Discovering the Capacity of Human Memory

Despite the fact that the number of neurons in the human brain has been identified in cognitive and neural sciences, the magnitude of human memory capacity is still unknown. This paper reports the discovery of the memory capacity of the human brain, which is in the order of 108432 bits. A cognitive model of the brain is created, which shows that human memory and knowledge are represented by relations, i.e., connections of synapses between neurons, rather than by the neurons themselves as the traditional container metaphor described. The determination of the magnitude of human memory capacity is not only theoretically significant in cognitive science, but also practically useful to unveil the human potential, as well as the gap between the natural and machine intelligence.