Never wandered about what was your brain capacity, how much memory you have, how fast can you process information, and if all of your RAM and CPU speed are cast in a stone or elastic? It seems pretty obvious that brain capacity is pretty much elastic, but think about it; it could mean that the more you remember the more you would be able to remember, the more you learn the more you would be able to learn, and the faster you learn the faster you would be able to learn. Not so trivial.
Now, consider the brain development during the early years of childhood, and the amount of information it received from vision, hearing, smell, touch and taste. The brain at this stage builds up an incredible amount of connections between each piece of information received. If certain connections, or 'pathways' are not used the connection is lost: "use it or lose it". By age 11, kid's brain has twice as much connections as an adult brain, it then starts a process called 'synaptic pruning', the child brains get rid of of extra connections it does not need. As controversial and ambiguous it might seem, the high number of connections in teenagers brain may explain that teen's reaction time to external events is much higher than the ones of an adult. Because of the high number of synaptic connections, teenager's brain may try to make sense of the incoming information during a longer period of time before taking an action. Hence, car accidents in young population might be explained by brain immaturity despite the fact that teenagers have better reflexes and muscles than the average adult.
But, let's go back to brain memory and how information is retained. Brain's memory is divided in three main type of memory: sensory memory, short term memory and longterm memory. Long term memory is itself divided as described below, ... but still it does not answer the question what is the limit capacity of a brain?
I would say that as of today there are only speculations about it, may be 1 terabyte, or 1 petabyte, or 1 exabyte, or 1 zetabyte.... well it does not make a iota of difference if you don't use it.
