Memory Refresh

It’s been reasonably well established that dreams are glimpses into the process of our brains converting short-term memories into long-term ones, rather like dynamic random access memory (DRAM) in computers can be committed to hard disk for long-term storage.  I don’t think anyone knows for sure why some of our short-term memories become long-term ones while others are forgotten, but it undoubtedly has to do with some combination of: the uniqueness of the memory, the importance of the memory for the survival of the individual, the interest that the individual has in the memory, and the emotions attached to the memory. 

I’ve wondered for a long time whether dreams might also be glimpses into another process that also has a computer analogy – memory refresh.  If DRAM is not refreshed every few milliseconds, by reading and rewriting it, it loses whatever data was stored in it.  I’ve wondered if our neurons and their connections aren’t exercised periodically (with the period measured in weeks or months or maybe even years), if they might lose the data stored in them (our memories, in other words).  Somebody should look into that. 

Now that I think of it, maybe those two processes are one and the same.  Perhaps some short-term memories get refreshed (and are kept) and others don’t (and are lost).