Cognitive Function Inquiry Growing up in an era so blessed with technological improvement makes it very easy to be fascinated by computers: we see, interact with, and use computers almost every day. They have influence over everything from the brewer who brews the coffee to the streetlights that control the overflow of cars during rush hour. By the way, those cars are also controlled by computers. We know a lot about computers today, more than we knew ten years ago, and in ten years we will know exponentially more than we know today. Yet the greatest computer of all still eludes us in how it works: the human brain. Believe it or not, your brain is a computer just like the one I'm writing this paper on. Both take meaningless data, process it, visualize it and store it, making everything coherent and understandable. But like any computer, there are some limitations to what the human mind can do. What are the limits of the human brain? How much can you really know in your lifetime? These are the things we hope to discover, because if humans could understand the more powerful computer, perhaps they could find a way to use it more efficiently. But before we can begin to fully understand its limits, we would need to introduce the very concept of memories. Supposedly, memories are very complex, so complex in fact, that not much is yet known about what exactly the process of creating a memory is. What is known is that “the process of memory begins with encoding, then proceeds to storage, and finally to retrieval” (“How Human Memory Works”). Since these three stages must occur for something to be memorized, there are many factors that can limit one's ability to remember. Also added...half of the paper...for everyone. If there's anything we still need to learn, it's what we can do and what our minds are capable of. However, it is one thing to simply know this information and another thing to apply it to our lives, in order to improve ourselves and our future. Works Cited Dunning, David. “What is cognitive bandwidth?” EHow. Demand Media, December 19, 2011. Web. April 21, 2014. Mohs, PhD Richard C. “Effects of Aging on Memory.” How things work. HowStuffWorks.com, May 8, 2007. Web. April 21, 2014. Mohs, PhD Richard C. “How Human Memory Works.” How things work. HowStuffWorks.com, May 8, 2007. Web. April 21, 2014."Short-term and long-term memory." How things work. HowStuffWorks.com, May 8, 2007. Web. April 21, 2014."What is the memory capacity of the human brain?" Scientific American Global RSS. Np, nd Web. April 21. 2014.