[thedoc (OP)]

I'd like to know how much information can my brain take before I start overwriting stuff that’s already there. Is all this learning good for me or should I concentrate on learning less? I have asked this question and nobody can give me an answer.

Asked by Sean, Edinburgh

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[thedoc (OP)]

Answered by Professor Ian McLaren, University of Exeter

You asked if the brain overwrites old information each time I learn something new. The answer is when you learn new things you do forget the older stuff to some extent but it’s not as bad as it sounds. Say you learn a list of metals and flower names. Then afterwards you learn a list of trees and plants. Learning that second list will make your memory for the first worse. We don’t think it overwrites it. If I now tell you that that first list was metals and flower names and you use those cues, things you’d apparently forgotten resurface. It seems like they were harder to retrieve and we think that inaccessibility protects them, actually from being overwritten. If you didn’t protect it in that way it would get overwritten and you really would lose stuff. The other question was, ‘Is all this learning good for me or should I concentrate on learning less?’ The problem as we age with our memories seems to be not a lack of capacity but we get worse at using it. We’re not as good at controlling it. If you keep on learning things and using your memory a great deal, that can only help. It’s a use-it-or-lose-it kind of idea. Hope that helps!

[Make it Lady]

I have no hard facts on this one but did have an unusual experience to do with this topic. Before I went to teach English as a foriegn language in Japan I had been doing lots of work involving quadratic equations. At the time I was very good at maths. In Japan I learnt Japanese quite intensively. When I returned to my studies I was totally unable to do the reasonable complex maths I had been doing before I went away. It was like it had been wiped from my memory. Even relearning it did not jog my memory.
I know that languages and maths don't seem similar but perhaps parts of the brain are used for what the brain feels is a similar subject. In this case it made a big mistake. 

[rhade]

Memory is a really tricky subject. I don't think it is accurate to say the brain "overwrites itself." I think what does happen is that the brain decides it has no further use for memories which are not accessed over a period of time, a bit like going through your closet and thinking "I've not worn that for yonks. I think I'll chuck it out!"
Where it gets really complicated is that we can create memories. You may not remember, for example, something you did when you were six, but if your family keep telling you about something you did at that age, you construct a memory based on it. In this way, totally false memories can be implanted in someone, and if a faked photograph is used, the effect is even stronger. There were a lot of cases in the 1980's with various quacks, often using hypnosis, concocting false memories of child abuse in people. The reality is that, while sometimes traumatic events are suppressed in memory, and can be recovered in therapy, usually the problem traumatised people experience is that they can't forget- those who were in the Nazi death camps in the war, for example.
This must be my longest posting on this forum to date. Sorry if it went on a bit!

[lyner]

It puts me in mind of that famous Gary Larsen cartoon.

"Can I go now, my brain's full?"

[Alan McDougall]

Well it is said that the human brain can retain three times the information of the American  library of Congress, but who really knows for sure.

Autistic savants can recall enormous amounts of information. Gogol Daniel Tammit.

[lyner]

There may be a very good reason why we don't use all of our potential 'brain power'. I don't think I would rather be an Autistic Savant than bumbling, forgetful old me.
Just being 'normal' must be an incredibly difficult task which actually takes up most of our 'thinking' ability. I don't think this has ever been quantified. As a society, we are very 'fussy' about who we will accept and who we won't. Even being a bit 'preoccupied' with an academic or logistical problem can make us behave in a way which is marginally unacceptable to other humans. How many genii have been looked upon as odd?

[rhade]

I think I remember seeing something somewhere, possibly on Dr. Karl's website, which said that the notion that most of our brain capacity is unused is not the case, but unfortunately I forget the full story.
I think there is a basic flaw in the way this question treats the human brain as if it were a computer, and you could just say "The capacity of this brain is 140 sqaudrillion megabytes. This memory is 40,000 KB, so it will take this much of it!" I don't think it quite works like that.

[rhade]

I just looked at the question again, and realised there is another thread to it, which was "is it good to start learning less?" I don't think it's ever a good idea to start learning less (or not learn more. I think it makes more sense to phrase it that way.) Anyway, what is Sean doing listening to the Naked Scientists if he wants to learn less? A somewhat illogical approach, methinks.

[Ward]

There may be a very good reason why we don't use all of our potential 'brain power'. I don't think I would rather be an Autistic Savant than bumbling, forgetful old me.
Just being 'normal' must be an incredibly difficult task which actually takes up most of our 'thinking' ability. I don't think this has ever been quantified. As a society, we are very 'fussy' about who we will accept and who we won't. Even being a bit 'preoccupied' with an academic or logistical problem can make us behave in a way which is marginally unacceptable to other humans. How many genii have been looked upon as odd?

I think you're right. I live in the Netherlands (I know my English sucks, please forgive me) and I just visited a museum a few days ago. There was an exposition about the human brain, were I was told that about 80-90 % of the human brain capacity is used for behaving right. In the world we live in that's obviously a very important thing. And because it's not even possible to measure how much 'MB' a human can remember, it's totally impossible to find out how much MB is stored to behave correctly. But it's quite a lot, I suppose.

[H2O2]

Hi, I agree with the general idea that there is a maximum amount of information storage available but, being a dyslexic, I learn through many different formats before information gets stored in my long term memory. I can remember information through all senses, ie. smell like for most people (cut grass) but when another piece of information is added it becomes a link memory. By using memory tricks I seem to store information and recall it in different ways and put it together differently. ie. if showed pictures of a) a table leg b) a table top c) a table cloth. for new information unless you know what they look like together the brain has to work out how the items fit together.  using multi sensory memory allows a better ability to puzzle match any information together. or so Ive found anyhow. So it seems to me that its not about overwriting and amount of information stored but the ability to process and apply.

[erickejah]

When I returned to my studies I was totally unable to do the reasonable complex maths I had been doing before I went away. It was like it had been wiped from my memory. Even relearning it did not jog my memory.

I had the same problem when I learned English, my math takes longer now

[Sanghamitra Dey]

there are loads of facts and figures that insist that we use a very small fraction of our brains and we have the potential of learning and storing more and more, i have also heard that we only use 2% of aur brain...!!! [:0]
it also depends upon our own desire of learning more and more, if we have the sincere kind of dedication and passion about learning and knowing more and more then who the hell is anybody or anything on earth to stop us...!! []

[blaze]

Although the brain possesses an enormous large capacity and we only use a small portion of it, if you happen to be exposed to wifi or wimax or things of this nature, it can definitely become overloaded.

When I became electrosensitive from area cell phone towers, I lost all memory of advanced mathematics, and even some some lesser forms, everything from algebra to calculus, and I'd been a top student in mathematics.

[Bored chemist]

Oddly there doesn't seem to be any objective evidence for the assertion that "if you happen to be exposed to wifi or wimax or things of this nature, it can definitely become overloaded."

[BenV]

It's strange how many people really believe that we only use a small portion of our brain - it doesn't make logical sense that we would.  If we didn't use it, why grow it?  If we could get away with having a smaller brain, we could have a smaller head and be born later on in a pregnancy, thus giving us a better likelihood of survival in early childhood.

[Bored chemist]

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=17742.msg202245#msg202245

[wannabe]

My take on this is as follows:
Everything is remembered, the variable here is the strength of the memory.
The capacity of the brain is limitless. The brain apparatus is unlike the one used in the machine analogies>>computer<< in that memory is created, synthesized that is (reference Hebbian learning), at the time of the input and as the result of the digestion of the input.
Accuracy of memory varies according to strengthening and restrengthening, i.e. revisiting remembered experience. As the brain is exquisitely capable of fabulizing (reference dreaming), veracity of what is remembered is unverifiable to anyone other then the owner of the brain.
Hope this helps.

[lyner]

From blaze:

When I became electrosensitive from area cell phone towers, I lost all memory of advanced mathematics, and even some some lesser forms, everything from algebra to calculus, and I'd been a top student in mathematics.

It is also said to affect rationality.

[BabyDoll]

Although the brain possesses an enormous large capacity and we only use a small portion of it, if you happen to be exposed to wifi or wimax or things of this nature, it can definitely become overloaded.

When I became electrosensitive from area cell phone towers, I lost all memory of advanced mathematics, and even some some lesser forms, everything from algebra to calculus, and I'd been a top student in mathematics.

I concur. Although it hasn't (or has) been scientifically proven, everytime I spoke for over half on hour on the mobile phone, I have an headache. And I cant remember anything. When I was younger I used to speak off my mobile for extended hours up to 2 hours everyday. I was young then. Now, my memory is crap and even with new phones, I still get headache over extended usage.