Units of Memory

Apparently our brains deal in units of memory, just like we deal with units of time, space, and ice cream sandwiches (10 ice cream sandwiches = 1 unit).

This Science Daily article has the full story. To measure what the unit of memory was (125 milliseconds, btw), they trained rats to believe that one room was actually multiple rooms by using different lighting schemes - i.e. the white room became the blue room became the yellow room, etc. Then, they would switch (or 'teleport' to use the article's parlance, which it clearly only used to try to get the reader's attention. Oh wait, it did get my attention. Drat!) from one room to another, and measure how much time it took for the rat's brain to switch from the memory of one room to the next. They noticed that the rat's brain never held onto both memories simultaneously, but rather switched rapidly back and forth between the two. Therefore, we have individual memory units, and they each take a certain amount of time to process.

So basically, all I'm saying is that we're a lot closer than we think to all getting Eternal Sunshine'd.

[via Neatorama]