How Your Memory Works

Legendary detective Sherlock Holmes held the view that the brain functions like an attic with a finite capacity for memory storage.

The Earth revolves around the sun, of course, Dr. Watson once informed him.

"Now that I am aware of it, I will try to forget it."

Holmes reasoned that if you fill your attic with irrelevant information, you won't have room for the important things, like differentiating between dangerous poisons' minute distinctions.

Holmes was he right?

Is our memory constrained in the same way that a computer's storage space is?

Or does our memory never run out?

What would life be like if we had perfect memory and never forgot anything?

Memories were portrayed as bright spheres stacked inside the brain in the animated movie Inside Out.

books found in libraries.

However, the truth is a little more nuanced.

Our memory bank is spread throughout various areas of the brain.

Individual memories, on the other hand, are dispersed throughout the brain.

One memory is created by the cooperation of many brain cells located in various areas.

For instance, when you remember eating grandma's apple pie, certain brain cells may help you recall the appearance of the pie, while others may help you recall the aroma of the cinnamon, and yet others may help you recall the mouthwatering flavor, to mention just a few.

But in truth, a memory isn't something we can physically discover in any one brain.

cell.

Not an item, but an action.

Think of "the wave" performed by baseball fans: only the magic, not any one fan

occurs when every fan is present and performing their duties in a certain order.

Similar to how a memory only occurs when numerous linked neurons fire in a particular pattern.

pattern.

One group of neurons can also encode different memories since the same cells have the ability to fire in a variety of distinct patterns.

This expands the brain's ability to store memories.

A cluster of cells that resemble seahorses can be found deep inside the center of the brain; this area was given the name "hippocampus" by scientists in the 18th century.

You might forget without your seahorse.

We owe a lot of what we know about memory to a well-known patient who was for years only identified by his initials, H.M.

When H.M. had an epileptic operation in 1953, the majority of his hippocampus was destroyed.

and during the rest of his life, he displayed a severe form of amnesia in which he was unable to create new memories of facts or experiences but was still able to recall everything he had already experienced.

prior to the operation.

This demonstrated to us that while the hippocampus is important for memory formation, it isn't the actual location of memory.

We store our recollections.

So how can events become recalled in the past?

We could create a kind of map showing which brain cells are active when the mouse experiences things if we looked inside a mouse's brain while it was in a maze.

[Mouse in a Maze].

In the future, we would observe the mouse's brain cells firing in the same patterns as they repeatedly played back the event in fast forward, backwards, and forwards, strengthening the connections between the cells.

Animals, including humans, consolidate new memories in this manner, which is referred to as consolidation.

to long-term archival.

A fragrance may cause the identical pattern of cell nerve firing to occur days or weeks later.

the mouse brain, a recall of the maze memories, similar to what the aroma of cinnamon may

Grandma memories for you.

However, the process through which the brain makes memories is not perfect.

Sometimes, replaying an imagined event in our minds might feel just as genuine.

experience.

When you imagine the sights, sounds, and scents of a crime scene from someone else's description, your brain functions similarly as when you were actually there.

The more times you mentally go over the event, the more genuine it seems to be.

Because of this, a detective can unintentionally plant a false report by asking leading questions.

In a witness, recollection.

Although humans have a good memory, we also forget a lot.

Although our brains also purposefully forget, some forgetting does occur naturally.

We can forget in at least three different ways.

The first is referred to as "passive oblivescence" (a word you will probably forget), which is what happens when a memory deteriorates with time.

This might occur as a result of the progressive deterioration of the connections between brain cells, or it could be that the memory is still present but you've lost the cues—sights, sounds, or smells—you need to recall it.

According to another theory, memories might conceivably endure a lifetime, but this is countered by the "interference" that occurs when the same neurons are used for many memories at the same time.

All of us eventually forget things in a slow-fading way.

Targeted forgetting, a different sort of forgetting, occurs as we sleep at night.

This is the time when we eliminate random, pointless facts from the day and get rid of stale memories.

For instance, if you believed that Earth was a flat disk supported by three elephants yesterday,

Your brain needs to get rid of one of these contradictory notions, hopefully the one about the elephants, since you just learnt that the Earth is round.

During specific stages of sleep, we remove unnecessary connections between cells and trim and prune them.

circuits for memory.

We all want we could forget things for various reasons, which is the third form of forgetting.

When someone deliberately suppresses negative memories, this is what happens.

Intentional forgetting helps us manage our emotions and concentrate on the tasks at hand in the here and now rather than becoming sidetracked by regrettable recollections from the past.

To maintain our sense of self, our level of confidence, our outlook on the future, or our ability to maintain connections with those who have wronged us, we might need to be driven to forget.

Although the specific mechanism of motivated forgetting is unknown, a portion of our brain appears to intervene and prevent the retrieval of the unsettling memory.

Therefore, even if information may still be in our brains somewhere, eventually we are unable to locate it.

Because forgetting is one of the most crucial things, our brains have a wide variety of forgetting mechanisms.

we do.

We are able to move past traumatic life events by forgetting them.

In fact, PTSD may just be a case of excessive memory loss.

Additionally, forgetting helps us get rid of clutter.

Imagine that your brain processes every sound, smell, and visual cue that it encounters on a daily basis.

day!

We would soon fill our neural networks with random, pointless information if our brains didn't remove the trash at night, as predicted by Sherlock Holmes.

We also wouldn't be able to update our mental models of the world and replace knowledge that is no longer accurate.

There are a few persons who NEVER forget anything, according to anecdotes found deep in the scientific literature.

They are so uncommon that they have a medical term for their forgetfulness called hyperthymesia.

Jill Price, an American lady now in her fifties, is the most well-known case.

Jill has a fairly flawless memory of her life up until the age of 14.

She recalls what she wore, what she ate for lunch, and important details of any previous date.

She included events that caught her interest and specific instances from her life.

Whether the events took place yesterday or decades ago, she narrates them in vivid detail as if they were a film reel that has been augmented with smells and feelings.

This may seem like a blessing, especially if you're in school, but Jill has spoken of being plagued by regrets and sad memories because, unlike the rest of us, she wasn't there.

can recall every decision she made as well as how it panned out.

You probably *want* to forget something, like that incredibly embarrassing incident from high school that always seems to occur at the worst possible time.

Can those undesirable memories be removed in some way?

In a House, MD episode, Dr. House used electroconvulsive therapy—controlled electric shocks—to treat a patient who was experiencing distressing memories.

brain.

Although not always the memories they desire to, those who have ECT do lose certain memories.

Our best tool still functions like a hammer when it comes to deleting memories in people, not

the scalpel.

It is no surprise that forgetting and remembering are both difficult cognitive processes.

a highly refined and mechanism.

Without the ability to recall and draw lessons from significant experiences, humans probably would not have persisted as a species.

But it appears that the capacity for forgetting is equally important, a fundamental ingredient of resolving

this enormous puzzle we call life.

Stay enquisitive!