Knowledge Paper: Memory
Matthew Felsted
Julie A. Roberts
English
Memory can be stored on any medium such as computer hard disks, books, in minds or in other digital and analogue devices. A simple music box can play a song easily by the exact placement of holes in the plate. The holes represent information needed to replicate the song. The pins striking off the ridges at the boundary of these holes pluck out each note. In Learn to Remember (O'Brien 24), he gives Plato's original theory. In it Plato states that memories are etched in the brain like "scratches of a pointed stick in wax", inevitably meaning new memories overwrite older memories. This brings to mind old record players and the needles that rub against the fine grooves in the vinyl discs to produce music.
Popular culture today often focuses on memory problems as a source of entertainment. In the movie Finding Nemo, a fish that has a 3 second memory, named Dora serves as an auxiliary point of humor. In Men in Black, the government conceals secrets of alien life by flashing away people’s memories with a hand held device. In the fantasy game universe of Assassin's Creed, a distant ancestor is imprisoned in a lab where scientists try to discover the whereabouts of a ‘holy grail’ by reading memories encoded in his DNA.
Memory is made powerful many times over when shared. If shared once then it is but a fleeting conversation, but if it is told again and again it may be recorded as a story. If significant, and true, it becomes history. It can also become an urban legend or folk tale that one day may become a myth.
The collective memory of western civilization draws upon the early fountains of ancient Greece. The land has passed down memories and histories of orators, poets, and philosophers. Preserved since times immemorial cultural wisdom personified as Gods and Goddesses are remembered even today. The Goddess of memory was named Mnemosyne. It is easy to see to see that mnemonic is derived from this name. A mnemonic device is a mental memory aid. Simonides of Ceos (5th-6th century B.C.) is called "The father of memory training" in Dominic O’Brien’s book Learn to Remember. He is credited with creating the locus memory technique. This memory technique uses a place that is already familiar and makes a mental journey past each landmark. Each main feature is associated with the key idea of the topic to remember. This technique is very much alive and practiced nearly two and a half millennia later.
To the ancient Greeks, memory was an honor. An early orator, Homer, wrote the Iliad, a story with 16,000 verses. Entertainers and orators of the era would recount the Iliad over several nights around a fire. Such speeches inspired the invention of memory techniques that we use today.
Researchers have studied the phenomenon of memory and consciousness by looking in towards the mind. If the mind is the product of the brain and nervous system, then memory is too. Early research has searched for chemical traces in specific areas for the physical basis of stored memories. These hypothetical traces are called engrams. Other searches into the physical location and form have focused on the information processing cells of the brain known as neurons. It is believed that the brain modifies its own structure at the microscopic scale by forming new connections and pruning existing connections. Neurons have an axon that stretches out to its neighbor neurons being long and narrow it carriers its message with a electrochemical impulses called action potentials. The axon carries neural transmitters to the gap between its end branches to the synapses where neural transmitters such as dopamine and serotonin inhibit or excite surrounding neurons. Once in the synapse the neurotransmitters bind to the receptors located on the dendrites of the next neuron. The signal is processed and a response is computed and relayed down its own axon to repeat the process until it is instructed to inhibit. Through repeated signaling connections are reinforced; the structure of the brain changes. This is believed to be the cause of learning.
Human memory is consolidated to different regions of the brain. Semantic memory is stored in the cerebrum. The cerebrum contains the major lobes of the brain. Some major components of the brain are the frontal lobe, occipital lobe, corpus callosum, temporal lobe, and cerebellum. The frontal lobe is involved with higher reasoning and planning. The occipital lobe is located at the back of the brain and processed visual information relayed from the eyes and retina via the optic nerve. The corpus callosum bridges the two hemispheres of the brain. It is the biggest link and bottle neck for the two hemispheres.
Memory is studied in psychology. Of memory there are three main types understood in this subject. These forms are sensory, episodic, procedural, and semantic. Sensory memory is the shortest and is formed from incoming sensory stimuli. The easiest way to understand sensory memory is to close your eyes. As soon as you close your eyes you can still see what your eyes saw when they are open but it’s quickly forgotten. Episodic memory is the most natural and instinctive form of memory. It includes visual, audio, smell, tactile, and taste. Procedural is motor skills memory. Learning to ride a bicycle and memorizing the coordination of muscles and balance as a skill is stored as a procedural memory. These memories are stored in the region of the human brain known as the cerebellum, it sits just below the occipital lobe. The last major classification of memory is semantic. Semantic memory includes memory of abstract patterns and learned knowledge. The memory of words and sentences and how to comprehend their meaning is semantic memory.
Semantic memory is the part of memory that is most easily and readily transferred. Knowledge that can be communicated and written down is stored in the mind by this type of memory. Language is the expression of semantic memory. Dividing language into its component parts of words reveals each unit is associated with each other. The act of defining a word gives associated words.
So now that we know a little more about memory, how can we strengthen it? Superior memory comes from a healthy mind. A superior mind relies on a healthy body. Circulation increases blood flow to deliver glucose to the brain. A routine of daily exercise optimizes the lung capacity for oxygen saturation within the bloodstream. Oxygen rich blood delivers nutrients for the mind to concentrate.
Nutrition also plays an important role in developing and retrieving memories. Omega 3 fatty acids extracted from fish and similar substitutes from flaxseed improve heart health and aids in circulation and is believed to benefit the mind. Vitamin B6 is required to build neurotransmitters such as serotonin and norepinephine. It is also used for myelin sheath formation, the encapsulating surface of axons, which is believed to increase the speed of communication between brain cells.
But what’s the easy way? Natural memory can be rapidly improved with a few simple mnemonic devices. Improving your memory is surprisingly easy with the help of the master’s toolkit. Each tool relies on imagination, visualization, or association. Inside our toolbox we will find the methods of pegging, loci, story telling, and more.
Pegging is the process of creating a list of associations to a template. Given the list of ten words how many can you remember asked 15 minutes after viewing it for 1 minute? The list is: ham, socks, house, wood, arrow, fire, clouds, metal, melting, and feather. With pegging you use a previously memorized list of easy terms and imagine some kind of association. Usually the process of doing this makes memorizing it much simpler. Try it with these peg words: 1. Bun, 2. Shoe, 3. Tree, 4. Door, 5. Beehive, 6. Sticks, 7. Heaven, 8. Gate, 9. Time, and 10. Hen. For the first item, you could imagine ham being placed in the bun for a meal. For the second, you can imagine socks go on feet for the shoe, etc.
Other methods of memory improvement include rote repetition and training with scientifically designed memory training games, such as the Dual N-back task. The loci method uses familiar locations in memory and requires you to mentally associate each landmark
Memory is what keeps us whole. All of identity and personality relies on memory. Learning and education require memory. With this new focus on memory see if you can find ways to challenge yourself to improve your own.
Bibliography
Julie A. Roberts
English
Memory can be stored on any medium such as computer hard disks, books, in minds or in other digital and analogue devices. A simple music box can play a song easily by the exact placement of holes in the plate. The holes represent information needed to replicate the song. The pins striking off the ridges at the boundary of these holes pluck out each note. In Learn to Remember (O'Brien 24), he gives Plato's original theory. In it Plato states that memories are etched in the brain like "scratches of a pointed stick in wax", inevitably meaning new memories overwrite older memories. This brings to mind old record players and the needles that rub against the fine grooves in the vinyl discs to produce music.
Popular culture today often focuses on memory problems as a source of entertainment. In the movie Finding Nemo, a fish that has a 3 second memory, named Dora serves as an auxiliary point of humor. In Men in Black, the government conceals secrets of alien life by flashing away people’s memories with a hand held device. In the fantasy game universe of Assassin's Creed, a distant ancestor is imprisoned in a lab where scientists try to discover the whereabouts of a ‘holy grail’ by reading memories encoded in his DNA.
Memory is made powerful many times over when shared. If shared once then it is but a fleeting conversation, but if it is told again and again it may be recorded as a story. If significant, and true, it becomes history. It can also become an urban legend or folk tale that one day may become a myth.
The collective memory of western civilization draws upon the early fountains of ancient Greece. The land has passed down memories and histories of orators, poets, and philosophers. Preserved since times immemorial cultural wisdom personified as Gods and Goddesses are remembered even today. The Goddess of memory was named Mnemosyne. It is easy to see to see that mnemonic is derived from this name. A mnemonic device is a mental memory aid. Simonides of Ceos (5th-6th century B.C.) is called "The father of memory training" in Dominic O’Brien’s book Learn to Remember. He is credited with creating the locus memory technique. This memory technique uses a place that is already familiar and makes a mental journey past each landmark. Each main feature is associated with the key idea of the topic to remember. This technique is very much alive and practiced nearly two and a half millennia later.
To the ancient Greeks, memory was an honor. An early orator, Homer, wrote the Iliad, a story with 16,000 verses. Entertainers and orators of the era would recount the Iliad over several nights around a fire. Such speeches inspired the invention of memory techniques that we use today.
Researchers have studied the phenomenon of memory and consciousness by looking in towards the mind. If the mind is the product of the brain and nervous system, then memory is too. Early research has searched for chemical traces in specific areas for the physical basis of stored memories. These hypothetical traces are called engrams. Other searches into the physical location and form have focused on the information processing cells of the brain known as neurons. It is believed that the brain modifies its own structure at the microscopic scale by forming new connections and pruning existing connections. Neurons have an axon that stretches out to its neighbor neurons being long and narrow it carriers its message with a electrochemical impulses called action potentials. The axon carries neural transmitters to the gap between its end branches to the synapses where neural transmitters such as dopamine and serotonin inhibit or excite surrounding neurons. Once in the synapse the neurotransmitters bind to the receptors located on the dendrites of the next neuron. The signal is processed and a response is computed and relayed down its own axon to repeat the process until it is instructed to inhibit. Through repeated signaling connections are reinforced; the structure of the brain changes. This is believed to be the cause of learning.
Human memory is consolidated to different regions of the brain. Semantic memory is stored in the cerebrum. The cerebrum contains the major lobes of the brain. Some major components of the brain are the frontal lobe, occipital lobe, corpus callosum, temporal lobe, and cerebellum. The frontal lobe is involved with higher reasoning and planning. The occipital lobe is located at the back of the brain and processed visual information relayed from the eyes and retina via the optic nerve. The corpus callosum bridges the two hemispheres of the brain. It is the biggest link and bottle neck for the two hemispheres.
Memory is studied in psychology. Of memory there are three main types understood in this subject. These forms are sensory, episodic, procedural, and semantic. Sensory memory is the shortest and is formed from incoming sensory stimuli. The easiest way to understand sensory memory is to close your eyes. As soon as you close your eyes you can still see what your eyes saw when they are open but it’s quickly forgotten. Episodic memory is the most natural and instinctive form of memory. It includes visual, audio, smell, tactile, and taste. Procedural is motor skills memory. Learning to ride a bicycle and memorizing the coordination of muscles and balance as a skill is stored as a procedural memory. These memories are stored in the region of the human brain known as the cerebellum, it sits just below the occipital lobe. The last major classification of memory is semantic. Semantic memory includes memory of abstract patterns and learned knowledge. The memory of words and sentences and how to comprehend their meaning is semantic memory.
Semantic memory is the part of memory that is most easily and readily transferred. Knowledge that can be communicated and written down is stored in the mind by this type of memory. Language is the expression of semantic memory. Dividing language into its component parts of words reveals each unit is associated with each other. The act of defining a word gives associated words.
So now that we know a little more about memory, how can we strengthen it? Superior memory comes from a healthy mind. A superior mind relies on a healthy body. Circulation increases blood flow to deliver glucose to the brain. A routine of daily exercise optimizes the lung capacity for oxygen saturation within the bloodstream. Oxygen rich blood delivers nutrients for the mind to concentrate.
Nutrition also plays an important role in developing and retrieving memories. Omega 3 fatty acids extracted from fish and similar substitutes from flaxseed improve heart health and aids in circulation and is believed to benefit the mind. Vitamin B6 is required to build neurotransmitters such as serotonin and norepinephine. It is also used for myelin sheath formation, the encapsulating surface of axons, which is believed to increase the speed of communication between brain cells.
But what’s the easy way? Natural memory can be rapidly improved with a few simple mnemonic devices. Improving your memory is surprisingly easy with the help of the master’s toolkit. Each tool relies on imagination, visualization, or association. Inside our toolbox we will find the methods of pegging, loci, story telling, and more.
Pegging is the process of creating a list of associations to a template. Given the list of ten words how many can you remember asked 15 minutes after viewing it for 1 minute? The list is: ham, socks, house, wood, arrow, fire, clouds, metal, melting, and feather. With pegging you use a previously memorized list of easy terms and imagine some kind of association. Usually the process of doing this makes memorizing it much simpler. Try it with these peg words: 1. Bun, 2. Shoe, 3. Tree, 4. Door, 5. Beehive, 6. Sticks, 7. Heaven, 8. Gate, 9. Time, and 10. Hen. For the first item, you could imagine ham being placed in the bun for a meal. For the second, you can imagine socks go on feet for the shoe, etc.
Other methods of memory improvement include rote repetition and training with scientifically designed memory training games, such as the Dual N-back task. The loci method uses familiar locations in memory and requires you to mentally associate each landmark
Memory is what keeps us whole. All of identity and personality relies on memory. Learning and education require memory. With this new focus on memory see if you can find ways to challenge yourself to improve your own.
Bibliography
- O’Brien, Dominic. Learn to Remember. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2000.
- Psychology website for types of learning and knowledge, April 2011. http://www.washington.edu/doit/TeamN/types.html
- Natural Standard, The Authority of Integrative Medicines, April 2011. http://www.bing.com/health/article/naturalstandard-124704/Vitamin-B6?q=vitamin+b6