What is placing disconnected information into smaller units that are easier to remember?

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Can an former head injury suddenly cause detrimental effects much afterward in life?
—Bearding, via e-postal service

Douglas Smith, professor of neurosurgery and director of the Middle for Brain Injury and Repair at the Academy of Pennsylvania, answers:

ALTHOUGH A BRAIN INJURY from a machine accident or a collision during a football game often seems to cause a sudden change to cognitive ability years afterward, this change does not simply appear out of the blue—the damage has been edifice up slowly, unnoticed, over time.

Postinjury, the progressive brain deterioration that may occur probable reaches a tipping point, after which the loss of function "suddenly" becomes obvious. Depending on the type and severity of the traumatic brain injury (TBI), it can accelerate memory loss or increase a person's adventure of succumbing to Alzheimer'south disease.

TBI usually damages nerve fibers in the brain called axons. These thin, tubelike structures transmit electric and chemical signals that are vital for conveying information amidst different regions of the brain. For unknown reasons, these delicate structures not only disconnect before long after injury but tin can continue to disconnect fifty-fifty for decades later in some patients. Once disconnected, the blunt stop of an axon seals itself off, swells with fluids, enzymes and proteins and eventually bursts. When axons burst open, they often distribute amyloid proteins through the neighboring encephalon tissue. These mucilaginous proteins are a hallmark of Alzheimer's, and in fact many TBI patients exhibit signs of dementia later in life that mimic the deterioration observed in Alzheimer'due south patients.

In addition, with axons disappearing or not functioning well after TBI, a person's power to process new information may slow down. Surviving axons may compensate for the damage by increasing electrical signaling and thus restoring the normal speed of data processing in the encephalon. This temporary ready, yet, tin crusade these axons to become fifty-fifty more than sensitive to harm if a second concussion occurs.

Near people with TBI will have progressive axonal damage, but information technology is difficult to predict who will suffer from cognitive changes years later. TBIs have a devastating effect on society, with more than 1.5 one thousand thousand cases documented in the U.Due south. every year. Currently no therapies exist for either short- or long-term damage, which means for now the all-time treatment is protection and prevention.

What is the memory capacity of the human brain? Is there a concrete limit to the corporeality of data it can store?
—J. Hawes, Huntington Embankment, Calif.

Paul Reber, professor of psychology at Northwestern University, replies:

"MR. OSBORNE, may I be excused? My brain is full," a educatee with a particularly tiny head asks his classroom teacher in a classic Far Side comic by Gary Larson. The deadpan answer to this question would be, "No, your brain is almost certainly not full." Although there must be a physical limit to how many memories nosotros can shop, it is extremely large. Nosotros don't accept to worry about running out of space in our lifetime.

The human encephalon consists of about one billion neurons. Each neuron forms about ane,000 connections to other neurons, amounting to more than a trillion connections. If each neuron could only help store a single retention, running out of infinite would be a problem. You might have only a few gigabytes of storage space, similar to the infinite in an iPod or a USB wink drive. Yet neurons combine so that each one helps with many memories at a time, exponentially increasing the brain'southward retention storage chapters to something closer to around two.5 petabytes (or a million gigabytes). For comparison, if your brain worked similar a digital video recorder in a television, 2.v petabytes would be plenty to hold iii one thousand thousand hours of TV shows. You would have to leave the TV running continuously for more than than 300 years to employ up all that storage.

The brain's verbal storage capacity for memories is difficult to calculate. First, we do not know how to measure the size of a memory. Second, certain memories involve more details and thus accept up more than infinite; other memories are forgotten and thus free up infinite. Additionally, some information is but not worth remembering in the first place.

This is good news considering our encephalon can keep upwards as we seek new experiences over our lifetime. If the man life bridge were significantly extended, could we fill our brains? I'k not sure. Ask me once again in 100 years.

This article was originally published with the championship "Enquire the Brains" in SA Mind 21, 2, lxx (May 2010)

doi:10.1038/scientificamericanmind0510-seventy

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Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-memory-capacity/