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Friday, March 20, 2009

Storing memories

Our memory system is built so that we are likey to remember what is most important to us. In our everyday lives, memory is a natural in by product of the manner in which we think about an episode. Different people retain or recollect very different aspects of their everyday environment.

Sometimes we want to remember facts that are dificult to learn for us. Luckyly there are several techniques that can help us improve the chance of remember what we desire to;a popular one consits in relate and integrate the new information with knowledge we already have.

Fragments of our experiences are constructed by an "encoding process"; a procedure for transforming something a persons sees, hears, thinks and feel into a memory. This process resides in the area of the brain that is in charge of constructing the fragments of out past experiences.

One of the problems with this mechanism is that encoding and remembering are virtually inseparable. The close relationship between them can cause dificulties in our everyday life. The problem is that we remember only what we have encoded and what we enconde depends on our experiences knowledge and needs.

When perforimg the retrieval and encoding of a certain memory the conditions are not always similar. Nevetheless when we recall this particular memory the subjective perception, such as: present thoughts, emotional state and corporal posture present at the moment of encoding are usually reinstantiated at recall time. This mechanim make ourselvs more consistent given that subjetivity does not affect the interpretation of the stored facts.

Memory is part of the brains's attempt to impose ordern in our environment.

5 comments:

justAnotherGeekgirl said...

"...when we remember we remember only what was forgotten. Each time we remember we remember forgetting."
...

Then Lady MENG-PO gives you the Tea of Forgetfulness, which erases your memory and ensures that you completely forget all the punishments you've just been suffering. There is a very good reason for this, but we don't know what it is.
(chinese stories)

Mariana Soffer said...

I loved it, guess there is nothing I can say that even compares to this. But I am gonna state my mediocre ideas anyway

1.I can do a parallel with the idea that since we are born we start deteriorating, and eventually we die.

2.Poetry, wisdom and magic

justAnotherGeekgirl said...

1. oh...deteriorating? let's think about butterflies!!!!!!!!!
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly )

Mariana Soffer said...

What am I waiting for? Butterflies, mostly. Why butterflies? Because I find a peculiar reassurance in their fluttering. Spring out of winter, the natural order of things. The seasons turn and the memories churn. Inside here, inside.

If I listen carefully, I can hear the butterfly’s wings trembling against the thin glass.

justAnotherGeekgirl said...

thats beautiful :)
and...
some of them just have a 24 hs life!!