“Revived experience is memory. Since it is the memory that enables us to live our lives over again, brings the past up to the present, it is one of the most wonderful aspects of our natures”.
Pyle,W ,H. (2006). The science of Human Nature. Memory. W.W. CHAPTERS
Even our most significant memories, the ones that form the foundation of our life story, are not perfectly recorded. They can shift or warp over time.
The whole purpose of memory is to preserve the past…So, have you ever asked why our memory is so unreliable? How human memory works? Or how exactly remembering works?
Well…Memories are not stored in one specific place.
Example: Performing at a recital.
Sensory information is processed to many different parts of the brain: The sound of the Cello (Auditory Cortex), the feeling of the strings in the fingers (Sensory Cortex), the face of a friend in the audience (Fusiform Gyrus), the pain of stage fright (Amygdala)…are parts all put together.
If someone is suffering from a loss, due to surgery, for example, the part of his brain that will be damaged is the Medial Temporal Lobe, which includes an important structure called “The Hippocampus”.
When you relive that specific moment later, the Medial Temporal Lobe combines those elements once again. In other words, a set of perceptions with the external world combined with a group of ideas form an experience. Therefore, reliving that experience again is how memory works.
How to improve our memories?
Some people have more memories than others, but I say: Mindful Meditation is the key. Meditation helps us work actively and healthily.
What features make us remember better than others?
The foundation of our strongest memories is exactly represented in these three elements:
1- Emotion: When having an emotional experience, the “Amygdala” (that is situated next to the “Hippocampus”) upgrades the “Hippocampus” and allows it to form a more detailed and stronger memory.
2- Place: The thing that most people are more consistent about is where they are. The place has a special strong role in memory.
3- Story: Our brains play much more attention to information, especially when it is a narration. The more you can associate things you want to remember with structures you already have in your mind, the easier they are going to be remembered.
Humans cannot remember every single detail of every experience. As a result, we tend to use pre-existing knowledge in order to fill in the gaps we have when remembering. We can boost the confidence in a false memory by confirming or by, at least, repeating it multiple times…
The future and the past are being somehow linked together. When you let your mind wander, you switch back and forth all the time remembering and imagining…That is, maybe, the reason why our memory is unreliable sometimes (despite the fact that our brain is a well-organized system).
Our mind is a time machine…The same machine that brings all those pieces together to relive the past, or that can bring some of those pieces with other pieces to stimulate possible futures.
To conclude, I advise everyone reading this to take care of the output that you receive from your surroundings and that you welcome into your mind…Enrich your mind with the enormous treasures this world has, live every moment as your best to let it be registered in your memory, and meditate daily to have a productive and healthy mind.
