Relation between Perception and Memory

When I wrote blogs on Physics of Perception and Chemistry of Dream, I was trying to prove that the creation of experience in dream is only false combination of previous perceptions stored in memory. But question remained about the nature of perception memory and how it builds experience  memory with time dimension.

To my mind the perception is instantaneous impression like snapshot image with sensory links to each and every component in that snapshot. Movie camera stores number of screenshots on time scale and each screenshot contains two dimensional arrays of bytes, density depending on resolution.  This requires large memory storage which gets multiplied by frame rate and time duration of video.

If we assume that human perception is similar to snapshot, the memory storage getting stored would be enormous during person’s lifetime, which simply cannot be quantified on material scale. Storage and retention of such memory in living brain where majority of portion of brain  is busy in managing body processes seems unlikely. There must be superb compression of such snapshots of perceptions during its storage as experience memory.

During my morning  walk on my favorite track, I tried to visualize the route of my travel and whether it is matching with our map concept. I was surprised to find that two dimensional track route map  is not stored in my memory. And I cannot grasp the entire map as we see on paper. I could only glance to various snapshots of scenes in my mind and infer change in direction or slope. I concluded that map is a derived thing from snapshots which are essentially in a linear sequence on timeline.

 Further introspection revealed that I am not storing each snapshot as a whole, but only recording the changes in its look. Like change of scale due to movement or some glaring changes in picture or presence of some new objects. If I try to recall all my memories of my everyday walks, I get few snapshots of different places along the route and that also only after my intentional effort of recalling it. Thus all experience of my morning walks is bundled in a small memory package of few snapshots and change events.

Now consider our experience of our usual daily work like mouthwash, tea, bath, lunch, play or normal day to day discussions with relatives and friends. We find that lot of such experience is in symbolized form occupying small memory. Reading or viewing television is not of this type as there is new action and events.  But the repeated advertisements on TV also may not be getting stored separately except recording of time.

There is one important difference in video snapshots and snapshots of perceptions. Each video snapshot  is independent and does not have links to its inner portions. However, snapshot of perception is having context link to each and every part in it, may it be tree, stone, person, light, sound or any conceivable characteristic.

Now the question arises whether comparison of  perception memory with video snapshot is valid?