Memories...

Do they eventually fade or are they there, always there and never leave? 
Do you create new memories and erase the old ones or do you simply focus more on some memories then you do others and so you forget that those memories are there. When you die where do you go, do you bring these memories with you? 

Whatever may be the reason for memories, they are essential. One with amnesia could tell you how important it is to have memory of passed events. 

 

When I'm high I can think of more memories than I thought possible. I sat down for a while and went through each grade from school and I had multiple memories from each.

I think that is why we live, to make memories.

 

 
I didn't say whether they were essential or not, I'm only pointing out that it's likely you would often find that someone who has gone through an experience like amnesia will consider regaining conscious memories of past events a priority. 

Asking "when you die, do your memories matter" is a question that could be answered in knowing where it is you go, or what it is that happens proceeding death. 
 
Edit: I know a man with Alzheimer's disease and it's painfully obvious that memories play a large role in our life. During a moment of clouding he is quite content and happy with himself and his environment, when he is made aware that this is a memory and he is no longer in that state; or in that place and time, his mood is suddenly different. Worse? Maybe, He's certainly not as outwardly joyful. 

 

To make memories, and to learn from these experiences. 

 

The only place you can ever be alive to enjoy things is in the present moment.
 
Even when you're thinking about the past, you're doing it in the present. The past and the future are parts of your mind that you can only ever access in the present -- what exists is the present moment.
 
When you die, you don't take memories or any other parts of your mind with you -- your mind is your brain. If you brain dies, the "you" that you believe in dies. None of you goes on; death is a permanent state. The stuff that composes your body will still exist, and that's how you'll live on.
 
Good reason to enjoy the present moment... We're all on the clock.

 

That's to say a brain is required to have memories yet we know not of experiences past death. Perhaps our memories are stored somewhere else and our brain is just a physical means of accessing them in our physical realm of existence. 
 
 
I know it shouldn't because it doesn't matter, but I really hate when others present their opinions as fact. 
It gets under my skin.
You know none of what you typed with certainty yet you tell us all like it's the truth and only the truth. 

 

 
Well, it's scientific fact. Memories can be identified in the brain. They're not a super-mysterious, still-unknown question for neuroscientists, such as "why do we sleep?" It's something that we understand as well as anything else in the brain.
 
I guess on the absolutely largest level, where science is ignored and no faith in humanity's knowledge of the world is granted, it could be construed that everything I'm saying is merely opinion. But if that is the case, I think you forgot to acknowledge the possibility that you don't know if I typed things with certainty, that you don't know if what I was saying is true or untrue, and that all the words you're speaking are as equally subjective and meaningless as my own.
 
Do you expect everyone to include a disclaimer like that every time they write a series of cogent ideas?
 
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My whole previous post could be condensed into: when you die, you're dead. The past and future are only ever in the present.
 
The point of saying that is: don't live your life lost in your past and your future. Don't get lost in magical ideas about death and ignoring the reality of the limited time we all have here to enjoy ourselves. Be here now. That's all I'm saying.

 

It's scientific fact that we can access our memories through the use of our brain. 

 

 
This is probably going to piss you off but it needs to be said.
 
From Wikipedia: "Magical thinking is the identification of causal relationships between actions and events where scientific consensus says that there are none."

 

Right, but scientific study does not conclude that the memories are not in the brain. Only that we are able to access them in the brain, thus we find our memories located in our brain. 

'The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.'

 

You're right -- I don't think any serious scientific consideration has ever been granted to the idea that thoughts exist outside of the brain.
 
Following your example, for lack of there ever even being so much as a question among serious thinkers in the field of neuroscience that the brain is where thoughts are, it isn't fair to state that "scientific study does not conclude that the memories are not in the brain."
 
"It" can't conclude that or anything else because "it," this hypothetical scientific study to which you've referred, doesn't exist.
 
If I'm wrong, feel free to link me some evidence.

 

Consider the article.   link    While I am sure there are a wide range of other sources dealing with this and similar information. This is the one I chose. I did not put forth a great effort in my search. 

"The pattern analyzer could accurately identify tasks based on the patterns generated, regardless of whether the subject remembered specific details," Johnson said. "This tells us the brain knew something about what had occurred, even though the subject was not aware of the information." 
 
 
This could, and I'm not saying it does, suggest that our brain is but a tool and one of it's purposes is in gaining conscious access to past events so that we can recall them in great detail for which ever reason we may choose to do so. That these images we create through the use of remembering might in fact be stored in a place other then the brain that which is on a level of existence not of a tangible form. 

Like the brain is a radio and the memories are the frequencies.

 

 I remember because I enjoy it.  I live in the now.

 

Come on now, memories are awesome. Alzheimer's is a dreaded condition for a reason.

 

Or a good reason to get your body preserved like Lennin or Kim Jong il.

 

I'm all for mummification.

 

Warp 9, engage.

 

You are drawing conclusions, once more, from a lack of evidence.

The article you linked seems much more likely to be caused by the memory cells stored in other parts of the body besides the brain. It's been well documented for quite a while now that other organs besides the brain hold emotions and memories. Those memories and emotions wouldn't show up on a scan of brain waves, would they?

But no, let's not look at the likely option that scientific evidence supports. Let's continue projecting baseless beliefs onto (what you thought was) a hole in the scientific process.

Only, it wasn't a hole. We already understand how memory works outside the brain and within the body...