Short term memory - why we forget

- Wed, 19 Sep 2007

Scientists have been stunned to discover that the human brain has less memory capacity than they had believed. Since the average adult has about 100 billion brain cells, it has always been thought that our capacity for memory was virtually limitless. Now, scientists at University College, London, have found our brain power may be sorely limited to accessing just 500 memories at a time.

Their study found that when neurons pass messages to one another, their talk creates a 'noise' in the nerve endings which connect brain cells to form communicating cables. The more neurons are chattering to each other the more noise is created. When this noise reaches a critical volume it restricts the brain's ability to think and remember.

"You can have as many neurons as you want in a network  but as memories are added and the connections get stronger the noise gets so amplified that a network can only store about 500 memories", the study's co-author Peter Latham told Live Science.  The fact is that we can, in fact, remember more than 500 things (the average person's vocabulary alone is made up of more than 50,00 words). So Hall explains this by suggesting that memory is stored in different parts of the brain to cut down noise and that there is some central linking system, like a search engine on the internet.

This finding is just one small piece of the incredible jigsaw that scientists are piecing together about how we think and how we store memory, so that one day we can chemically boost our brain's capacity to store and recall memories. However, there is already a way in which you can increase your brain's memory capacity that is not invasive. Neuroscientists at Headstrong have developed memory games which have been proven to 'work out' and  strengthen the neural pathways in the brain responsible for memories and concentration. Regularly playing these brain games has been shown to improve the brain's memory 'fitness' and could help protect your brain against age-related memory loss, including diseases like dementia and Alzheimer's.