Why do we retain memories if all of our cells replace themselves after a small amount of years?
In: Biology
Memories themselves degrade over the years. Every time you recall a memory, sometimes within the memory changes. It starts with very small fine details, and over the years all you’re left with is the impression or how you felt and maybe some visions of what happened.
But even then you aren’t remembering what happened, you’re remembering what your brain saw and perceived at that time.
Certain things like smells, and sounds do have a profound effect on our ability to recall things as well.
You don’t store memories like 1 cell 1 memory, concept or idea or some simplification like that. It is more like the connections within them that helps you to build a network and that network helps you to recall information. You also have certain redundancy and you store different memories in different places (easy access and long term stuff etc). But as other redditor said, you [normally] don’t lose your brain cells.
imagine your body is a city, imagine your cells are buildings. some buildings like brain cells might be like government buildings, or docks like your mouth. roads like veins and arteries…
like others have said, some cells/buildings get replaced more or less often than others. but on top of this, there are always similar cells/buildings near by.
if for instance your house had burned down and needed to be rebuilt, you could stay at a family members house or a hotel, essentially somewhere that would serve the same function.
currently in quarantine, many people work from home or school from home.
in your body cells are so densely packed and built up in dedicated areas, that the safety net and redundancy for each individual cell is significant.
consider how your skin operates multiple layers working together, providing redundancy and support, as well as different levels of utility. or even your finger nail, layers at the back growing and pushing layers to the front ready to take over from the previous.
Because it’s not the cell that hold the memory it’s the pattern the neuron (cell that basically let you think) is in so as long as the new cell is in the same place as the last then it won’t affect your memory.
A memory is basically a combination of neuron patterns like one for the way an experience smelt and one for the way it looked and one for the way you felt and so forth. This is why smelling or feeling something can trigger a memory that you couldn’t just recall at will.
The patterns that form smell, touch, sight and so forth all link up and so you remember a situation in detail. Your brain puts all the puzzle pieces that it thinks relate together even through on their own they don’t make any sense.
This is why when you remember something it’s very likely that there’s a detail you swear happened but it didn’t actually happen, same as when someone else who was there swears it didn’t happen even through you can remember it so clearly. Your brain isn’t perfect so it can add things that weren’t actually in the original memory into it because they were similar enough to be put there.
I hope this was simple enough well also explaining your question and potential questions
If it were true that every single cell you now have since making a certain memory is now different, I think it has to do with the fact that what makes you is the same thing that makes a school of fish, a swarm of bees, etc. you are a hive mind, and be it a matter of cells sharing 99.9999% of all information from time to time OR the fact that you’re not your cells, you are the electrical synapses that dances between them, you can rest assured that if your cells are constantly dying and regenerating you are still going to be YOU.
Is the question WHY or how?
The answers below that tackle how are good.
The question of why makes the philosophical brain do cheetah backflips.
Because brain cells (called neurons) are different. They don’t do much dying and aren’t usually replaced if they die. So what you heard about cells is true for skin cells for example, but not neurons
Think of your mind as the earth and experiences as a river, the river always flows, and although it mostly stays the same, under different circumstances, it can change. Crude I know, but the point is valid.
The memories aren’t stored in your cells, they’re stored in the ARRANGEMENT of your cells.
It’s like, imagine a light switch that’s turned to the “on” position, but like sitting on a counter. Imagine replacing every piece of it one by one, the cover, the backing wiring, the cover for the switch, etc, with a copy of the exact same part in the exact same position.
After you were done, you’d have a totally different light switch, every part would be different… But it would still be switched on.
To be honest, having spent the last 15 years as a PhD neuroscientist, no one actually knows how memories are stored. Specifically because the cells and connections in the “memory” areas keep changing, and new ones WILL grow there. There are some theories that memories are stored in the connections between the cells AND in the dna superstructure (modifications to the backbone of dna, not the code). There’s no explain like I’m 5 for this one, because no one knows.
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