Comments by "Rob Fraser" (@krashd) on "Are Repressed Memories Real? | Random Thursday" video.

  1. People have this idea that our brain is a thousand times faster than a computer and has a thousand times the capacity of a huge hard drive, but the reality is that our brains are only exceptional in the way they handle data, not how fast it can process it or how much it can store but just how it manipulates it. When it comes to memory that manipulation is in the form of association. Our brain is theorised to have a storage capacity of roughly 100 terabytes (though estimates vary widely) and possibly as low as 10 terabytes, so how do we store 90 years or so of memories on a "hard drive" that a home movie enthusiast could fill in under a month? To save space our memory uses a compression technique known as association, and association is thought to be the reason why our dreams can seem so eccentric and surreal. When your brain creates a new memory of you going to the park it doesn't record the entire event moment-by-moment like a video camera would - that would use up far too much valuable space - it creates associations to stuff you previously remembered. If the park layout hasn't changed since you first visited then why record it all again? Your brain just creates a hyperlink from the new memory "visit to the park" to what it already had stored "my first visit to the park" then adds any new changes or additions to it, this is why if you try to remember a place you haven't been to in a while you get a fuzzy image in your head that can vary between how it looks now and how you first saw it. Your brain won't waste valuable memory recording something twice if it can just reference an old memory and add the new cliff notes to it. By adulthood you have such a collection of experiences, from the noise a plane makes to the smell of freshly cut grass, so that whenever your brain creates a new memory that memory can consist entirely of associations leading to dreams becoming a hazy mess - a train station with a door that leads to your parent's old house and inside is your aunt talking to Billy Connolly about Alsatian dogs. Associations run amok!
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