Is the Brain Really Big Enough?

24 hours of sound and vision to remember per day...
Countless calculations and monitoring...
Can one brain really do all this?

Even when you talk about how far we've got with virtual memory and the advances of nanotechnology, is the brain really big enough to handle a lifetime of memories...

Could it be possible that some of the memory handling is done outside the body? Or, is there something more sophisticated at play? (Not just some entity outside that handles the memory, but perhaps another part of the self that crams all these meaningful events in?)

What do you think?
Is the brain big enough?

Yes the brain is big enough.

I say it is absurd to immagine that the brain remembers everything per day, month, year, etc.
Surely people forgets the vast majority of everything.

Part of our brain problems come from our poor human diets like the nonsence that eating animals makes a person smarter - ridiculous.

And then years of useless imformation taught in our schools that keep many people brain crippled for life.

Not to mention the horrible childhood developements going on by the common twisted parenting.

Then there is the use or mis-use of alcohol and drugs that stun the brain of a huge part of humanity.

The reason the brain APPEARS to be inadiquate is because people abuse and degrade our own brains at an accelerated pace.

That is my true but cynical opinion.

And speaking for myself - then my memory does come from outside of my brain / body because I have to write stuff down or use some form of marker, and keep extra keys, or I might forget anything.

Memory is better at 20 years old and it starts down hill by 30 and by 50 we are hanging onto whatever we can.

Just a couple of questions for you Booky, if that's okay...

When you write something down to help 'jog' your memory, once 'jogged', do you not then more clearly remember, that is, does not your memory better work then?

If you answered yes to the previous question, is it possible that given enough reminders, you would quite clearly remember just about anything (perhaps from any aspect) from your life?

(I guess this might fall more into the realm of clear familiarity rather than 'memory'... But they do correlate closely...)

Okay, that is true and I say yes that we ( I ) can "jog" our memory, but I will still say that is time related.

I can "jog" my memory for yesterday but a week ago is much tougher and month is near blank and years are out of the question.

Of course we can remember the big events like someone had a marriage or baby back in 1992, and remember the Space Shuttle explosion but day to day stuff is a blurry mixed up memory that our brain dumps into the delete section.

I would say that the brain remembers what the person wants to and all else is put away into a limbo. So some far irrelivant memories are not congesting our brains.

In a computer we can still access the deleted stuff (with great effort) but that deleted stuff does not take up the memory space.

I just say it is not right to claim the junk-pile as being a part of the inventory - even for our brains.

Otherwise I would say that is another defect of the brain if it clings to useless information. And still there is no reason to believe that the brain is insufficient to hold all the info and more.

The brain might be cluttered with crap but still it can hold more.

I even have this theory that part of our memory is passed on through our genes to our children. Call it passed on instinct but I say it is more. Like the great musician has a child that plays music without any training as it is in their blood. A criminal mentality begets children with a draw to crime. So I say the brain and key parts of our memory is hereditary just like looks and appearance and defects and attributes are hereditary in any animal and in human families. The baby bird knows how to fly because it inherited the info - the memory from its parents.

So I say the brain has dividers like a high priority memory and low priority and a junk-pile.

I remember thinking off of my psychology that information is stored by priority, like its been said earlier.

like say a wife is giving birth - the husband will surely remember her wife and what she was doing at the time, but might not be able to recall what the color of the walls were or how many people were in the room. It would be more like recalling an unfocused picture.

The brain does take in and establish memory for something that may be considered important to remember sometime in the near or distant future.

The way to restore that? Brain foods like honey; get those synapses sparking! repetition - nerves grow stronger connections with each other in your brain the more and more it has to think about the action.

try sudoku once a day, every day, for a year and see what happens.

I respect your opinions... But I do feel, that pretty much anything can be jogged, which may include information that was the most prominent (I'm sure Mugen agrees the next most prominent thing may also be memorable, no contradiction there...) I guess the point was some get remembered, and some rejected... I wonder if something like hypnotism could help recapture such lost memories, particularly if you were able to freeze a memory, I guess...
I like the idea we can pass certain traits onto offspring, and perhaps having part of it in DNA, and activation from seeing someone else perform these feats...
I personally don't believe anything related to memory is junk, each part helps explain a greater whole...
I like your advice about honey and sudoku, Mugen... Do you have any more tips? (possibly some who have little free time...)

I change, and say it is possible the brain might remember everything and maybe it is even a photographic memory to some degree.

The brain might remember while the person does not.

And I still have my reservation that as we get older then the brain deteriorates and so that old brain memory could deteriorate as well. So that age and aging might destroy the old memories.

I do not like hypnosis but I must confess that I believe some people have the power to hypnotize others, and some people are subject to being hypnotized.

That is cool that you like the idea of parents passing info to their offspring and I agree that it probably is included in the DNA.

That would or could explain the concept of reincarnation and people claiming to have past lives because they inherited it in their genes.

Like General Patton believed he was a reincarnated warrior from Alexander through Caesar then the Napoleon wars, and even if we believe in God it makes sense that God would reincarnate (or evolute) the best of qualities instead of starting from scratch. That is the same logic in the King David covenant and for the British Monarchy - that the hereditary traits of Kings is passed along through the genes.

That - IMO - is saying that memory and the brain is more then simply thoughts and recollections, but the brain includes characteristics like a sense of courage, the feelings of compassion, the noble spirit, or the evil spirit, etc., etc.

In many ways our instincts and our feelings will define a person more-so than our experiences or our memory.

Makes sense to me.

Black Gold - to answer that, I provide a very relative link that includes pretty much everything I wanted to say and then some.

Attention/Repetition/Association are the biggest points to keep in mind(pun intended) to improve on said memory.

http://oedb.org/library/features/the-memory-toolbox






This may or may not be a far fetched idea, more philosophical than anything, but maybe you could pick up on lucid dreaming. Connecting the dream world with the real world can be very beneficial as well. I can tell you from experience that if I've ever wanted to learn something, I would think of it while I sleep as many times needed and I continue to retain that information.

Interesting site Mugen...
The authors style reminds me of my own.

I guess the despite the methods discussed being effective, different people may gravitate to using different tools...

I'm also sure, despite listing 75, you could go further with this kind of thing... An easy way would be to get more specific.

I've only taken baby steps in regards to guiding lucid dreaming. It's something I think of trying again, but never get round to. it might be one of those things that if you don't use it you're not really aware of it's power... I should remind myself to try again!

hehe I'm sure there's more. Those are just a few ideas, as you requested


A very good way I learned how to hone the skill of lucid dreaming is keeping a standard notebook and a pen next to your bedside. In the morning, all you have to do is write down as many details about the dream as you can.

When I first did this, I could only remember a few pictures or scenarios. Now I don't need the notebook, because I remember every single detail about the dream. The note book merely acts as a tool to speed up the process of lucidity. You could do without, but it would take much more remembering and a longer span of time - which is counter productive haha

Keep in mind that process only allows you to become more aware of your dreams. But if you CAN become aware of your dreams, you'll find it fairly easy to manipulate them.

I see it as trying to remember a memory of a month ago.. how difficult is it to recall details? can you even remember it? Then progressing to recall a memory of a week ago, then the day before, or even a few seconds ago.

Lucidity in my mind means consciousness with no limits. Where your dreams become reality in a sense of awareness.

I'm not quite sure how I gained all my senses, but that's besides the point. I'll leave that for you to discover on your own


If you can summon that dreaming power, you'll become capable of so many things - including a strengthened memory.

In my opinion,

The brain is a filter, consuming knowledge or concept through the senses. The brain then "thinks" about, or perceives the knowledge. It filters it all into, what you need to know, and what you want to know. The consious part of the brain, holds information for a while, while the subconsious sponges it all up and decides when to let you use the certain knowledge.

There may be two "levels".

Concious and Subconcious. Concious is what you are thinking right now, while Subconscious holds all of the information, or most of it, that you might need to know for future circumstances. Our brain still functions on the simple firmware, SURVIVE...

You do forget, but only what you don't REALLY need to know.
Although there is an "override" feature, to conciously remember something wether it be to wright it down or to repeat it until you can not forget it.

Tear that one to shreads, as I am sure you all can and probably will...

By the way, I am Bullfrog, not to be confused with somebody with the username "Bullfrog", this is my REAL name.

Just to add, the brain might "compress" the knowledge... I'm sure it can hold all eternity of knowledge, the problem being is we can't understand it all.

I actually think there is something to this memory in the cells stuff. I mean DNA encodes a mountain of information, so why not specific memories too. I mean if your genes hold information about your height, weight, eye colour, hair colour, musical ability, mathematic and communication skills, physical atributes and dissabilities, Why not specific day to day hobbies, skills and memories of events as well? I even heard it said somewhere that memories are stored in the heart! And that's why heart transplant patients start to take on the personality of their donor.

I think in response to this question, one has to consider the fact that we don't actually remember the events of every day; in fact, I posit that no human has ever remembered the full events that occurred within that human's perception for one day. We couldn't perceive the whole of human perception for even a microsecond with the processing power given our impressive brains, so I am forced to conclude that we must simply remember highlights of certain days, even years or decades of our lives. This shallowness of memory disallows we humans from even recording our own hugely limited experiences, let alone this whole of what we don't perceive, dimensions of time, space, and texture which we as humans can't even begin to imagine. A fitting analogy is our smallness in size compared to the entire universe, which is filled with the matter and events of all existence. This analogy is only flawed in that this smallness which is symptomatic of simply being human shows only how much we miss in a single day on earth with our limited perception. How about all of time in the entire universe?

There is one possible fault I can think of to your highlights idea Rastaman... What about short-term memory? Surely that would remember more than the highlights...
I do like the idea that all of the Universe's events are remembered somehow...I had an idea it may be recorded somehow on some sort of quality of elementary particles, perhaps by energy and/or motion of particles (or even their combined configurations and how they work together).
Perhaps a multi-level model is best, which might combine with Sorceress' idea of memory impregnation on DNA (and maybe RNA) and beyond.

yes I loke that idea too, of universal memory, maybe it is stored in dark matter or in the energy of the stars somewhere - its rather a poetic thought.