Why cant we retain all our memories and experiences as we get older?
In: Biology
To give as simple an answer as possible, there are two main facts to keep in mind – 1) there’s no survival advantage to storing every single moment of our existence as a memory [e.g. no need to remember the fine details of long, uneventful car rides] and 2) the brain requires tremendous amounts of energy relative to its size to operate (estimated that ~20% of the body’s calorie consumption is used on the brain)
Given these two facts, the brain has developed complex systems that determine what does and does not deserve to get stored. This is in an effort to conserve energy.
This is an incredible over-simplification and there are other theories (related to the brain’s processing power amongst other things), and it’s likely that all of the theories are true to some extent. But I think the simplest and most consequential reason that we don’t store everything as a memory is in an effort to not waste energy.
edit: spelling
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