The other day I turned on the TV and on screen was Michael Jackson singing his famous song from 1991, 'Remember the time.....' Incidentally, it is also a widely used phrase when two friends meet after a long time and try to match each other's memory of the time spent together. One might remember with a great detail, while the other person's memory might not be as vivid. So why does this happen?Well, it's not just you and me who are puzzled. Humans as such have been trying to understand memory since time immemorial. It is interesting because memory is an important part of what makes us humans and yet it is one of the most elusive and misunderstood human attributes.
What we do know, however, is that memory is the process, by which we encode, store and retrieve information. Actually, everything we do depends on our memory and what we learn becomes our memory, provided we remember it. Memory enables us to adapt and learn from past experiences and also help us build relationships. It's also the power to recall previously learned skills, facts, experiences, impressions or habits. It is the hard disk inside our head that stores everything and allows instant recall too.
Memory as we know is the sum total of what we remember. We still have to figure out what exactly memory is, how it works and why it sometimes goes wrong. It plays trick on us sometimes.
Don't be surprised. We all have experienced that memories erode with age. We remember faces but not the names. We might remember incidents but not the place or occasion it occurred. My father, at 89, often jokes about his memory playing tricks on him when he is having one of those "senior moments." Our memory system often falters and we have false memory, because we become influenced by suggestions and misinformation from others close to us. This happens when there is a gap in memory and we don't remember details. Instead of saying, 'I don't know' our brain becomes smart and fills that gap with false memories. I am sure this has happened to you as well.
There is another type of trick memory plays on us. Remember the time when you had a tune that kept playing in your head, even when you didn't want to hear it? That happens to me quite a bit. This is called earworm and happens when your brain's memory gets stuck. You only know the first few lines of the catchy new song you recently heard. Your brain starts playing it, but it does not know all of the song. So it keeps repeatedly playing the same part it knows over and over and you say to your friend, "For some reason I am stuck with this song today" and you two just laugh it off.
So you see there is a problem with our memory because it doesn't always work through clear lines of communications. In the process of organizing and storing information, brain often puts similar things together. This makes it easier for us to recall similar things quickly. Imagine someone yelling, 'fire!' and different images come to your mind: Water, fire extinguisher, run, panic, save yourself, help others, get your baby to safe place and so on. The problem here is this system can be easily manipulated by just twisting certain stimulus. You can trick your brain into thinking it is remembering something that didn't happen so long as it is something that could have happened. Yes, memories are truly amazing. Some people marvel at remembering so much from the past.
Most of us remember incidents far in the past. My earliest memory is a vague recollection of myself (when I was about four years old) riding on the back seat of a tricycle with my brother, a pleasant memory. But did I really remember it? In a recent research on authenticity of childhood memories, scientists have found that human memory is incredibly fragile and inventive, and easily creates false memories of our past, some of which have long-term effects on us.
Regardless of whether it was my memory or something that my memory filled up from numerous suggestions of my parents, it's a positive memory for me. Scientists suggest that positive memories remain in mind more vividly, and negative memories fade with time. I know most of you are thinking, "So how do we know which ones are real?" Memory experts believe it is difficult to differentiate between the real and what our memory fills up.
Remembering events from our past usually kicks off between ages three and four. Memories are fleeting and vague. Some scientists believe that before the age of three our brain is not developed enough to retain memories; others connect memory with language development. Once we start talking we can shape events into a story that can be retold and remembered. After age seven, our memories become a continuous narrative.
Memories can be incredibly powerful. It is like a web woven from sounds, smells, tastes, touches and sights, according to scientists. Hence memories can uplift and inspire or cause lifelong phobias, behavioral problems and even depression.
While we believe our memory works like a video camera, carefully preserving events exactly as they occur, in reality it is much more fragile, inaccurate and more susceptible to influence than we would like to believe. Often our brain becomes lazy and takes shortcuts. While trying to solve a problem or make a decision, your mind often falls back on rules of thumb, mental shortcuts, or solutions that have worked well in the past. The other thing is that our brain also likes to play the blame game. When something bad happens, it is only natural that we look for an underlying cause to blame. The problem is, often the blame is placed on the wrong person, event, or object and frequently, reality gets distorted in order to protect our self-esteem.
Finally, our brain is capable of remarkable things: from remembering a conversation with a dear friend to solving complex mathematical problems. Then again, as you've seen, it isn't perfect and we forget often. Sometimes it forgets important details like time of an important meeting. It's natural for us to forget things like someone's name or where we put the keys or TV remote or phone sometimes. Scientists believe some memory loss is good for us. Imagine if we did not forget, we would go crazy because of too much information. As usual we have to forget some to store and remember more information. Don't you think so?
The author is an educationist and writer of several children's books
usha@pokharel.net
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