The Amazing Hard Disc

Part - 5

Memory Needs Every Method Of Nurture Its Capacity

.................................................................................................…“Every day I used to wake up and see in the mirror to remind me who am I. I used to believe that there is a world outside my mind. The shape of the room, the color of car, and every fine detail had some meaning and one day I realized that I was wrong. Nothing was there outside. Everything was inside.It was my Memory……………………………………………………..”

We have two decision making systems in our head: Mind and Brain. Mind and Brain both have their separate memories. Mind’s memory is called Implicit Memory. Brain’s memory is called Explicit Memory. Let’s talk about Explicit Memory

You are sitting in a classroom learning subjects or you are in a birthday party or travelling in bus or watching a movie, every moment you are recording the information and storing in the memory. Some information you immediately forget, some information you keep remember for days and some for years all it depends upon how do you encode information, how do you store them and how efficient you are retrieving the information. In this article I will talk about relationship between brain and memory and how brain encode, store and retrieve the information and by understanding the basic system how we can improve our memory.

Memory is one of the most important aspect of our decision making system since we are completely dependent on the information stored in past in our memory to make decision for present. Your phone might have 16 GB or 32 GB memory, your computer might have 360 GB memory, your personal hard disc might have 1 TB memory but have you ever imagined, what is the capacity of your own memory that is located in your head? No scientist could have ever found it. Theoretically it is infinite. Your all senses continuously capture the information even your eyes capture 1 MB data per second so you could just estimate how much data you already have stored in your memory. 

Our five senses continuously capture the information in the form of physical and chemical stimuli and send it to brain for encoding. Brain can convert this information into visual form or acoustic form or semantic form or elaborative form. It depends upon context and individuals. Encoding is very important part and how memory will be stored is dependent upon encoding. There are some people who have very good memory and it is due to their efficiency in encoding the information. Below digram shows the process how brain encode the information in visual or acoustic or different format and store into Memory.

When brain has encoded the information then it goes to next process: storing. Consider your memory a big library and there are lots of sections. Memory is stored in a particular section and it is decided by how did you encoded it. You all must have encoded the information colors of rainbow as “VIBGYOR” in your memory. I normally use visual and elaborative encoding to store information in my memory. Now the question is why we forget the information that is stored in our memory? Is each and every detail stored in our memory?

The Answer is No.

We don’t store each and everything in our memory. Suppose you ask someone phone number and you those number were in your memory for sometime but after some minutes you forget that number so how does it happen? Basically Brain has two type of memory that are called:

• Short Term Memory (Working Memory)
• Long Term Memory

Information processed by your brain at first stage goes to short term memory. It has very limited capacity around 7±2 elements and information stays here for some seconds to some minutes. Normally information is stored here as audio form or visual form and it will be there till you keep rehearsing it and after some time it will be moved to long term memory or will be lost forever. If you want to feel your short term memory than take any 9 digit numbers like 825763907 now exercise for you is to leave your laptop/mobile and keep remember this number for 1 minute and check this page again after 1 minute.

Now check this number again. So what happened with you in last 1 minute? You were continuously speaking mentally this number or visualizing this number after some time you will lost this number if you could not save it into long term memory. If you were distracted in last one minute you might have lost this number. Since short term memory has limited capacity so as new information come it automatically delete old information. So how information goes from short term memory to long term memory? Key is rehearsal.  After rehearsal ling for some time information goes to long term memory and stored permanently. Long term memory is infinite and information stored there is permanent so how to check information is stored in long term memory or not? The simple trick is if you can recall the information after some minutes that means if has been stored in long term memory. Now the next question must come in mind when a memory is permanently stored in long term memory. Now the question is why we can’t recall the information that we read in our school time ?

To know the reason for this, again imagine your long term memory as a big library where you have placed lot of books. You did not access some books from long time and you forget where you put the books. Same happens with our memory. Everything we learnt in our school time or college time is still in our memory but we have lost the connection with that information so we are not able to recall that memory. When we keep retrieving same information our connection with that information becomes strong but if we don’t use the information after some time we lost connection with that information so it is advisable for students to keep revising the lesson to keep remembering what you have learnt. Below diagram shows how neural connection become strong with the information that is retried very frequently and connection is almost lost when information is not retrieve in the span of long time.

Research has proved that we lost 80% of information in 24 hours so best revision is within 24 hours of learning.  An individual is likely to remember more like a list of item when rehearsal is spaced over an extended period of time than intensive rehearsal of one time (Cramming). Even we have lost the old information but when we get related information to the old information we automatically retrieve the associated information. You must have observed that when you go to old place like your old school or old home you automatically retrieve the information related to that place easily. So if you have forget to old information and not able to recall then go to the place or recall related information.

Long Term Memory

Long time memory is the place where we store all the details processed by short term memory permanently. There are four sub-divisions in long term memory where different types of information are stored. These four subdivisions are:

Episodic memory

Episodic memory refers to memory for specific events in time, as well as supporting their formation and retrieval. Some examples of episodic memory would be remembering someone's name and what happened at your last interaction with each other.  Experiments conducted indicated that older adults have worse episodic memories than younger

Semantic memory

Semantic memory refers to knowledge about factual information, such as the meaning of words. Semantic memory is independent information such as information remembered for a test In contrast with episodic memory, older adults and younger adults do not show much of a difference in semantic memory

Autobiographical memory

Autobiographical memory refers to knowledge about events and personal experiences from an individual's own life. Though similar to episodic memory, it differs in that it contains only those experience which directly pertain to the individual, from across his lifespan.

Spatial memory is the part of memory responsible for recording information about one's environment and its spatial orientation. For example, a person's spatial memory is required in order to navigate around a familiar city, just as a rat's spatial memory is needed to learn the location of food at the end of a maze

Since explicit memory is also a physical organ so it keeps improving as we use it extensively. Using memory means keep encoding, storing and retrieving information. Some people have good semantic memory, some have good episodic memory and some people like drivers have very good spatial memory.

Amnesia

Amnesia is loss of memory. The memory can be either wholly or partially lost due to the extent of damage that was caused.  In some cases the memory loss can extend back decades, while in others the person may lose only a few months of memory. There are two type of amnesia:

Retrograde amnesia: It is the inability to retrieve information that was acquired before a particular date, usually the date of an accident or operation. Link to used memory is lost so patient lost the old memories but there is still infinite free space in his memory so he can still make the new memories. You might have seen in lot of movies depicting retrograde amnesia. Some of the famous movies are The Bourne Identity, Jab tak hai jaan etc

Anterograde amnesia: It is the inability to transfer new information from the short-term store into the long-term store. That means patient keeps old memory before accident but cannot make new memories that mean now he doesnt have any free space in his memory. His memory is full now so he is completely dependent on his short term memory. Hollywood thriller Memento and Bollywood super hit film Ghajini depicts the case of anterograde amnesia.

Patient may suffer from one of the above or both type of amnesia or there may be some different type of variation of these amnesia also like psychogenic amnesia as it was shown in movies like The Shutter Island and The Machinist and Lacunar amnesia that is loss of memory about one specific event. Movies based on lacunar amnesia are “Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind”, mysterious skin and trance

Study of Amnesiac patient is very important to study the second type of memory that is called implicit memory or I call it Mind’s Memory. I will talk about it in next article.  

Techniques to Improve Memory

When we talk about improving memory we talk about efficiently recalling the information after long time that we had stored in our long term memory. It includes remembering the concepts that we learnt, new words, formulas, to remember names of person we met, to remember the telephone numbers, to remember the things we have seen, to remember the addresses, routs, appointments etc.  A better memory definitely gives you advantage over others. There is no universally accepted method for improving the memory and each and every one develops the technique as par their convenience.  I am sharing you some of the common techniques:

Rehearsal: One of the most popular technique, it means keep repeating the information. After enough rehearsal information from short term memory is stored in long term memory but keep repeating in fixed time interval is necessary otherwise we can missed the link and forget the information. Best time to rehearsal is after 24 hours and then keeps repeating it after some days. There are two types of rehearsal: 1. Maintenance rehearsal (Cramming) 

2. Elaborate rehearsal. 

Maintenance rehearsal consists of constantly repeating the word or phrase of words in order to remember without knowing the meaning. Remembering a phone number is one of the best examples of this. Maintenance rehearsal is mainly used for the short-term ability to recall information and I don’t like this technique. With Elaborate rehearsal, one associates old information with new information in order to remember. An example of elaborate rehearsal would be remembering the number 007 since it is associated to James Bond

Method of Loci: It is ancient Greek technique and is very useful to remember the list of words. In this technique we memorize the layout of some familiar building or house. When desiring to remember a set of items we 'walks' through these building in our imagination and commits an item to each one by forming an image between the item and any distinguishing feature of that locus. Retrieval of items is achieved by 'walking' through the loci. I have used this technique many times and it’s super useful. The key point is making as weird as possible image.

Visual Encoding: One of the best technique and my personal favourite. In this technique we encode information in visual in such a manner that it is related to already store memory in pre-defined system. Like Eavesdropping that means to secretly listen of conversation someone so I made a visual that Eva Green is secretly listening someone conversation and dropped something and I stored this visual in memory. Or Galenicals that means an herbal drug so I made a visual that Glem McGrath wearing a clinical sweater selling herbal drugs. You can learn thousands of new words by this technique. In same way we can remember numbers also. Suppose my pin is 3504 so I can take 3 as handcuff 5 as curtain hook, 0 as football and 4 as sailing boat so remembering this I can make a visual that I am standing handcuffed in ATM from curtain hooks there are lot of football there and a picture of sailing boat there. This may seem funny but believe me this technique is very powerful. Male visual as weird as you can. You can make golden handcuff or big football. You are the king of your imagination, make whatever you want and store. You can develop your own system and remember mobile numbers also. I will talk in detail in some other article on this topic.

Mnemonics: Mnemonics is a memory retention technique that aim is to translate information into a form that the brain can retain better than its original form. Commonly encountered mnemonics are often used for lists and in auditory form, such as short poems, acronyms, or memorable phrases. Their use is based on the observation that the human mind more easily remembers spatial, personal, surprising, physical, sexual, humorous, or otherwise "relatable" information, rather than more abstract or impersonal forms of information. Examples on Mnemonics are like you remember VIBGYOR for seven colors of rainbow,

To memories the names of the planets, use the planetary mnemonic: "My Very Eager Mother Just Served Us Nothing".

The first 15 digits of the mathematical constant pi (3.14159265358979) can be encoded as "Now I need a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics"; "Now", having 3 letters, represents the first number, 3. So you can make your own thousands of mnemonics to remember the information.

If you find the spelling of Mnemonics difficult then read first line of this article again. You will never forget the spelling.