The mystery of memory

Summary

At first sciences of memory taught us to distinguish short-term from long-term memory. Many things are recalling for a little time before being lost. What is not lost gets transferred into long-term memory, which can last almost for ever.

Remembering helps recover information from long-term memory, replace and keep it in “working memory”.There is a difference between procedural memory – remembering ‘how’ and declarative memory which is less stable.

Other distinctions like recognition versus recall. Recalling information is much more difficult than recognizing it. It is hard to recall more that 15 shown object, but also same people can recognize 10000 or more photos which was shown them one week ago.

Also there is photographic memory – snapshots associated with smells, touches or tastes from early childhood. Most of people lose the ability to remember it as they grow older.

The human brain contains some 100 billion nerve cells, each capable of making up to 100000 connections. Each time a new memory is made, a new pattern of connections is created, which stores new memory. To remember the name of a person the best way is to try to think about things that are relative to that person. In that case it is easy to retrieve missing name. Each of these features is stored in a different region of the brain.

All in all, neuroscientists trying to find out how all these different regions and brain processes relative together to give people coherent conscious experience.