Did you know raw memory statistics exist that demonstrate how your brain’s capacity for remembering is far greater than you can imagine?
At least, I have a hard time imagining many of the fun facts about memory I’ve dug up. For example, some researchers think that the cerebral cortext alone is made up 125 synapses.
That means space for 2.5 petabytes, which is truly impossible to imagine when it comes to storage capacity.
To help myself imagine what that means a bit better, I did some research. It turns out that this amount provides more than enough space to store 3 million hours of TV shows!
Of course, different scientists produce different numbers in their studies. But they’re all in the same basic range.
And that’s just one of the many memory facts and statistics I want to share with you today.
Because memory isn’t just about storage capacity. It’s also about learning, and being able to recall what you’ve learned.
And that’s where the memory statistics I’ve found get truly interesting.
Ready for more?
Here’s a table of contents if you prefer to skim:
Table of Contents
Or if you prefer to keep reading for all the details, let’s dive in!
Memory Statistics That Will Change Everything You Think About Your Mind
As we go into this list of exciting facts together, please keep in mind that memory science is a slow moving train.
That’s a good thing, because researchers need to take their time to test theories and compare them with others.
By the same token, evolution doesn’t seem to change the human brain very quickly. So some of the facts we’ll explore today have been known for a long time.
I point this out because it’s important to be humble and flexible when committing facts to memory. Some people may have read different things and even interpreted the same data differently.
Unless you’re prepared as a debater, it’s generally a best practice when discussing memory to be at least a little scientific yourself. Rather than present anything as a settled fact, use statements like, “this is what the research shows, at least as I interpreted it.”
That way, you get the best of both worlds: insight into what researchers think the data is telling them and great conversations with other people that are free from ego.
These matters aside, here’s my favorite fact about memory.
One: Remembering New Things Changes The Physical Structures Of Your Brain
What does taxi driving and learning to juggle have in common?
Both change the structure of the brain as people learn city streets and how to keep balls flowing smoothly through the air.
Researchers found specifically that learning to juggle changes the brain’s grey matter. More specifically, visual memory seems to get a boost.
In the case of the taxi drivers, researchers found that the hippocampus increases in size, possibly due to increased demands on spatial memory.
But don’t worry. You don’t have to be interested in driving or throwing balls around in the air. Other researchers have shown that similar positive changes take place in the brain while learning new languages.
Personally, I have learned to juggle in order to get the visual memory benefits, and don’t regret it. That’s because this fascinating fact belongs to the larger realms or neuroplasticity and neurobics.
As you can see in my demonstration video above, I managed to combine juggling with language learning to make this concentration exercise even more transformative. I can only imagine what shape the various parts of my brain have morphed into… All positive from what I can tell!
Two: The “Memory” Of A Major Search Engine Is 50% Smaller Than Yours
Back in 2007, Yahoo! announced that its 4000 processors totally three terabytes of memory. Of course, sites like Computerworld took them to task for making such a claim.
I raise the point, because Yahoo also said they have 1.5 petabytes of disks at their disposal. If this Scientific American researcher is right, that means they have approximately half of the capacity you do.
Three: Human Brain Activity Would Require A Zettabyte To Capture
Let’s take things one step further. Neuroscientists David Eagleman has talked about a different problem.
Rather than focus on how much storage capacity various types of human memory might have, he says that a computer would need a zettabyte to capture all of the brain’s activity.
As he describes it, a zettabyte is the “total computational capacity of the planet.” In other words, the activity of your brain produces so much information, the power of just one brain is equal to something like all the computers in the world.
Now that’s a massive amount!
Four: The “Forgetting Curve” Is Savage!
Before we congratulate ourselves about how massive our capacity for memory storage is, we have to acknowledge the “dark side of memory.”
In 1885, Hermann Ebbinghaus published a monumental work about one particular aspect of memory. He called it the “forgetting curve.”
Depending on which studies you read, and what kind of information the researchers test, the forgetting curve predicts that most of us will forget about 50% of what we learn within an hour of learning it. This 2015 study successfully reproduced Ebbinghaus’ research and I’m confident it would show the same thing… or worse.
I make that dark prediction because since 2015, the problem of digital amnesia has grown. Not only are an increasing number of studies like this showing that students are not learning well from online books and courses. Times Higher Education has shown that panic and anxiety harms the memory of students who take courses online.
It’s possible that dopamine issues are at the core of the problem, but either way, it still comes down to the fact that our online lives make the forgetting curve worse.
If you want to fight against the issue, consider learning how to use accelerated learning techniques like Memory Palaces, spaced repetition and interleaving. They’ve been lifesavers for me.
Five: Seven Items, 20 Seconds & The Achilles Heel of Short-Term Memory
If the forgetting curve wasn’t upsetting enough, short-term memory is not great for most of us.
As studies in chunking have shown, we tend to be able to juggle only about seven items in our working memory. And we have only about 20 seconds to encode them using some kind of memory technique if we want to hold them longer than that.
Think about your own experience with phone numbers. When someone gives you a new number, you tend to repeat it by rote, at least until it either gets into long-term memory or you can write it down.
In the subheading above I used the term “Achilles Heel,” and that’s not wrong. But we can shield ourselves against this weakness in memory by using memory techniques. The trick is to match the right technique to the specific information you need to remember.
That can be a difficult new skill to pick up, however. Especially when you consider our next fun fact.
Six: You Experience 6200 Spontaneous Thoughts A Day
If you’ve ever seen a science fiction movie about space travel, you probably know what a wormhole is. A portal in the space-time continuum opens up and a spacecraft is able to enter and exit somewhere else millions of miles away. Depending on the story, the ship might even arrive before it left if there’s a quantum mechanics theme going on.
Well, what if memory can be a bit like that too?
Although controversial and as yet unproven, physicist Sir Roger Penrose has a theory called Orchestrated Objective Reduction. Perhaps the easiest way to wrap your mind around it is to listen to him describe what he calls the Hemingway Paradox in this compelling set of clips from his interviews with the journalist Andréa Morris.
Does any science exist that confirms the gist of Penrose’s theory?
Not exactly, but Dr. Jordan Poppenk at Queen’s University talks about “thought worms.” These are unique and spontaneous thoughts that erupt seemingly out of nowhere – at a rate of approximately 6200 hundred a day.
In the Nature paper he published with Julie Tseng, the theory suggests that these ideas arise from a foundational space of mental noise. According to their research, it really is like “worms” arising inside the great “black box” or open space of the mind.
Seven: Accessing Your Memories Risks Changing The Truth
Here’s a tough pill to swallow:
According the Dr. Gary Small, every time you access a memory, you’re changing its location in your brain. You may also be changing its factual nature in terms of how you remember your own autobiography.
Nowhere is this research confirmed more compellingly than in the work of Dr. Elizabeth Loftus. An easy way to get into some of her findings is this TED Talk:
Her work on the problem of memory in eyewitness testimony has literally changed how the law works.
How can you protect yourself?
Personally, I use a lot of journaling to record various events. And when I’m a guest on podcasts, I often point out how every time I introduce myself, I am subtly changing my own memory.
This admission often gets a laugh and breaks the ice. But it also helps me manage my own memory biases, which can strongly include all of us to bend the truth. I don’t know about you, but I never want to do that.
Of course, not all memories are so flexible. Semantic memory, for example, is much more robust. This is your memory for facts like street names, colors and the digits of pi if you ever commit them to memory like Akira Haraguchi and Brad Zupp have done.
Likewise with language learning, something many memory athletes take up. All of these facts boil down to right or wrong answers. Just watch out for details pertaining to your past through episodic memory. Merely by remembering them, you’re probably changing them.
Learning Statistics You Can Use
Although there are many other fun facts about memory, as I mentioned, learning is equally important to consider. That’s because learning and memory are intertwined. As far as I can tell, it’s not really possible to have one without the other.
But as we’ve seen with some of the facts above, the fact that we have a massive capacity for storing things we want to remember doesn’t mean we’ll succeed. The tips that follow will help make sure that you do better despite memory’s many quirky ways.
Eight: Sleep Is Like A Time Machine For Memory & Learning
We often hear that sleep is critical for memory.
According to this study, that’s a massive understatement. Getting a good sleep not only prepares you to learn more the next day. It also helps you remember what you learned the day before through a process called consolidation.
This is especially important when we’re young and scientists are currently assessing how these needs might change as we age.
Although it’s anecdotal, I can tell you that I definitely need more sleep than ever to keep learning like I used to when I was in university.
Nine: Testing Yourself Instead Of Waiting For The Teacher To Do It Helps Your Learn Faster
Lots of people email me for memory hacks, hoping that I’ll help them cram for an exam at the last minute.
Although there are a few accelerated learning techniques I share on this blog, my podcast and in the Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass, I always tell people to give themselves more time to master their memory.
And one of my favorite tactics for learning faster has little to do with mnemonics. Rather, it’s about self-testing through a process scientists call active recall.
In brief, this form of “self-testing” gets you to take the initiative and test yourself before sitting for an exam at school.
As this study shows, students who test themselves perform better on exams. The process works generally, but seems to work especially well in medicine. Unfortunately, this study found that not enough medical students use the technique.
I do all that I can to help students learn medical terminology by combining active recall and mnemonic devices. As you can see from many of my testimonials, medical students who do this absolutely flourish.
Ten: Physical Fitness May Tire You Out But You’ll Still Learn Better
I was a fat slob during university.
But in 2015, I turned this around by working on my diet and working with a personal trainer.
I immediately noticed that I started learning much better and remembering more.
These scientists found that BDNF production is probably at the core of this effect.
In another study, scientists found that exercise is even more important for memory as we age.
I have to admit, now that I’m approaching my fifties, getting to the gym three times a week feels harder each and every year. But I keep doing it because the benefits are clear.
So too are the deficits. When I skip going to the gym, brain fog starts creeping in very quickly.
What I’ve Learned Throughout My Career
Across my career as a professor at three universities, giving a popular TEDx Talk and running this blog on memory, I’ve learned that strengthening your memory is two things:
- A deeply personal journey
- One deeply affected by facts that bind us all together
What I mean is that we all experience the forgetting curve. But when we take it upon ourselves to learn and apply memory techniques, we can reduce its effect on our lives.
When it comes to practicing memory techniques, I’ve also learned that less is more.
For example, Alex Mullen and John Graham have won major memory competitions. Dave Farrow holds two Guinness Records for memory. They all practice the techniques in short blasts.
Finally, I’ve learned that memory can be useful to help “control freaks” like me not take life so seriously. As I discussed in my TEDx Talk, I’m very devoted to science.
But memorizing some Sanskrit phrases helped me quiet my mind and enjoy life a lot more.
I sing them like a song, and it turns out that science shows singing produces healing chemicals in the body and improves mood. If only I’d known sooner!
If you’ve fallen in love with all the facts and stats we discussed today as much as I have, here’s a suggestion.
Get my free course now and start completing it:
It will help you master techniques like the Memory Palace with four free videos and three worksheets.
As you go through it, I suggest journaling everything.
That way, you can produce statistics of your own as you track the improvement of your own memory.
Frankly, I can’t think of any memory stats more exciting and interesting to look at than the ones that relate directly to your own journey into learning and remembering as much as possible.
