How to keep your memories

Many of us really do not cope with the abundance of information, and this is primarily due to the fact that modern life does not contribute to the natural involuntary concentration of attention. In order to somehow make it easier for ourselves to remember, we use auxiliary tools: electronic organizers, mobile phones, diaries, stickers – we write everything down!

However, from the moment when technology begins to replace memory, we no longer “turn on” it consciously, we deprive it of daily training. So, on the one hand, we make life easier for ourselves, but on the other hand, we impoverish our capabilities. And yet the situation can be corrected, because the brain is a flexible, plastic organ. However, in order to learn how to cooperate productively with your memory, you need to know some of its features.

What is memory

Memory is a mental function that is responsible for the accumulation and structuring of experience. With its help, we capture, preserve and reproduce the traces of past experience – this is the basis of the process of cognition. Individual experience that accumulates in memory helps to navigate the world around, in relationships with people and the rules of behavior in society. Thanks to memory, we do not have to re-learn every day what has already happened in our lives – we can predict various situations and even look into the future.

“We are our memory,” says psychologist Natalya Korsakova. – It makes us ourselves, provides a sense of the continuity of being from birth to death. People are so hard on states when, for one reason or another, something falls out of memory, because the continuity, the integrity of the perception of the world and oneself is torn.

How memories are stored

There is no single center that registers, sorts, stores and issues information that we receive from the outside world. Nerve cells of the brain, neurons, starting from our birth, form a huge number of connections that record a variety of information.

Memory does not have a clear localization in the brain – it is responsible for the zones that are associated with other mental functions: perception, speech, emotions, thinking. “It is difficult to determine where the memories are displayed, physically stored. Perhaps because of the variety of memory types that are connected to the memorization process even in the simplest situations, ”explains the American psychologist Philip Zimbardo in his book Psychology and Life.

Three stages of the memorization process

sensory memory, it is also called “ultra-short”. All perceived information is transmitted to the brain through the five senses, and its trace is stored for several seconds. So, having heard a sound, we continue to hear it for about four seconds. During this time, it becomes clear how important this information is for us: as a result, it either ends up in short-term or long-term storage, or is erased and forgotten.

short term memory, or short-term, operational. This is the currently “conscious” information about past experiences that “pops up” from sensory or long-term memory. For a moment (no longer than 30 seconds), we begin to see, hear (“before our eyes”, “sound in our ears”) something that is no longer directly happening. If the information deserves attention, it is processed and transferred to long-term storage. If not, it is erased, and another one immediately takes its place.

Long term memory: it lasts for many hours, days or years and is associated with learning and personal experience. Its capacity and duration depend on how important the information we remember is for us.

Forgetting

Forgetting is a function of the psyche, which is just as important as memorization: we could not acquire new impressions, knowledge, if we did not forget the old ones. New information moves away from our field of attention and sends to the storage system what preceded it.

“However, you need to consider that the storage process is an active process,” says Philip Zimbardo. “New information, interacting with the entire amount of memory, changes attitudes and motives and thereby restructures all subsequent human behavior.”

“In a storage system, a memory trace creates associative links with other traces in terms of contiguity, similarity, and sound,” explains Natalya Korsakova. “Often it is difficult for us to remember something, not because we have forgotten, but because we cannot retrieve it from the “storage system”: the memory trace has been transformed under the influence of these factors, and we cannot recognize it.”

That is why it is impossible to remember, to learn something – for example, a foreign language – in a dream: the words will lie in the “store”, but we will not be able to refer to them consciously, purposefully. Memorization requires a certain level of conscious activity.

“Since forgetting is just as natural as remembering, you shouldn’t fight it,” says Natalya Korsakova. – In general, there is nothing superfluous in memory, so it is pointless to train it without any purpose – it is a waste of energy. We do not remember much or forget simply because we do not really need it. Therefore, it is very important to understand what we cannot remember and what we do not want to.”

Remember well

Each person has his own individual differences, which manifest themselves in a different pace, accuracy and strength of memorization. They are associated with the characteristics of nervous processes, the degree of their balance and mobility. However, if we need to learn something, to master new knowledge, everyone needs to organize this process so that the memory trace is more stable.

For example, in order to better remember foreign words, you need to not only read them, but also write them down, listen, speak out loud, correlate with a visual image. The more markers the memory trace is equipped with, the more likely it is that we will be able to restore it, activate it.

Or, to remember the name of a person we have just met, it is not enough just to look him in the face. It is necessary to concentrate on the pronunciation of the name, asking to repeat it again. At least three times mentally you need to repeat the name and correlate it with the appearance of a new acquaintance. This will be the twenty seconds that the brain needs to activate neural connections and information to move from operational to long-term memory.