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Tuesday, October 21, 2003
Memories
While driving to work this morning, I was thinking about the idea of our ability to remember stuff. Recent studies have shown that sleep is beneficial for helping solidify things that we learn. They also found that "intelligent memory" increases as we get older, and is boosted with exercise (another reason to get out and be active.. healthy body => healthy mind).
One time after church when we went to Lake Anza in Tilden Park, I was telling Frogmochi and Edena about how our brains theoretically should be able to remember everything we ever see/hear/feel/etc. The capacity of the human brain is so vast, I can't even put a gigabyte or other computer number equivalent for the amount of data our brains can process and hold. Most of the times, I believe we are just lazy about remembering things. Our brains can process everything, but it chooses to discard most information that we encounter (hence the saying, "in one ear and out the other") because it's deemed not applicable to us.
During my commute, I keep track of certain cars on the right and left of me since I want to know if my lane is going slower or faster than the other two (I don't have access to the 4th lane, because that's only for carpools). I only try to track one or two cars. But I was thinking, it wouldn't be altogether difficult for me to keep track of more cars around me. Being interested in cars, I can identify the make/model of most of them, so recognition is not the problem. But why would I want to commit so much brain resource to such a trivial task? Because I can!
In tracking the stuff going around me, I realized that my memory functions much like the Divx video compression codec. Divx is an algorithm used to make DVD-quality movies fit on a CD. For those who aren't familiar, Superman informed me that the way that Divx works is that it only keeps track of the pixels and parts of the picture which are changing during a movie. Since most of the time, a lot of background, scenery and other information isn't changing, there doesn't need to be much data stored. Where Divx breaks down is with action sequences where explosions and stuff cause the entire picture to change dramatically.
If overwhelmed, our memory, too, can be broken down. It's called information overload. To be honest, though, I believe that it's more of a psychological barrier than anything else. For example, studying for a midterm may cover quite a bit of material, but it's rather the frustration and/or disinterest that comes from looking at the same subject matter for hours which is the main problem for effective understanding. In comparison, just think of the things that you are truly interested in.. there really isn't much stopping you from knowing a TON about those things. It shows in your favorite TV show, music artist, cars, movies, places, etc.
"Memories" turns out to be the name of that sad instrumental-only song (it's mostly guitar picking) from the movie Top Gun after Goose dies and Maverick has to reconcile with the loss with his instructor, Goose's wife, and himself. Good song, but oh so melancholy. You should listen to it sometimes.. makes for a quality introspective/nostalgic time.
10:12 AM Albert
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..a life in DUO