Eli5: Are memories something physical inside my brain, like something written on a Hard Drive or ink on a piece of paper?

Question

Eli5: Are memories something physical inside my brain, like something written on a Hard Drive or ink on a piece of paper?

In: 13

Answer 1

We don’t know.

Memories in the brain do have a physical component which exists as electrical impulses between neurons and pathways in the brain, and there are some cells in the immune system called “Memory Cells” which can remember pathogens for many years to fight them if they show up again.

But what these electrical impulses are, how they interact with the brain, and whether there is some type of physical transcript of memories in organic compounds, nobody knows yet.

This is a particularly interesting field of study in biomechanics because it would pioneer nanotechnology and potentially allow us to interface the human mind with computers. Sounds like Sci-Fi right?