Summary: The mystery of memory

Fascination with memory and how to improve it goes back millennia, though sciences of memory are barely a century old.

Two types of memory can be distinguished: short – term and long – term memory. Some things are recalled only for a few seconds and if, before being permanently lost, they are transferred into long – term memory can be remembered for ever.

Remembering involves recovering things from longer term memory and placing them into “working memory”. Two different systems are active here: procedural memory (remembering “how”) and declarative memory (remembering “what”).

There are two other sides of memory: recognition versus recall. This can be illustrated by example: it is very difficult to recall a friend’s face, but very easy to recognize the person when you see him.

One more aspect for memory: “eidetic” or photographic memory which is more attributable to the children and most of us lose the ability as we grow older.

The human brain contains some hundred billion nerve cells, each capable of making thousands of new connections with its neighbours. Each time a new memory is made, a new pattern of connections is created, which in some way stores new memory.  

Trying to remember the name of the person a variety of strategies might be used which suggests that different regions of the brain are involved in remembering.

The greatest challenge to the neuroscientists today is to understand how all of these different regions and processes are bound together to give us coherent conscious experience. 

Picture reference:

http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/9730 (viewed at 2012 05 13)