6 Fantastic Facts You Didn’t Know About Memory

Human mind has always been, and still remains, a mystery, especially when it comes to our memories. Ever since we were born our brains have been constantly trying to figure themselves out. And naturally, scientists have conducted millions of test and experiments to uncover the deepest secrets of the human mind, but we’re still nowhere close to even dipping our proverbial toes in the vastness that is out consciousness.

Even with such unimpressive results, the scientist have been able to identify quite a few extremely curious properties of our brains. Here are 6 fantastic facts you didn’t know about memory!

1. How Much Info Can Your Brain Fit?
Not that long ago, in 2016, scientists were able to identify that a rat’s brain neurons could code information in 26 different ways. And since rat and human neurons are almost identical in their structure, the researchers managed to extrapolate that our brains could potentially fit 1 petabyte of information. Let’s just say that you’d be able to download all of your favorite movies and TV shows a hundred times over and there would still be free space for hobbies, work skills, and other unnecessary things.

2. Snails Exchanging Memories
Last year researches made an interesting experiment with sea snails. While trying to figure out if genetic memory exists, a team of California scientists repeatedly zapped specimen A, trying to teach it to tuck away its flaps for longer to avoid being shocked. It worked! Now they took RNA from snail A and transplanted it to a non-suspecting snail B who’s never been zapped before. What do you think happened? Snail B tucked its squishy flaps for much longer than a regular snail, thus proving that memories can be transmitted through RNA… we just don’t know how exactly that works.