Memory limits stem from slow encoding speed, not storage capacity

Evidence

One of the field’s most prominent theories suggests that long-term memories are stored in synapses – the connections between two neurons. Synapses allow neurons to communicate and thus control the flow of information in the brain. Given that the brain has about a billion neurons – each of which are connected to thousands of other neurons – the total covers trillions of connections. This amounts to a storage capacity of well over a million gigabytes. So how come we don’t remember everything? To paraphrase cognitive neuroscientist Paul Reber, the problem is not so much with the hard drive as it is with the downloading speed. Because the rate at which we can commit information to long-term memory is relatively slow, our memories are selective; we tend to keep the memories that we like, we think about them frequently, we cherish them, and perhaps even embellish upon them along the way. We often forget the rest. — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 79

Categorization

• CANDY: The neat line that the brain’s problem is downloading speed, not hard-drive space, is a light, shareable way to reframe human forgetting.
• SEED: The idea that memory is selective by our own emotional preferences — we keep what we like and embellish it — feeds an angle on why our cherished memories are the most unreliable.