Why do we retain memories if all of our cells replace themselves after a small amount of years?
In: Biology
This is very simplified but…
If you’ve ever seen a swirling eddy in a river, you’ll observe that the water composing the formation is passing in, around, and out very quickly – yet the pattern in the river is sustained. Depending on the surrounding conditions, it can be very stable and long lasting.
The water is your cells, the eddy is you.
The concept that all your cells regenerate within 7-10 years is based on some misconceptions. Different types of cells regenerate at different rates. Some only last a few weeks while others last your entire life. Most of your brain cells are in the later category. The 7 years is based on an estimated average of all your cells.
And while we do not know much about how memories work there is some evidence suggesting that memories gets refreshed when you are asleep so that even if brain cells do not last your entire lifetime but gets damaged somehow the memories will get restored and refreshed from time to time.
if you replace every piece of a house (brick, tiles, shingles ecc) one by one you still get the same house
I don’t think brain cells work like skin cells, for example. But supposedly we can kill brain cells through drugs and drinking. The brain sure is mysterious, isn’t it?
Because not all cells get replaced in a few years.
…and even if it happens, memories are not stored inside cells, but by connection between cells, so as long as there is another cel to take up the slack, there is no problem.
Well, to be frank, how many memories do you really retain if you don’t reinforce them? Try to think about how ridiculously huge amount of thoughts and inputs throughout your life that you will never remember – memories lost.
Neurons (brain cells) last a lifetime! The ones you were born with are the ones that are in your noggin right now.
While there is neurogenesis (growth of new neurons) in some parts of the brain–like the hippocampus, which is involved in memory formation–this concept doesn’t really apply to the brain on the whole. When neurons die, they generally don’t come back.
Not all cells of our body are replaced, for example, neurons, aren’t replaced ever, they do not divide so that’s why if you lose too many you may develop some mental illness, but even if they divided the information retained would be passed onto the new cells therefore your memories would go along, skin cells, for example are replaced if they die.
I think other answers are good but just to clear up another misconception: I don’t think we have a great understanding of how memories are stored, but we have moved past the idea that memories are stored in individual biological memory units. There is a name for this theory but I can’t remember it.
I personally believe brain cells don’t store information but they store electrical pattern codes and certain patterns are recognized as one particular memory or theme. This is not exactly backed by a ton of real science tho, I just think it’s a better framework to think through than nothing at all.
Also brain cells live a v long time compared to the rest of ur body.
Latest Answers