When we remember something, we’re not withdrawing from a “memory bank.” There is no memory bank. Long-term memories don’t reside in one particular neighborhood in your brain. Memory is stored throughout your brain in the pattern of neural activity that was stimulated when the event or information was first experienced. Your memory of last night’s dinner requires the activation of the same constellation of disparate neurons that perceived, paid attention to, and processed your initial experience of that meal.
Now, when some piece of the memory from last night’s dinner is activated— someone asks you if you’ve ever eaten at Trattoria Il Panino in their neighborhood-the question triggers the activation of the connected network and you remember much, perhaps even all, about that time you ate there. The weather was lovely, so my friend Tiff and I walked there. We had a conversational Italian lesson over dinner with John. I ate mushroom risotto. Delizioso! Memories physically exist in your head through a neural network of associations.
Whenever we remember something, we are reactivating the various elements of the information we experienced, woven together as a single unit. Functional MRI brain imaging studies have glimpsed the act of retrieving a memory. When a person is asked to remember something while in an MRI scanner, we can literally see this person “searching his or her brain” for the information to be recalled. At first, brain activity flits around, lighting up all over the place. But when the pattern of activity in the brain matches the pattern of activity that occurred when the person first learned the information, it stabilizes there. And remarkably, it is then that the person will say, “I remember it!”
Similarly, the pattern of activation seen on a brain scan while someone is recalling a particular photograph is almost identical to the pattern of activation created when that person is physically looking at that photograph. Imagine Mickey Mouse. Got him? You “looked” inside your brain, and you can now “see” Mickey Mouse. The parts of your brain that are now activated include the same neurons in your visual cortex that would be activated if you were actually looking at a picture of Mickey Mouse. When imagining an image from memory, your brain is activated as if the image were right in front of you. To recall what you experienced or learned, your brain reactivates the elements of what you perceived and paid attention to in the first place.
Additionally, activating the memory of Mickey’s image in your visual cortex might cause you to also remember other aspects of Mickey, say, the sound of his voice. So remembering Mickey Mouse might include what he looks like and what he sounds like. Activation of neurons in the visual cortex (what Mickey looks like) can trigger the activation of linked neurons that are distributed throughout the brain, which in this example includes neurons located in the auditory cortex (what Mickey sounds like). You can see and hear him.
But retrieval isn’t like selecting an item on a DVD menu or a YouTube channel and pressing PLAY. We don’t read our memories like a book or play them like a movie. Visual memory isn’t like looking through your smartphone photo library, a collection of photos that can be zoomed in on and out of. You’re not viewing a photograph. Remembering is an associative scavenger hunt, a reconstruction job that involves the activation of many disparate but connected parts of the brain. We remember memories; we don’t replay them. Retrieval of a memory happens when one part of the memory is stimulated, triggering activation of the linked memory circuit.
Your memory isn’t a video camera, recording a constant stream of every sight and sound you’re exposed to. You can only capture and retain what you pay attention to. And since you can’t pay attention to everything, you’ll be able to remember some aspects of what is happening before you but not oth-ers. Think back to that first evening of summer on the beach.
Think about the vast amount of information that your senses are exposed to in any given day. If you’re awake for sixteen hours today, your senses are open for business without a break for 57,600 seconds. That’s a lot of data. But you simply can’t and won’t remember most of what was available to your eyes, ears, nose, and brain today.
The number one reason for forgetting what you just said, a person’s name, where you put your phone, and whether you already drove over a really big bridge is lack of attention. You can’t later remember what is right in front of you if you don’t pay attention to it. For example, if you don’t notice where you put your glasses, you can’t form a memory of where you put them. Later, when you’re frustrated, unable to find them, you’re not experiencing a true memory failure. You haven’t forgotten anything, because the memory was never formed. Your glasses are missing because of a lack of attention (they’re usually on my head!).
So if we want to remember something, we first have to pay attention to it. Unfortunately, this isn’t so simple. Even if we didn’t live in such a highly distractible time, paying attention isn’t easy for our brains. In driving over the Sagamore Bridge, for example, I might have been distracted by a conversation or some delicious daydream, my attention diverted.
More likely, I didn’t register driving over the bridge because that detail wasn’t particularly important to me. It was a routine experience. I’ve driven over that bridge hundreds of times. As it is with brushing our teeth, taking a shower, getting dressed, drinking our morning coffee, and commuting in the evening – because these experiences are essentially the same day-to-day, we don’t pay attention to them. And because we don’t pay attention to them, we don’t remember them. We tend to pay attention to-and therefore remember-what we find interesting, meaningful, new, surprising, significant, emotional, and consequential. Our brains capture those details. We ignore, and therefore forget, the rest.
Source – Remember: The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting by Lisa Genova
Goodreads – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54895704-remember
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