Memory is the process by which information about the world is stored in our brain in order to give us a sense of who we are. It tells us what we did yesterday or five years ago and it guides us on what to do tomorrow. Just stop and imagine for 2 minutes, what would happen if you suddenly lose your memory? You would be good for nothing and will have to start learning everything from scratch, just like a newborn baby.
Our memories are stored in our brain. The human brain consists of about 100 billion neurons. Each neuron forms about 1,000 connections with other neurons, amounting to more than a trillion connections, each connection helping with many memories at a time, exponentially increasing the brain’s memory storage capacity to something closer to around 2.5 petabytes (or a million gigabytes).
As Plato has said about memory:
All knowledge is but remembrance
For comparison, if your brain worked like a digital video recorder in a television, 2.5 petabytes would be enough to hold three million hours of TV shows. You would have to leave the TV running continuously for more than 300 years to use up all that storage. That means, we don’t have to worry about running out of space in our lifetime.
Most people are unaware about the potential of a human brain and the myths related to our memory makes them doubt their own capabilities. It is important to bust those myths and empower people to harness the real potential of their brain.
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