8 Things Scientists Still Don't Understand About Your Brain
5. How Do We Store Memories?
Quick, think back to what you had for breakfast yesterday, your first kiss or your first day at school. Where were those memories kept before you became consciously aware of them?
Much like the hard drive in a computer, memories are physically encoded into our brains ... we think. Neuroscientists assume this is how it works, because there's no real other way it could work, but we don't really know how or where your memories are when you're not thinking about them.
There are also lots of different types of memory. There's the type that lets you remember your first kiss and there's the type that lets you remember a person's names after meeting them, but it's not just about recording information, but how we use it. You can, for example, use your memory of what a specific cat looks like, and extrapolate it to know what other cats are, even if it has a different colour, size, or number of legs - you can even imagine a fictional cat. In this sense, memory and imagination are very similar.
It is thought that memories aren't encoded as discrete "bits" like they are in a computer, but are actually the result of different combinations of firing neurons. We're still unsure how they form in the first place, why some fade, and even how it is possible to create false memories.