Author: Daniel Sigue

Right now, in Psych 100 we learned about memory and the topic I am going to talk about is long-term memory. Long-term memory is the biggest place you can store memories. It has an unlimited capacity and the storage is estimated to range from 1000 billion to 1,000,000 billion bits of information. Long term memory is memories that you remember from a while back. Long-term memory can be split into two types. The two are procedural and declarative also known as implicit and explicit. Procedural long-term memory is skills you have known how to do. Declarative long-term memory is able to be explained in words. Declarative can then be split into two more types which are semantic and episodic memory. An example of procedural is like how to ride a bike. An example of declarative is like directions to get to someone’s house. An experience that I have that relates to this topic is that I have declarative memories that I can explain. An example of semantic memory is knowledge about general world/events that happened to you in the past. An example of episodic is a memory that you can remember the time and place in your mind. One of the memories that I have that I can explain is directions to get from my house to my high school. This relates to the topic because I had to be able to remember how to get to my house from the high school back when I was a freshmen or sophomore so that an upperclassmen or friend’s parent would be able to drive me home after a practice when my parents could not get me. I also had to be able to do the opposite and tell someone how to get to the school from my house if I had friends over and they had to go there. My memory wouldn’t be a procedural because it isn’t a skill that I have but a memory that I can explain in words.

In class, we learned that the brain is made up of different lobes that have different functions that you require to be independent. Two of those lobes are the frontal lobe which is found in the front of the brain and controls important cognitive skills like emotional expression, problem solving, and many more. One of the other lobes is the temporal lobe which is found below the temples of the skull. This lobes job is to understanding speech. When damage happens to the brain it can impair these different lobes. My experience with this topic is that in high school I was a wrestler and I was very prone to getting concussions or hitting my head hard on the mat. During my time of wrestling, I had acquired a few concussions that have impaired some of the lobes that make up my brain like the frontal and temporal lobe. The concussion caused my brain to hit my skull with different parts of the brain moving at different speeds, this results in tearing nerve tissues and bruising of the brain.  This affected my brain because during the time of the concussion, I had troubles processing math problems, watching tv, or listening to music. This happened because my frontal lobe hit against my skull and bruised. During this time when I was in school, remembering what people were saying or comprehending what I was doing was more difficult than usual. That is because the temporal lobe had also hit my skull at one point during the time my head had hit the mat. My experience is related to the information we learned in class because when I learned this information in class it made me understand why certain activities were harder than others when I had a concussion back in high school.