# Capacity of the brain

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capacity-of-the-brain/773086>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [November 26, 2016, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capacity-of-the-brain/773086 "2016-11-26T21:23:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\
**Post date:** [November 27, 2016, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capacity-of-the-brain/773086/21 "2016-11-27T18:47:59Z")

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I hear that as folks age they have more lower digestive tract issues. They retain more and more BS until they’re full of it. 😃

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**Author:** ![Kedikat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ed655f/32.png) [@Kedikat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kedikat)\
**Post date:** [November 27, 2016, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capacity-of-the-brain/773086/22 "2016-11-27T19:41:46Z")

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From experiments with memory recall, it seems that some of the storage capacity may be an active filling in the gaps. Many points are remembered, but many are also reconstructed on the fly as seemingly fitting in between the gaps. I often wonder if our brain structure and method has a data compression algorithm. As it gains more data, it adapts the algorithm to stretch out the hard data points. Being able to better reconstruct the gaps more accurately with certain newly learned data.

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