9 replies to this topic

[Heliotrope]

How much long term memory can you hold? Have you thought about that? We have 100 Billion neurons, a trillion glial cells in our central nervous system. The 100 billion neurons form an estimated 100 to 500 trillion synapses (I believe, from sources I read).

Think about it, life isn't that long, about 2.5 billion seconds in an average lifetime. Granted, not all brain cells are in the business of storing memory, but why so much? Why such a high limit? Why so much more than we need and not just enough to get by?


Have you thought about if you will live a life that is 1,000 billions seconds long, where to store info

[Luna]

Why? No reason!

Where? In the deleted parts! ever forgot anything? ^^

[Heliotrope]

Any other serious thought on the topic?

Ｗｅ　ｄｏ　ｈａｖｅ　ａ　ｈｉｇｈ　ｌｉｍｉｔ　ｏｒ　ｔｈｒｅｓｈｏｌｄ　ｏｎ　ｌｏｔｓ　ｏｆ　ａｂｉｌｉｔｉｅｓ．　　Ｃａｎ　ｓｕｒｖｉｖｅ　ｆｉｎｅ　ｏｎ　ｓｏ　ｍｕｃｈ　ｌｅｓｓ．．．

[ben951]

"Is there a limit to brain's memory capacity?"

Of course there a limit, the brain is not a magical organ, even if it's a quantum computer (apparently it's not) it as limited storage capacity.

[ben951]

How much long term memory can you hold? Have you thought about that? We have 100 Billion neurons, a trillion glial cells in our central nervous system. The 100 billion neurons form an estimated 100 to 500 trillion synapses (I believe, from sources I read).

Think about it, life isn't that long, about 2.5 billion seconds in an average lifetime. Granted, not all brain cells are in the business of storing memory, but why so much? Why such a high limit? Why so much more than we need and not just enough to get by?


Have you thought about if you will live a life that is 1,000 billions seconds long, where to store info

Apparently the limits are not that high: http://www.scienceda...91112121601.htm

If we live longer we will have at some point the ability to enhance hour brain with non biological storage capacity

Edited by ben951, 13 November 2009 - 05:31 PM.

[Heliotrope]

from the link, so is this how it works? new memories crowd out old ones, deletions like emptying your Computer's recycle bin. Whether nature, or God, or whoever/whatever gave us this gift, it's great. But if one's truly immortal, no physical brain can hold eternity, but even with current type of human brain, we can do fine for many many lifetimes' storage correct?

[Luna]

from the link, so is this how it works? new memories crowd out old ones, deletions like emptying your Computer's recycle bin. Whether nature, or God, or whoever/whatever gave us this gift, it's great. But if one's truly immortal, no physical brain can hold eternity, but even with current type of human brain, we can do fine for many many lifetimes' storage correct?

But didn't we just say it doesn't hold everything? it throws things away and holds new things :X

[valkyrie_ice]

it's not so much we toss stuff out as it is individual memories slowly become assimilated into metamemories. As a child I went to Disney dozens of times. Yet only the most recent trip several years ago remains as a single definable memory. The older memories have linked into a metastructure collage of the most memorable moments of various trips, though with effort I can separate out subsections to restore individuality to the newest ones. The oldest memories are more or less in compressed storage.

I can recall my very first memory with clarity, but much of my childhood has merged into a collection of distinct moments. Similar memories have more or less blurred into uniformity. I can't recall every day at school, but I can recall the overall school experience with distinct memory highlights of important events to me.

I don't think we will ever surpass the minds ability to store memories, but as we age, more and more similar moments will blur into these metamemories, and only those most relevant to our daily life will stay in focus. We will eventually begin using external storage, but mainly it will serve as refreshers, at least until we can link directly into a computerized memory for perfect retention, but even then I think we will end up using a similar meta storage for minutia.

[ben951]

I also have the feeling that there's a lot of data stored in our brain that we can't access consciously or at all at least easily.

For instance 6 months ago i saw the house that's my parents owned when i was a little kid (I'm 36 now) I had a lot of memory coming back to me that i couldn't recall otherwise, even old feelings when I was walking near my old school.

Maybe indeed that some part of the data is compressed and the environment act like Winrar for the brain.

Edited by ben951, 18 November 2009 - 04:55 PM.

[Heliotrope]

no doubt when the technology's available, we can implant some memory-storage devices to give us perfect photographic memory, maybe even connect to internet-of-future by thoughts in our head.