Human brains have an immense memory capacity, so much so that it would be virtually impossible to fill one up in a human lifespan, even if a person remembered everything he or she had ever seen, done, or heard. Most brains have a memory capacity of about 2.5 petabytes, which is 2.6 million gigabytes. To put that in perspective, most Blu-Ray® discs hold about 50 gigabytes. This means that if the brain was a digital TV recorder, it would hold about 3 million hours of TV shows.
More about the brain and memory capacity:
- There are at least 14 different types of memory, including procedural, perceptual, cultural, and collective memory, among others.
- In 2009, Google processed about 24 petabytes of data every day.
- Studies show that infants as young as 6 months old can recall data after a 24 hour break.