Graphic Source: Clipart.com

One of the strangest things associated with humans is their memory. It turns out that most creatures have memory capability, although some have much shorter duration memories. What is memory exactly? It is nothing more than the ability to store, retain and then retrive data. In a way, most living things would be almost useless without it. Even on the simplest plain, memory is necessary for our daily functions. When we were babies and had no idea of how to do things or even that we should eat when we were hungry, we learned. It took us awhile to acquire these skills. Think of what life would be like if we didn't even know that the strange feeling in our stomach meant we needed nutrition Without our memory, there would be no human race. Some of our bodily functions are automatic and memory has nothing to do with them, such as breathing and our hearts beating. This is a lucky think for us or the first time we went to sleep, we would probably die. We sweat when we are hot to cool us down. Our bodies are temperature regulated without us even knowing it.

An interesting memory experiment took place with a small fish. A tank was set up with a complicated net type device in it, that was hard to get around. It took the fish a few minutes to figure it out, but it got around the net. The fish was then taken out of the tank and kept somewhere else for the equivalent of about 30 fish years, then put back into the tank with the net. The fish immediately negoiated the net. It had remembered how to do this all those years later. I know that we are talking fish years here, but it was still quite an accomplishment. Are many of the things we think about memory wrong? Could it be that memory operates on real time, no matter what type of animal it is being used in? What I mean is that maybe 20 minutes to us is 20 minutes to an animal no matter what its life span is? Humans have a very quick sensory memory capability. We can look at an item or object for less than a second and remember it. It is almost like setting up your camera on the fastest shutter speed and taking a photo. Some experiments have taken place in this area of science and it has been found that many of us actually see more than we realize. It has been found that when using this type of memory we can recognize about 12 items at once, but this memory decays so fast that we can't recall all of them.

There is another type of memory called short term. It is usually good for up to one minute and has a limited capacity. Today, scientists believe that the limit for objects that can be stored in short term memory is about 5. This limit also depends on how information is presented. If sets of random letters are presented to a person, they may or may not be able to remember one set or more, but if these sets make recognizable words, they will be more easily remembered. It seems that even though a word is comprised of individual letters it may be remembered as one unit, the same as a single letter would be in a random set of letters. This is sort of economical since you might be able to remember many more letters using this indirect method. Once we move out of sensory and short term memory we are into long term memory. Long term memory is an incredible place to put something. It can remain there your entire life and you can store unlimited amounts of objects there. Some people that are required to take different types of tests for their jobs try and make memorizing things easier by making up little stories comprising the data that they are trying to remember, others make up words. In the field of law in one state the made up word PUDADAPA is used to help remember the opening and closing sequences of a criminal trial. It means:
P = People U=Must D=Defense M=May Open
D = Defense A=May P=People A=May Close
To recap, this is used to remember the sequence of a criminal trial for test purposes. It means the the People Must have an opening statement of what they are intending to prove, while the defense may or may not give one. Then the People may give a closing statement and the defense may also give a closing statement or either or both may elect not to. I used this to point out how we can sort of compress the information we are going to store in our memory and return it to the uncompressed state by saying the word we made up which returns the information we need.

Graphic Source: ImageAfter

To prove further that using a system to remember things allows us to remember more, research was conducted that found out that when people organized cards containing words into more categories, they remembered more. The system helped them. Some researchers even break down our memory process into smaller units such as past and future. Next they break this down into event and time. I guess that there is no limit to how you break these things down. Increasing the amount of oxygen to the brain seems to increase our capacity to remember things. There are really too many categories of memory being tossed around by scientists and philosophers, it seems to get a little ridiculous at times, since these are man made boxes that we created to file different functions of memory into. Sometimes these boxes overlap or maybe two or more might even define the same thing in a different way. When people hear or see something and their memories make them react in different ways. Descartes asked why, "what makes one man want to dance may make another want to cry": it may be, he suggests, that the second man has "never heard a galliard without some affliction befalling him". That is so true, our experiences that we retain do shape how we react to things.

The movie Rain Man was a true story about a man who has autism and yet has what is known as a perfect long term memory. His memory is so perfect, that it is said he has never forgotten anything. He can read a telephone book and retain all the information for example and he has. Unfortunately for him, this has come at the expense at many of his other functions and sometimes he can not understand the simplest of things, such as the concept of money. In one very rare case, an otherwise normal woman was able to remember every event in her life. This is called Hyperthymesis Syndrome. This woman's ability has stumped scientists and memory experts. You can ask this woman about any event that occurred during her lifetime and she will tell you about it in vivid detail. The same is true if you give her a date. She will tell you everything that happened on that date that she was aware of at the time. She can tell you what day of the week the date fell on, what the weather was like, major news events and such. Scientists have been studying her for years, to try and find out how she does this, but they admit that after six years they still know nothing. Some thought that her memories were caused by traumatic events, such as the death of Elvis, but that theory soon faded as she recited different memories of laws being passed and trivial events.

The next step in checking out this woman is going to be to test her using an MRI. Some of the researchers believe that her brain may be wired differently than the brains of the rest of us. One of the theories about her brain is that some circuits may be disconnected, so that other parts of her brain don't interfere with recollections, but as I said, this is only a theory. The researchers admit that they are still way off as far as knowing what is going on. If we can figure out what is going on with this woman, it may help to improve the memory of the rest of us. I am sure that we could all use a better memory, I know that I could. I am getting tired of forgetting people's names.