Okay, so by assuming that you had nothing more important work to do and since you clicked on this link, let me tell you that you are special ! We all are special. Now for many of us, being special sometimes means being good only at studies. Well, at-least that’s what our society think.
Today, the definition of being smart has a complete different meaning from what it used to be earlier. The more you can memorize, the smarter you are declared. Well, lets just improvise the previous line, the more you UNDERSTAND, the smarter you should be declared.
There is a difference in UNDERSTANDING a concept and MEMORIZING a concept. Some people understand it and with the passage of time, forgets it. Reasons can be many. Some people memorize it and still forgets it.
If you see the similarity between both the situations you will find that people eventually do forget the concept or anything that they ever remembered in their life. There is no shame in such things. We are humans, forgetting something has been our trait since centuries ! !
So the question is what is the capacity of memories that our brain can hold. Are our previous memories overwritten by the new memories because of limited space ?
Lets crack this up ! !
Our brain consists roughly around one billion neurons. Now each neuron forms around 1,000 connections to other neurons, thus resulting in more than a trillion connections. Assuming that if each neuron could store a single memory, running out of space would have been a problem. You might have only a few gigabytes of storage space for your memories, similar to the space in an iPod or a USB flash drive. Yet neurons combine so that each one can help with many memories at a time, exponentially increasing the brain’s memory storage capacity to something around 2.5 petabytes (or a damn million gigabytes).
One terabyte is equal to about 1,000 gigabytes or about 1 million megabytes; a petabyte is about 1,000 terabytes.
Its like if our brain worked like a digital video recorder for a television, 2.5 petabytes would be enough to record three million hours of TV shows. We would have to leave the TV running continuously for more than freaking 300 years to consume up all that storage.
Even if we BELIEVE that the storage capacity of the brain is between 10 and 1000 terabytes, still estimating how much of that space is “used space” versus “free space” is very difficult to explain and figure out. The brain is for obvious reasons much more complex than an simple external hard drive.
Not only do some parts of the brain seem to be involved in many different memories at same time, but this stored data is often being corrupted and even lost. And that’s the reason why we forget. So the next time your dad scolds you for not switching off the lights, just tell him that you recent stored data might have been corrupted.
But One thing is certain: The notion that humans only use 10 percent of their brain is a myth—information may be stored in every part of the brain.
So, I hope that I was able to satisfy your hunger of more freaking information. If you have any more additional information, then do share it with us in the comment section below ! !
