How does memory work?

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Egbert Haynes
How does memory work?

Memory is described as the capacity or mental power that allows to retain and remember, through unconscious associative processes, sensations, impressions, ideas and concepts previously experienced, as well as all the information that has been consciously learned. The human brain has various types of memory. One is short-term memory, which allows you to retain certain information for only a few seconds, such as a phone number. Another is the so-called long-term memory that serves to preserve information for minutes, hours, weeks or even years.

Two types of memory are semantics and episodic

The semantic memory stores specific data, such as the capital of France is Paris, 2 × 2 is 4, etc. While episodic memory preserves the memories of events experienced directly by us and relates them to various elements. The first stores conscious information about what we want to remember. The second makes us retain things without realizing it, such as the details of a landscape to which we have not paid special attention, or advertisements without much interest and that without realizing it later we are able to remember.

There is also another type of memory called procedural, which is what allows us to do things after we have learned them, without having to constantly maintain our attention. A good example of this is driving a car or riding a bike. Once we have learned and internalized the technique, we do it without almost thinking about all our movements. We do these activities so unconsciously that we may be thinking about other things or talking, since they no longer require our permanent attention..

Human memory actually has a much higher capacity than that of the most powerful computer.

It can contain ten trillion bits (information units).

But the capacity of human memory is not capable of explaining everything, because we are also capable of recognizing an object, even if it is on its side, upside down or in a normal position. For example, we know that a glass is a glass, even if it is horizontal or slightly covered. Furthermore, we know that an object was a glass if we find a fragment large enough after it has been broken. All this occurs in our brain without it being logical for our memory to contain information about all possible positions of a glass and other objects. Human memory has the extraordinary capacity to obtain information without having acquired it explicitly, but by making quick, practically immediate deductions. We know how to recognize a tree without ever having seen that specific species, we do not need to have seen all the trees in the world to identify it as such..

How can human memory contain so much information and know how to retrieve it?

The answer to this question has been a research avenue of numerous scientists throughout history. It seems that memories can be recovered thanks to the electrical excitation of certain neurons. The activation of a specific group of these allows to recover a memory. And the transmission of electrical signals through neurons is in turn caused by chemicals called neurotransmitters. Therefore, memory is based on chemistry.

The process by which human memory is capable of storing new information seems to be that of the plasticity of the synapses or neuronal contacts. The human brain is not a network of cables already formed, but communications and new circuits between neurons are created as we learn and remember new vital situations and specific data.

Memories are registered in our brain thanks to the new circuits created. The more different details we have of an image and its surroundings, the easier it will be for us, just by seeing a part, to remember the whole. There is not an activated circuit for each memory, but rather a set of circuits that, activated at the same time, provide the memory.

There are memory techniques in which the association of visual or auditory stimuli helps us to recover information. Remembering a list of written words would be easier for us if, in addition to reading it ourselves, someone repeated it out loud to us, and even more so if we also wrote them, since a motor activity is added here that reinforces this association. For this reason the context is very important in the recovery of memories. There are memories that it is easier for us to evoke when we are in the original context where they were acquired, for example, childhood memories of a place where we went on vacation, come to mind much clearer when we return to that place and see , we hear and feel the smells of that place. It is a clear example of associative memory.

Personal abilities can be enhanced, there are memorization techniques such as mnemonic words made up of the first syllable of the names to remember. Others exploit the role of the environment or of different stimuli (visual, auditory, olfactory ...) to enhance memory. Although the simple memorization of lists of words only allows to exercise a specific type of memory.

Human memory has a complex structure, it is a process that occurs in various places in the brain, since various functions are involved in memorizing, such as visual and auditory identification, the classification of what we see, etc. Memory, like other mental abilities, can be enhanced through personal training, such as physical and manual skills. On numerous occasions we do it almost without realizing it, with studies, hobbies or hobbies. The important thing is to stay active in all senses throughout our lives, so that our capacities, instead of diminishing, continue to grow over the years..

Bibliography

Mosby Dictionary of Medicine and Health Sciences. (1998). Harcourt Brace.
Duran, J. (1996): The polyhedral brain. Barcelona. Ed. Jokes.


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