How We Remember, and Why We Forget

A good article that I found recently is about memory, an important key for learning, working, many parts in our lives. The article by Ashish Ranpura tries to answer serveral burning questions - what are the different type of memories, how memory are made of, and can memory be improved. How we remember stuff - Why we forget stuff? It is a quick read but a good overview piece:

"… The end result of all of this moving across categories is that humans are good at remembering a few complex chunks of information while computers are good at remembering many simple chunks of information. It is a lot easier for a person to remember four photographs in great detail than it is to remember a list of forty two-digit numbers; quite the opposite for a computer. Also, because we form memories through consolidation, attention and emotional arousal work together to determine what features of an event are important, and therefore what features will be remembered.

From a practical perspective, that means that we can remember something best if we learn it in a context that we understand, or if it is emotionally important to us. It is a lot easier to remember that the hypophysial stalk connects the hypothalamus to the pituitary gland if you already know a lot about neurobiology. But it’s also an easy fact to remember if you’ve ever had a loved one who suffered from a tumor near that part of the brain…"

How We Remember, and Why We Forget - [Brain Connection]

Die Dulci Fruere