How Does the Human Brain Store Information

"how does the human brain store information ?"

Permanently -- if it's my wife and she wants to remind me of something I did wrong at 10:17 AM on February 23rd, 15 years ago.

/_{"Honest, Honey, the nun was on fire when I got there!"}

Ah so your wife has that ability as well.

My ex wife can also remember what i did at 09.15.17 secs on the 2nd of jan 10.75 years ago and also what the weather was like.

I have trouble remebering what i did this morning, Unles it was important

My wife's memory is so good she can remember things that never happened!

Hi Chrisg

I think the peterg71yq has made an important point about how memory is stored.

Have you ever noticed how memories get mixed?

In some cases they get completely fabricated but there are a lot of cases where the memory gets amalgamated with another. Some times it is because of a common key, such as a smell. The smell of antiseptic in a hospital can cause recall of a lot of other hospital experiences.

When it comes to what appear to be complete fabrications, the human mind has an ability to "Dream". Sometimes dreams can be so complete and the details so vivid that it is hard to recognise it is being a mind creation. It just gets recorded/filed in the memory bank as another deposit.

Often the best clue as to how something works is when it doesn't work quite right. It is a hint that gives you a starting point to figure out how it is put together and how it should work.

I suspect that looking at cases where things are not quite right, things like autism spectrum Syndrome, Epilepsy, Schitzophrenia, these may provide an in-site into how the brain works.

Asperger syndrome is a form of Autism that is said to be high functioning. It is often linked with extreme memory recall in a particular area of interest. Things like reading a city's train time table once and being able then to tell you all the links to get from one side of the city to another in the least possible time. Another Asperger's case I know can look at a wall, just a casual glance and then tell you how many bricks are in it and when you quiz him he can tell you which joint between bricks has the largest space and which is the smallest. He can do this without a second glance.

I have also known a few engineers who are boarder line Aspergers with their ability for mental recall combined with a lack of people skills and an absolute affinity with their computer.

How memory is actually stored and how it is recalled is a very important subject. As we get closer to an answer there are a lot of people that could be helped. I guess that comes in 2 forms. Memory enhancement for those that are loosing it and memory removal for those that would benefit from loosing something that terrifies them. Both of these are sad to see up close.

BAB

I spent some time this summer teaching a 9 year old boy with asperger's, to do some math.. his sheets from school were just typical multiplication questions. he agonized through them, and it was very hard to get some enthusiasm out him. I introduced him to Matrices of add, subtract, and multiply for up to 12 x 12.. once he started to see the patterns, he could zip through them pretty quick with much more enthusiasm.

Chris

Women can never forget anything that they can use against you. Usually they bring these things up when you least expect it.

It would appear then that women all over the world ( no. better not type that) have really good memories when its to point out their mans failings ( failings as defined by womans logic) ( what ever that is on mars) ( that is where they come from isn't it?)

but how does their superior brain store the millions of trivial data about dates ? ( chronological dates that is not dates as in fruit or men taken out)(or women taken out, must not discriminate ) good job theres a spell checker on here

Actually men are from Mars....women are from Venus.

As I understand it, women's brains are supercharged between puberty and menopause. As they reach puberty their bodies release hormones which allow 25% more glucose to the brain through the blood/brain barrier.

Dear peter, yours is a good question. I can't answer your question completely ... but the answer to how we can download it is ................ the secret of language/art..... Via teacher/ student... parent/ child .....Guru/guest. I hope others can enlighten us. Ray

Q1: no one knows

Q2: see Q1. since no one knows, it cannot be downloaded into your spare brain or whatever you had in mind have on hand.

Some one must know ?

or at least have an idea.

It seems strange given what the Human race has found out about the human body that no one knows how the brain stores information ( as far as i know)

And to digress given that so much is not known about the brain, Scientists still say water dowsing doestT work, ESP cant happen, People cant communicate over long distances and so on

But as scientists they cant disprove it either Because they havent a clue about how the brain works?

Please don't respond to this comment on religious grounds

I am only commenting about The Biological aspect of the brain, And comments i have read in the science journals etc Thanks

There's a part of the brain they find is involved in memory storage: that's the hippocampus. However there's minimal or no understanding of how that works, or why some things end up in short term storage and others are downloaded right onto the permanent memory hard drive, as it were.

Also the location of memory storage doesn't seem entirely clear. They'd think it was all in the hippo, but then they find out that little mirrors have been stored all over the brain after all. I don't have a reference for that .. can't remember?

Still they say they are getting pretty good at erasing specific memories. There are drugs and so on being developed for "therapeutic forgetting". As your wife might want after your divorce, to get rid of the important dates and events.

Come to think of it, I suddenly remember that I read years ago about some research done in goldfish, they found that memory was encoded as a peptide. You could actually take the peptides from one fish after teaching it to remember something, and inject it into another one and it would remember the color blue or whatever cue they had taught the first one. Sure enough, there's some peptide memory stuff on google.

Whatever did the world do before Google ?

errrr i dont know i cant remember

Thanks i will look that up later

There is a lot of info on the brain and intelligence (natural and artificial) on Ray Kurzweil's website:

http://www.kurzweilai.net/

spent days and nights on end in a huge library somewhere.

One or two points to make. First, just because the brain activity resembles computer activity does not mean that the brain is organised like any computer one regularly works with. It is not binary; indeed it is not even digital. The basic unit of the brain is the neuron(e) or nerve cell. The basic activity of these cells is to fire single or multiple electrical impulses, pulses of defined height and width, but of varying frequency. These cells are interconnected in a many-to-many fashion which makes it exceedingly difficult to determine the immediate or ultimate purpose of a single neuronal discharge. Though the neurones are linked by chemical bridges (the neurotransmitter chemicals are released from one cell and cause the next to fire) there is no accumulation of chemicals, peptide or otherwise, to account for the formation of memories. Memories must reside in a system of nerve discharges. Furthermore, there is no single location in the brain for memory; although there is some evidence that short-term memory is held in the hippocampus, it is probable that the frontal lobe, which also has a role in emotions, has a part in long-term memory. And no, I have never used, or even heard of, a drug for erasing specific memories. The benzodiazepines, like Valium, do have as a side-effect the loss of memory for the immediate situation in which they were administered, but they do not touch long-term memory.

hmmm... I revisited the "therapeutic forgetting" story and found it was in fact debunked as a misinterpretation of the experimental work on the beta blocker propranalol. The experimental treatment does not actually erase the memory, it removes the emotional associations of the memory which cause stress/fear/PTSD.

That being said, I know a heart patient who was on beta blockers for a couple of years and suffered memory deficits which she considered pretty serious. Maybe dosage is a factor.

Benzodiazepenes are best known as reliable wipers of memory while under their influence, as you pointed out.

I guess that leaves bilateral ECT for the long term memory wipeout - but there's no report of any deliberate memory selection in that case: random hit or miss, apparently.

There is an electrode stimulus that might be applicable: signal of the type HFAC is reported to cause nerve conduction block. I wonder if it is possible to block specific types of memory if the location of that memory type is known. Memory of peoples' faces for example.

Why must someone know? we don't know everything, and the human brain is probably THE least understood thing there is. We know more about how quantum mechanics works than we do about the human brain. Yes a number of people have some ideas, but none of them have been proven and some of them are mutually exclusive.

You can download all your brain info if the device you are downloading it to has a keypad.

....or at least one ear, or at least one eye and a certain level of inherent intelligence, and enough time to do it....

excellent question.

I'm enjoy the story interpreted by Zecharia Sitchin (here told as Twilight Zone), where he tells the story of the ruler Gudea, who was visited 'in a dream' by gods, who transmitted to him, the plans for a temple they wanted him to built. He saw it in vivid reality, and upon waking, found a model of the temple made of lapis lazuli in his lap..

To me this means that the ancient gods had the ability to transmit information to a brain.

we have had some discussions before that pertain to this. (link, link)

Chris

The Invention of Memory by Israel Rosenfeld

This book is a discussion of this subject. It is 20+ years old.

The basic method of storing information described in the above is very complex. It involves mapping of various sensory inputs ( sight, hearing, feeling, etc; and derived inputs (names, emotions, ideas, etc.) onto many different sites in the brain, using a physical map of he brain surface and/or volume in different locations of the brain to correspond to the relationships in the input, so that each input has several maps, and the different areas have maps of different inputs. The actual data point is a tendency to fire, or to transfer sodium/potassium ions across a synapse, or junction between cells. Storage is a change in the cell wall characteristics, either physical or chemical. Mapping of the locations of the various storage sites is also done.

Recovery of data (or memory) is done by comparing and matching similar maps. It is important to note that the conscious mind is only one part of the brain function, other parts could have connections to call up and analyze the data. The unconscious analysis is also available for calling up to the conscious mind as well as the various levels of data analysis.

In other words, the amount of storage and analysis is truly staggering. Modeling on computer design would give us a very slow cycle of many thousands of independent processors each having both dedicated memory and shared memory, under various levels of control.

/The above is my interpretation of research results. However, this is not a field I am currently deeply into. There is more I have left out for place limitations.

Just a thought.

It is unlikely to be magnetic, reasoning well if it was it would be wiped clean when you had an MRI as the intense magnetic field would wipe it clean.

It could be electrical as ECT resets the brain in some cases causing loss of memory after treatment.

(E.C.T Electro Convulsive Therapy)

or it could be some sort of chemical storage device.

by the way its 0546 am here in UK whats the time there ?

I would suspect that the memory is filamentitious. I think that when a memory is first made, that the pathways between neurons are mapped out, and a fast-forming filament is quickened by electronic signals. Depending on the intensity of the memory programming, the connections are strengthened by building up the filament, to make it more durable. the more reinforcement, the better the memory. (rote) I suggest that this explains the difference between short term and long term memory, and why certain neurons have significantly more connections than others. they are the hubs. this parallels what we know of memory enhancement techniques. I suggest that we should be looking for a electro-protein effect that acts like a polymer. this way, electric and magnetic effects, and a host of other things (pharmaceuticals) don't affect memory, but only certain chemicals can stop or suspend the process.

brain chemistry has to be the answer. brain electro-chemistry that can build physical wiring. wiring that is strongly built, lasts your whole life. This is why we can remember some things from childhood with such great clarity... at a time when our brain chemistry is purer.

my two cents...

Chris

Well said ChrisG, only change "electronic" with electic, and the post is as good as it gets. I seem to remember some of this, seeing that I helped in my daughter"s medical studies, but since she's the doc, I tend to disregard/forget the lecture. However, I do remember that the main reason that Alzheimer patients dont remember is that this "filament" bonds break. And of course when enough of them break, lots of other things go wrong. Nevertheless, you deserve a GA for the best answer to OP so far.

We need to understand what the brain stores. The brain stores the experience of the individual and perception what is experienced. Why an individual's brain need to store experiences? Because during entire life time a suitable response to similar experiences can be formulated. Thus based on repeated experiences beliefs are formed to respond with situations forming habits. The subconscious mind (small brain) unfailingly stores every thing that is experienced. During deep sleep the nurones start connecting and form permanent pathways to the stored information. The actual physical process ought to be chemical as the human body works on chemical processes. Stored chemical codes get activiated by electrical pulses generated by hormone secretion when we need to recall the experience. Then why we fail to recall every thing from memory? Based on an individual's belief system "Raticular Activating System" decides impotance of the experience and throws back the inofrmation or ignores. This why one incident experienced by many has as many different responses. Mahess

Having recently completed converting over 4000 negatives and 1500 colour slides to .jpg files the question was illustrated well. Take a 1Mbyte .jpg file and look at it:

• In terms of personal experience: familiarity box ticked; the brain remembers all the surrounding information about the individual image: who the individual was, what their preferences were, what the individual did, the joy of that occasion, who else was there, etc., etc.
• Such an image might also invoke additional meaning to both the familiar and another individual identifying it, for example, as one of a human, about 21 years old, dressed in connection with a special function at such-a-location, having an insight into the weather conditions on that day, pitching it at such-a-time-of-year, etc.

If the image itself were 1Mbyte, then what on earth is storing all the surrounding information connected with it? And how big is the .exe file that is running the interpretation?

Great question!

What where am I what am I doing here?

I have big difficulty to remember the names since i was child and up to right now, what is the cause of that ?

Short term is electrical, and easily lost.

Long term is chemical, and nearly permanent.

I just watched a program on this on PBS just a few days ago.

Big issue is that data is transferred between the synapsis- the space between ends of two neurons. The amount of data "stored" depends on the involvement of the observer. Memory can be triggered by "key words" or sights or smells (any thing that was part of the original "memory" element.

The higher your involvement or "excitement" regarding the observation, the better and more precise your memory of it.

A great discussion is on the Nova website at

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/how-memory-works.html

Regarding "downloading" data- It appears that you have to "experience" the input- see it displayed, hear it, etc. for the data to become part of your "memory bank". Researchers have found ways to "observe" memory, but nothing was mentioned on how to reverse the process.

There is research being done on how to "erase" memory chemically, but I did not see anything yet developed to "create" memory.

Why are we only asking individual brain's memory methods? What about entangled quantum energy residing in atoms that make the human body or for that matter body of living or non-living entities? Remember, though we are mortals, the atoms of elements are not. All the atoms in my brain may be entangled with others' brains near and far. Can I not receive information from them through some spooky consciousness phenomenon? We have alloys with memory. Many researchers have proofs of water having memory. God in his design of the universe must be storing data creating memory of everything to run the mega show called The Universe. John Assaraf and Murray Smith in their book "The Answer" name the most basic form of energy as "Consciousness". Why not try also to find ways to reach the unlimited memory available in the entire universal consciousness. Mahess

Lets keep it simple.

if we cant understand how one brain works how do you expect us to understand how a lot of brains work.

so start with somthing simple, work out how that works, then work out how it works with other things

If you make the question to complex we may never work it out

Peterg, it seems you have opened a can of worms, or brains, that looks set to be unsolved for a long time. Should make interesting trying though.

well if nothing else it will give us somthing to think about for a while.

If we can remeber what the subject was

I like your thinking, but I believe that is the basis of telepathy et al, and would be a level Above memory...

Chris

My understanding is that each brain cell is connected to many others, and these connections may either cause the connected brain cells to "fire" or inhibit them. The strength of these connections changes as learning takes place. Devices have been built (or simulated on a computer) called Artificial Neural Networks which learn from experience. There is no obvious way to record this information directly on an external storage device.

Another way to approach or understand this queston:

We all understand the term "mental images." What does that mean? How can the image of a face be recalled? What "eye" is seeing the image? Human thought isn't pieces of information. It's usually occurs as mental images.

(To understand ourselves in total, we have to investigate our consciousness. We inhabit a body. We aren't the body. This sounds like gibberish to anyone unwilling to look for ways to do this. Meditation is the basic method -- and there are many techniques. I've seen chrisg288's comments about having had an experience of what is commonly called "the Beyond." While he apparently didn't get there by sitting in meditation, he nonetheless found it profoundly real. From my own experience there is a reality beyond our normal waking consciousness. To learn the most important thing about ourselves -- i.e., who and what we really are -- one should investigate one's own consciousness. A competent guide is most necessary. It is easy to be misguided, in an unaided search. Why this is so has no short answer. There are many levels to this ascent into consciousness. But this investigation is no less scientific than science based on sense information. This can easily become a long diatribe. I'll stop here.)

by repetetion v can remember things.

brijeshsac@yahoo.com

The question that started the discussion is an area the modern research has yet not fully fathomed. It involves various branches of the sciences. My own personal experiences confirm that the human brain stores everything, and requires strong emotions and ignited desire to fetch on surface information from deep down the memory lane buried under decades of oblivion. My father passed away in 2001 at the age of 87. Our entire extended family had gathered to perform religious rites the next week. Everybody started ruminating and soon the talk moved around our growing up years. My brother brought up how my father scolded me having learnt that I had failed in my math's preliminary exam barely a month before the final board exam, and subsequently helped me daily solve difficult problems. That was 1967; the math teacher set a very tough question paper and in the class of thirty all failed except Ramesh. Ramesh as usual got 100/100. I did not have any contact with Ramesh after passing out Higher Secondary Board, joining university and treading my own career path. However, I could not stop thinking of Ramesh after the family gathering. My mind continued to rake Ramesh. Any where I went, on the roads, shopping malls, cinema halls, public transport, barber shop, tourist places, I continued to search Ramesh. I even did not know he was in the home town yet. After about three months, one early evening while driving back home, suddenly from corner of my eyes I spotted Ramesh buying fruits from a roadside vendor. I managed to stopped and rushed to him. I knew he was Ramesh even after more than thirty years aging him. Both of us were so happy that the vendor and other buyers broadly smiling wished us strong rekindled friendship. How after almost three decades I could recognize him from about 50 meters driving a little fast and only getting a glimpse of his face as he turned his back? My "Reticular Activating System" was so highly ignited that my small brain in the background continuously went on comparing every image of a person within my frame of vision with that of the image of Ramesh captured decades ago. And when the match was found, it instantly flashed to me. If one gets strong emotions, burn the desire in the system, sooner or latter the brain never fails and gives the memory back. Mahess

Yes i know a guy who might know the answer his name is robert dratch or hes nickname is bob in golden colorado he might know please post what you find out here. his site is bob-dratch.org he workes for dhri. I would like to know how the brain stores memeries to...and i for the last year have been trying to find that out to.

Ellen,

welcome to CR4.

I tried the bob-dratch.org... not impressed... and then couldn't close the tab when I tried to exit... which means malicious scripting to me.. very not impressed.

I didn't know what DHRI was.. so googled and went to their site...found out that is an India-only site... when it could be so much more. one would think that some site claiming to be about human rights and development would be global in scope, don't you think? so I'm not that impressed there either... I don't know much about what they are accomplishing, as I just quit the site at that point.

if you are trying to post relevant information by presenting links, then please use the link button on your post editor, and provide some more comprehensive information about your information... because you have not been clear.

We try hard to welcome new members.. and sometimes that means being direct about expectations... but most importantly for me.. I would rather hear about you, than bob.

best wishes,

Chris

theres nothing on http://bob-dratch.org/X2.htm about memory ?

first links dosent work

http://bob-dratch.org/talk.htm