Remember : the science of memory and art of forgetting by Lisa Genova

Debjeet Das

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Apr 9, 2021

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Making memories 101

• memory is quite economical, our brain is evolved to remember what is meaningful
• effective remembering requires forgetting
• Attention is essential for creating a memory for anything
• creating a memory takes place in 4 step

1. encoding-your brain captures sound,information,sights etc and creates meaning of what you perceive and paid attention to and translates into neurological language.
2. consolidation- your brain links all previously unrelated collection of neural activity in single pattern
3. storage- this pattern of activity is maintained over time through persistent and structural changes in neurons
4. retrieval — through activation of these connections ,revisits,recall you recognize what you learned and experienced

• You have to put the information in your brain, you have to weave the information together, you have to store that woven information via stable changes in your brain and then you have to fetch the woven information when you want to access it.
• The Hippocampus, in middle part of brain- is essential for memory consolidation . It binds your memories.It links all separate pieces of information and knit them into a retrievable unit of associated data. If your hippocampus is damaged, your ability to create new memories will be impaired.
• The formation of memory can be retrieved tomorrow, next week etc requires a series of molecular events that take time. During that time, if something intereferes with processing of nascent memory in hippocampus, memory can be degraded and lost.
• Any new information from today that you perceive and attend to , that you find interesting, special, surprising etc will be processed by your hippocampus for consolidation into memory. It continues to repeatedly activate the part involved in what is to be remembered until those pat of brain become stable, connected pattern of activity, essentially wired together.
• Once memory is made, they dont reside here. They are distributed throughout parts of brain that registered the initial experience.
• Long term memory dont reside in one particular neighborhood of your brain.memories physically exist in your head through neural network of associations.Whenever we are remembering , we are reactivating various elements of information we experienced , woven together as single unit.
• 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 the first place.

Pay attention

• If we want to remember something , we need to notice what is going on . Noticing requires 2 things — perception(seeing, hearing and smelling) and attention.
• You can only capture and retain what you pay attention to.
• hippocampus cant conssolidate any sensory information into lasting memory without neural input of attention
• repition definitely strengthens memory , but first you have to create a memory to strengthen and without attention , that doesnt happen.
• paying attention requires conscious effort. your default brain is not attentive. You are deviated to daydreaming, self-talk, repetitive thinking, you have to turn your brain on, wake up, become consciously aware and pay attention.
• Getting enough sleep , meditating and exercise can enhance your ability to pay attention.
• In the Moment
• working memory holds what you are paying attention to right now. It is the memory for the present moment. It is limited and short lived .
• Information cant be held in working memory for long . You can hold your visual information or audio information for 15–30 sec and then contents are displaced by next piece of incoming information. The next piece of data enters your working memory and it elbows out whatever was in there.
• you can sustain the same information longer in your working memory by repeating it and if you repeat in enough times , memory will be consolidated
• In addition to short life span, working memory doesn’t accomodate lots of stuff. We can only remember 7+-2 things for 15–30 sec in working memory.
• we held information by adding some rhythm or breaking information like 12062007 will be remembered better in form 12/06/2007
• Though visual cues and association have profound effects on consolidation and retrieval of long term memories, they dont come into play in working memory.
• The more syllables a word, sentence or list has, the more difficult it will be to remember in woring memory.
• details available in present moment that capture your attention will be sent from working memory and be sent to your hippocampus. There they are consolidated into a long term memory.
• Muscle memory
• It can be enhanced by repetition and focused practice- like swimming,any games, driving, brushing teeth, typing or learning new things etc.
• it is different of declarative memory- declarative memory are associated with memory of remembering. Retrieval of declarative memory involves the conscious recall of previously learned information and previously lived information.
• muscle memory is different. This is your memory of motor skills and procedure, the choreography of how to do stuff.Once learned , the steps are retrieved instantly, effortlessly and unconsciously . You are utterly unaware of these memories while remembering them.
• As the sequence of physical step is practiced , it is translated into connected pattern of neural activity. As you continued to learn the skill, another part of brain called cerebellum provides additional feedback. Practiced skill becomes more stable and consistent.

Your brains wikipedia

• semantic memory-the knowledge you have learned ,the facts you know about your life and world. And you can recall this information without remembering the details of learning.
• Memories for what happened , for information that is attached to where and when are called episodic.It is personal and all about past.
• spacing effect- rehearsing of memory if spaced out helps in better consolidation of memory. It also gives you opportunity to self test , which dramatically strenghtens the circuitry of this memory.
• to better learn new data, not only do you want to repeatedly expose your brain to the data you want to acquire but also want to repeatedly retrieve this new data from the brain. Repeated testing beats repeated passive reading
• Meaning matters when it comes to creating and recalling any kind of memory.
• your brain isnt interested in knowing what is boring or unimportant. If you want to know more stuff, attach meaning to it.
• If you attach visual and spatial imagery with something you are trying to memorize , then an incredibly powerful neural connection is built for recalling the information you want to remember.
• memory palace method-you are tapping into innate super power of visual and spatial imagery to associate items to be memorized with physical locations.
• regular use of these tools- repetition, spaced learning, self testing,meaning and visual and spatial imagery- will no doubt strengthen your semantic memory, but you will be able to remember more stuff.

What happened

• brains are phenomenal at remembering what is meaningful, what is emotionl and what surprises us.
• life events infused with emotions are what we tend to remember long terms- triumphs, failures, falling in love etc.
• emotions , surprise and meaning helps you in remembering better. Routine events are never emotional or surprising.
• If you experience something highly unexpected and exceptionally emotional, you might create a flashbulb memory. Flashbulbs are episodic memory that are resistant to fading and can be easily recalled later.
• in order to enhance episodic memory

1. get out of your routine
2. get off your device and look up
3. Feel it- emotional experience are better remembered than neural ones
4. repetition-it makes your memory stronger
5. keep a journal-information you record can serve as cues for triggering recollection of whatever else happened today.

Your memories are wrong

• For every step in memory processing — encoding, consolidation,storage and retrieval- your memory for what happened is vulnerable to editing and inaccuracies
• nascent memories are highly susceptible to influence and creative editing — when these memories are being consolidated, before they are committed to long term memory.
• once stored , memories for what happened still arent safe from alteration. Left alone for too long , memories can decay with passage of time.
• when we retrieve a memory of something that happened, we are reconstructing the story, not playing the videotape.
• When we recall what happened, we typically fetch only some of the detail we stored. We invent new inormation to fill in gaps in our memories so that narrative feels more complete or pleasing.
• our opinions and emotions today color what we remember from what happened last year.
• while recalling, any edits made is saved to neural circuitry, we overwrite the original information and this updated information is remembered.
• because episodic memory is vulnerable to outside influences- false information, opinion, bias deforms the real memory.
• writing down allows you to rehearse and therefore strengthens the memory.

tip of tongue

• you want to retrieve the phrase or incident but you cannot recall on demand. The blocked word is not forgotten. It is stored somewhere in brain . But you cant produce it.

Prospective memory

• it is the memory for what you need to do later. Brains to do list.
• marketing company takes advantage of your prospective memory by automatic subscription which you foget to unsubscribe.
• This is unreliable and challenging for people of all ages.
• it is not enough to create to do list- you have to check them- you want to extenalize the brains calender, make a habit of entering and checking your calender in smartphone or computer.
• Be specific about your plan.
• forgetting
• it is important . It is advantageous to get rid of any unnecessary, irrelevant and interfering event . sometimes we need to forget one thing in order to pay attention to others, so forgetting helps in facilitating memory.
• unless you actively do something to remember some piece of information, your brain will automatically forget it.
• one way of intrntionally forgetting is not to pay attention in first place
• another method of forgetting is ask the person to continue to revisit the memory with the intention of introducing changes.

aging

• memory capability doesnt decrease as we age. But your execution of what you know how to do, might not be what it used to be.
• processing memory decreases we age . Your ability to sustain information decrease as we age.
• put it in context
• our ability to remember depends on the context. Memory retrieval is far easier when the context of recall matches the context of present .
• Mismatch condition impair recall
• context both internal and external become part of memory. and its activation serve to trigger te retrieval part.
• relentless, unmanaged stress is toxic for your body and brain.
• acute stress response is your fight or flight. It enhances your senses and ability to focus while inhibiting your ability to think, so you can respond straightaway without taking time to weigh the pros and cons.
• if we are considering a single, temporary stressful event , then stress improves memory formation.
• chronic stress impair your ability to retrieve memories that are already stored. It inhibits your prefrontal cortex and impairing your ability to think. If you are under constant stress, you will start losing neurons in your hippocampus. fewer neurons available to consolidate memories, which means your ability to create new memories will be impaired.
• through yoga, meditation, exercise, healthy diet ,mindfulness, gratitude and compassion we train ourself to be in less stress

sleep

• it is vital to your health, survival and optimal functioning
• if you dont sleep enough , your ability to concentrate is going to be sluggish.
• sleep helps consolidate new memories and insufficient sleep interferes with consolidation.
• the amount of replay that occurs during consolidation process while you snooze correlates with amount of memory you will be able to recall after you wake up.
• sleep is helpful for all muscle memory skills. It facilitates skill mastery
• your hippocampus doesnt have infinite storage capacity. so deep sleep helps free up some much needed space for consolidating new stuff.
• Naps help you retain what you have already learned and they make room for what you are going to learn

Memory paradox

• our brain is not designed to retain what is routine or predictable

conclusion

• For better memory

1. pay attention
2. see it- involving mental picture enhances memory
3. make it meaningful
4. use your imagination- people with best memories have the best imagination.
5. learning by doing- you learn better if you do the stuff than observing others
6. look for drama- emotionally charged event looks to be consolidated better- success,humiliation,failiures, wedding etc.
7. mix it up- sameness is kiss of death to memory- learn new thing, visit new places etc
8. repitition strenghthens memor
9. writing or maintaining journal
10. cues- the right cues can do wonders in remembering . It can be anything that stick to your mind
11. smell- while learning , good smell helps is actiating olfactory bulb and improves memory
12. Be positive
13. externalize your memory- take aid of diary,sticky notes, reminder app etc
14. context matters- right context helps in remembering better.
15. chill out- stress impairs memory.takehelp of yoga, meditation,exercise and mindfulness
16. get enough sleep-it is important for locking long term memory.