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Wednesday, January 28, 2009
1:10 AM
(.beware..tons of text..)got bored posting the technical and wordy texts...here are some youtube videos!! =) **scary but..memories seem to be more than just pockets of info of yr life. they r so unique that they form me. belong to me. if i pass u my heart. or the final archive obj. will u feed n live on my memory?** i feel really sad for him **the memory is such an impt part of our life. time.** ** the heart. the heart.** ________________________________________________________________ *insert image* hey! searched --> how human memory works <-- and these r d online findings. (summarized as much to my understanding ^^) part 1 : how human memory works ________________________________________________________________ your baby's first cry...the taste of your grandmother's molasses cookies... the scent of an ocean breeze.. these are memories that make up the ongoing experience of your life -- they provide you with a sense of self. they make you feel comfortable with familiar people and surroundings, tie your past with your present, and provide a framework for the future. it's our collective set of memories -- our "memory" as a whole -- that makes us who we are. memory isn't a thing like bad eyes or a good head of hair. memory doesn't exist like how your body exists -- it's not a "thing" you can touch. it's a concept that refers to the process of remembering. in the past, experts describe memory as a tiny filing cabinet full of individual's memory folders. or memory as a neural supercomputer wedged under the human scalp. but today, experts believe that memory is far more complex and elusive -- it's located not in one particular place in the brain but is instead a brain-wide process. memory is a result of an incredibly complex constructive power -- one that each of us possesses -- that reassembled disparate memory impressions from a web-like pattern of cells scattered throughout the brain. your "memory" is made up of a group of systems that have different roles in creating, storing, and recalling your memories, working together perfectly to provide cohesive thought. if you think of an object -- say, a pen -- your brain retrieves the object's name, its shape, its function, the sound when it scratches across the page. each part of the memory of a "pen" comes from different regions of the brain. the entire image of "pen" is then reconstructed. yet you're never aware of these separate mental experiences, nor that they're coming from different parts of your brain. because they all work together so well. experts say there's no distinction between how you remember and how you think. scientists still don't fully understand exactly how you remember or what occurs during recall. search for how the brain organizes memories and where they're stored is a never-ending quest for decades. -- the process of memory begins with encoding, proceeds to storage, and eventually, retrieval. http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-memory.htm ________________________________________________________________ part 2 : memory encoding ________________________________________________________________ encoding is the first step in creating a memory. it's a biological phenomenon, rooted in the senses, that begins with perception. for example, the memory of yr 1st love. your visual system registers physical features, like color of eyes and hair. your auditory system picks up the sound of their laugh. you probably notice their scent or felt the touch of their hand. these separate sensations travel to part of your brain called the hippocampus, which integrated these perceptions as they were occurring into one single experience -- your experience of that specific person. although a memory begins with perception, it is encoded and stored using the language of electricity and chemicals. the connections between brain cells aren't set in concrete -- they change all the time. brain cells work together in a network, organizing themselves into groups that specialize in different kinds of information processing. as one brain cell sends signals to another, the synapse between the two gets stronger. the more signals sent, the stronger the connection grows. with each new experience, your brain slightly rewires its physical structure. the brain organizes and reorganizes itself in response to your experiences, forming memories triggered by the effects of outside input prompted by experience, education, or training. to properly encode a memory, you must first be paying attention. since you cant pay attention to everything all the time, most of what you encounter is filtered out, only a few stimuli pass into your conscious awareness. if you remembered every single thing, your memory would be full before you even left the house in the morning. how you pay attention to information may probaby be the most important factor in how much of it you actually remember. http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-memory1.htm ________________________________________________________________ part 3 : short term and long term memory ________________________________________________________________ once a memory is created, it must be stored. there are three ways we store memories: first in the sensory stage; then in short-term memory; and ultimately, for some memories, in long-term memory. because there's no need for us to maintain everything, the different stages of human memory function as a filter that helps protect us from the flood of information that we're confronted daily. creation of a memory begins with its perception: registration of information during perception occurs in the brief sensory stage that lasts only a fraction of a second. your sensory memory allows a perception such as a visual pattern, a sound, or a touch to linger for a brief moment after the stimulation is over. after that first flicker, the sensation is stored in short-term memory. short-term memory has a fairly limited capacity; it can hold about seven items for no more than 20 or 30 seconds at a time. you may increase this capacity by using various memory strategies. for example, a ten-digit number like 8005840392 may be too much for your short-term memory to hold. dividing into chunks, 800-584-0392 may stay in your short-term memory long enough. by repeating the number, you can keep resetting the short-term memory clock. important information is gradually transferred from short-term memory into long-term memory. the more information is repeated or used, more likely it is to become long-term memory, or to be "retained." unlike sensory and short-term memory, which are limited and decay rapidly, long-term memory can store unlimited amounts of information indefinitely. people easily store material on subjects that they already know about, since the information has more meaning to them and can be mentally connected to their long-term memory. most people think of long-term memory when they think of "memory" itself -- but experts believe information must first pass through sensory and short-term memory before it can be stored as a long-term memory. http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-memory2.htm ________________________________________________________________ part 4 : memory retrieval ________________________________________________________________ when you want to remember something, you retrieve the information on an unconscious level, bringing it into your conscious mind at will. most people think they have either a "bad" or a "good" memory, in fact, most people are fairly good at remembering some types of things and not so good at remembering others. if you do have trouble remembering something -- it'scause of an inefficient component of one part of your memory system. let's look at how you remember where you put your eyeglasses. when going to bed, you must register where you place your eyeglasses: you must pay attention while you set them on your bedside table. you must be aware of where you're putting them. next, this information is retained, ready to be retrieved at a later date. if the system is working properly, when you wake in the morning you'll remember exactly where you left your eyeglasses. if you've forgotten where they are, several things could have happened: you may not have registered clearly where you put them down to begin with. you may not have retained what you registered. you may not be able to retrieve the memory accurately. if you've forgotten something, it may be because you didn't encode it very effectively, you were distracted while encoding should have taken place, or because you're having trouble retrieving it. however, you may not have really forgotten at all -- instead, the location of your eyeglasses may never have gotten into your memory in the first place. distractions that occur while you're trying to remember something gets in the way of encoding memories. thus, not effectively saved into your memory. you may forget simply cause you're having trouble retrieving the memory. if you've ever tried to remember something one time and couldn't, but then later you remember that same item, it could be that there was a mismatch between retrieval cues and the encoding of the information you're searching for. http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-memory3.htm ________________________________________________________________ end ________________________________________________________________ . . . . . |