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The brain is truly a marvel. A seemingly endless library, whose shelves house our most precious memories as well as our lifetime’s knowledge. But is there a point where it reaches capacity? In other words, can the brain be “full”?
The answer is a resounding no, because, well, brains are more sophisticated than that. A study published in Nature Neuroscience earlier this year shows that instead of just crowding in, old information is sometimes pushed out of the brain for new memories to form.
Previous behavioural studies [PDF] have shown that learning new information can lead to forgetting. But in this study, researchers used new neuroimaging techniques to demonstrate for the first time how this effect occurs in the brain.
http://theconversation.com/health-check-can-your-brain-be-full-40844
Original Submission
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Thursday June 04 2015, @01:09PM
It's more a "not really, it doesn't quite work the way you're thinking".
Having to boot old, useless memories for new ones certainly suggests a capacity. So, it's not a hard drive where memories are discrete values., but it's still got very easily recognized human limits.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 04 2015, @01:17PM
Indeed! "Can a hard disk ever get full? The answer is a resounding NO, you just need to delete some stuff before you download new porn..."
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 04 2015, @03:05PM
Obviously, the article's author's brain reached full capacity immediately after the "resounding no" statement...because everything else in the article contradicts that statement.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by KGIII on Thursday June 04 2015, @09:51PM
The strange part is that I thought this was already well established science? I recall an hour long documentary on the Science Channel with Morgan Freeman (I forget the name, I do not care nor normally watch television) where this was discussed. I have heard this in a number of other documentaries. I have read this at various sites years ago. The brain does not get full to the point where it is incapacitated - it deletes stuff before that happens which makes room for more junk to be stored. This is similar to a self-truncating flat file database only it includes meta tags so we can reference it and it has a self-building cloud tag, which is nice but not so accurate when you get to be old like me.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Thursday June 04 2015, @11:17PM
Having to boot old, useless memories for new ones certainly suggests a capacity.
here's the thing, your brain doesn't have to boot these old memories! so why do it? actually, it might be for our own good. people with "photographic" (eidetic) memory many times suffer because they literally can't forget bad memories.
from Eidetic Memory on wikipedia:
Possibly because of these extraordinary abilities, certain individuals have difficulties in social interactions with others who have normal memories (only 2 of 55 in the United States have successful marriages), and may additionally suffer from depression stemming from the inability to forget unpleasant memories and experiences from the past.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2015, @06:13AM
Here's the thing: I'd much rather 'suffer' than lose information. The human brain is complete garbage.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Friday June 05 2015, @08:26AM
Yeah, the summary makes it sound like a "resounding yes". Dumping old memories to be able to store new ones sounds exactly like the 'capacity' has been reached, and the brain's OS is using a reasonable method to decide which information to keep.