Your computer can only contain so much data in his memory before there is no room left. When this happens, not only can you no longer download or update new files, programs or applications, but those that you have often executed less efficiently.
Does the same thing happen with our brain? Can our brain lack memory storage? You can be relieved to learn that the answer is “no.” The human brain has a practically unlimited storage capacity. It is not because of the number of brain cells (the mainly cited figure is around 86 billion neuronsAlthough it is only an estimate) but because of the way these neurons are organized.
Our brains have an unlimited memory
When you learn something, many brain cells are activated at the same time. You do not count on a single neuron to store this memory, but on a group of neurons, and this network of neurons is activated when you remember this memory.
Each memory involves a specific network of neurons, but the same neurons can be involved in many different memories, explains Mattal Lattal, A neuroscientist in Oregon Health & Science University who studies how memories are formed.
“The brain has an essentially unlimited memory capacity because of how the network can be organized,” he said.
Learn more: Understanding memory recall and brain storage
How memory works in the brain
The cells that make up the network are not necessarily in the same part of the brain. They are distributed throughout the brain. Where these neurons are located, depends on the type of memory.
Say you have a memory of feeling a blue flower; The blue part of the memory can involve neurons in a part of the brain, while the smell of the flower implies neurons in a different part.
However, wherever they are, they are not individual neurons, but the model From the network, it makes memories different.
“It is not as if there were, let’s say, 1,000 neurons in the brain and 10 of them are the memory of your mom and 10 of them are the memory of your dog,” explains Lattal.
The potential models, the options to combine these 86 billion neurons in different ways to code different memories, is practically unlimited. So go ahead and memorize all the verbal forms of Zulu and try to learn to play the Rachmaninoff piano concerto n ° 3. Your brain will have a lot of memory for the task. And a lot.
Are our memories still factual?
The brains and computers are similar, however, in a way. Whenever you open a file on your computer, then close it, it reappears the document. If you make changes to this document, these changes are part of the document, unless, of course, to tell the computer not to record the modifications. Memories work in the same way.
“Whenever we recover our memories, we somehow open them so that they can incorporate new information,” explains Lattal. “And they become vulnerable this way.”
This could explain why you and your brothers and sisters have somewhat (or sometimes radically) different memories of childhood. You have different memories of the same event, says Lattal, because these memories “simply migrated naturally in different directions, and it is not clear that is right”.
Learn more: The surprising role of sleep in strengthening long -term memory
How memories can change
A classic experience has demonstrated this characteristic of memory. When the Challenger space shuttle exploded in January 1986, the television event was seen by millions of people, live or in the coverage of the news immediately after. This is what Lattal calls “a very salient cultural event”.
Professor of Emory University Ulric NeisserKnown as the father of cognitive psychology, has seen an opportunity for experience. The day after the explosion, he gave his first-year students a questionnaire asking them details about their experiences surrounding the event, questions such as: Where were you? Who were you with? What were you doing? What time did it happen?
Three years later, he asked the same questions to the same students. More than 40% of respondents gave answers the second time incompatible with the responses they have given the first time.
“They were completely inaccurate, but very confident in this memory,” explains Lattal.
Similar incoherent memories have been demonstrated in the case of other events, such as the assassination of President Kennedy or the 2001 terrorist attacks.
What is happening in these situations, explains Lattal is that you have opened this network of neurons, and if it is a very protruding memory, it can change small ways every time you do. For many years, it can turn into a slightly different memory.
“The heart is often there, but the details around the periphery are confused,” he says. After a while, you no longer remember an event, but you remember a memory.
So, although you don’t have to worry about running out to store memories, it can be difficult to trust them 100%.
Learn more: Do dogs have a long-term memory?
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