pfeiffer says in his book The Human Brain: "The word 'stored' can be very trivial. The brain is a dynamic cell system. Never stop using and reusing your memory footprints, add new objects or try new combinations. The abstractions it makes are used, among other things, to help us predict. Weather forecasts or business trends, our daily actions, such as buying clothes, are based on our memory of what happened yesterday, last month or last year.

Here is an example of how storage serves its current immediate purpose, rather than storage space for past events: You may be in a department store looking for a specific item, such as B. a spool of Red string. When browsing the counters, do not pay close attention to other objects, just look for the thread. But a few days later, you might need another item: a kid's school backpack. You remember seeing one in the store. Or it could have been a sign of "book bags" that you didn't really notice at the time. You might not remember exactly where the item is displayed or what else is there. But now you have a need and the memory of that particular item is flashing to your aid. The memory was there and remembered an "emergency". If it wasn't necessary, it may never have been restored from the backup files.