Meaning, they could be crowded out or overwritten? I'm no brain expert, but if it weren't for aging, new wiring being added, the ability to recall being pushed one way or the other, I bet we'd be able to remember much more than we typically do. My mother can remember things about my life that I don't. Why is that? At different stages in our lives we have access to different stages of our lives? Anyway, it is a fascinating topic.
Technology is awesome, when it works. It might take a while to get there, but I find myself wishing we had what we have now in my youth so I could be much better with it and what's coming next.
As a side note, I'm not sure if you remember the conversation we had on your yard art post, but I did mention you in a post I published yesterday because of that conversation. In case you're interested, you can find that post, and it's bottom reference to our conversation, by clicking here.
The fascinating part to memory for me is that there is so much there! Petabytes of the stuff we don't even know we have and can get only brief, accidental glimpses of. Nature was not kind to give us the memory but no way to access most of it.
Another theory of mine is that is what all of the "unused" part of the DNA code is for. Some day, something will trigger a mutation in someone and that will activate the "unused" part from the single 8088 CPU it is now to a Pentium II and we can draw on the other mental resources we are not capable of now. At least that's something to wish for.
I very often wish I had access to the Internet, YouTube instructional videos, and Khan Academy when I was a child. I could have learned so much more than with the resources (and support) I grew up with. Sadly, we don't get do-overs, though, no matter how nice it would have been.
And thank you for the mention and for remembering our conversation, too. Since you have the Tarbibs frozen in time and on display, I suppose the story must have been true. It just needed a little spark from a neuron!
Will