Can you remember where you were on this exact day one year ago? How about five years ago? The human brain has a remarkable ability to remember events from the past in vivid detail but it can also just as easily forget. When it comes to preparing for exams, some students, such as myself, can struggle to commit material to memory. The human ability to maintain memories is a topic that has always amazed me. I can recall stories from when I was a young kid with perfect detail. While, in contrast, there are times in my life where I cannot remember a single detail. How does this work? How does the brain decide what to remember and what to forget? Are all our memories inside our brain somewhere? These types of questions are ones that I asked which has led me creating this particular blog post.

First, it is essential to understand what exactly is memory. One aspect to understand is that memory is not an actual “thing” like our hair or our brain but rather a concept, which refers to the process of remembering. Experts today believe that memory is not located in one particular place in the brain but rather throughout the brain. The idea behind memories is that they are attached to our senses and our experiences in our own lives. For example, there are many senses that are attached to our memories of the beach such as scents or sounds. Another example that is given in the link above is that of riding a bike. When one rides a bike, the memory of how to operate the bike comes from one area of the brain while the information about how to get from point A to B comes from elsewhere. However, scientists appear to still be unsure exactly how the system works. There has yet to be an understanding about what occurs during periods of recollection.

The idea of long-term memory is one that I find especially interesting, as it is amazing that humans can remember so many details from so long ago. Short-term memories can be made into long-term simply through rehearsal and meaningful association. Long-term memory involves a physical change in the structure of neurons within the brain. In laymen terms, these neurons form circuits, where these neurons are then transmitted to the brain in a connection to the visual, auditory, associative cortexes of the brain. However, once again scientists are still unclear about many aspects of the process. The process of forgetting occurs when these neural circuits are weakened or when other memories “over-lap” which can overtake older memories.

But what happens to forgotten memories? An article in the New York Times explains exactly that. The article explains that scientists have two different theories. One theory is that these memories do not simply go away but rather are overshadowed by other memories but still somewhere nonetheless. The other is that older memories become weaker and that learning new information, such as passwords, degrades the old memories so that they do not interfere. An article from Nature Neuroscience explains an experiment conducted by scientists in Birmingham and Cambridge involving 24 participants. The participants were first trained to associate words to two unrelated black and white ordinary scenes from lists of famous people. Then they were given a cue word and asked to remember the image they had previously been trained to link to that word so that the image would become a memory. The scientists performed this test several times sprinkling each cue word into the test. The conclusion of the study was that as people began to develop new memories, the competing memories become weaker. They also performed further studies that found that therapeutic applications of memory could assist in weakening fears, such as snakes, from individual’s minds.

In conclusion, the human memory is a remarkable aspect of life that still remains somewhat mysterious to scientists. Although we have obtained an understanding of some areas of memory, there is still much more to be learned. Through rehearsal of different memories or experiences one can continue to remember them in detail. Another great way to make sure no important memory is lost is by writing them down somewhere. It is a topic that will continue to occupy the world of science and stretches on as long as long as it can be remembered.