system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Are memories "physical" or "persistent" in the brain like in hard-drives? or when we die they just vanish like RAM memory after a computer lost its power?
gpt
If you place sensors on the edge of a pool and measure the ripples you can tell where a pebble dropped. If you can place sensors at the edge of a room you can measure where a balloon popped. If you place sensors at the edge of a living brain you can tell that it is alive, and a bit more, but you can't tell if it's thinking about pebbles or balloons. You can't measure if there is a memory in it which is not being remembered. Once the brain is dead you can't tell much other than its architecture.

This answer is based on current technology. The answer to your question is simply that we don't know. We haven't gotten anywhere near that level of precision in examining brains.