Memory

The brain is an amazing three-pound organ that controls all functions of the body, interprets information from the outside world, and embodies the essence of the mind and soul. Intelligence, creativity, emotion, and memory are a few of the many things governed by the brain. Protected within the skull, the brain is composed of the cerebrum, cerebellum, and brainstem.

The brain receives information through our five senses: sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing - often many at one time. It assembles the messages in a way that has meaning for us and can store that information in our memory. The brain controls our thoughts, memory and speech, movement of the arms and legs, and the function of many organs within our body.

The brain is composed of the cerebrum, cerebellum, and brainstem.

Memory is what allows us to remember facts, ideas, feelings, relationships between concepts and all kinds of stimuli that occurred in the past. Although the hippocampus is the brain structure most related to memory, we cannot locate memories at a specific point in the brain, but a large number of brain areas are involved. In addition, this ability is one of the cognitive functions most commonly affected with age.

Types of memory

We can divide the types of memory according to different criteria:

• Short term memory: It can be defined as the memory mechanism that allows us to retain a limited amount of information for a short period of time.  Its storage capacity is limited, approximately 7 plus or minutes 2 items for 18-20 seconds if the retained information is not reviewed. For this reason you are able to remember a phone number for a few seconds and after a few moments you forget.

•  Long term memory: Can store information for virtually unlimited timeIt is responsible for storing your memories, the knowledge you have about the world, the images you have seen, the concepts you have learned .

• Sensory memory: Would retain the information for a couple of seconds. Sensory memory is responsible for recording the sensations that are perceived through the senses and for superficially recognizing the perceived stimuli. This memory system has a great processing capacity, as it is responsible for recognizing perceived sensations and for recognizing the physical characteristics of perceived stimuli such as lines, angles, brightness or tone.

Curiosities of memory

·       The German philosopher Hermann Ebbinghaus dedicated many years of his life to the study of memory, reaching very interesting conclusionsAccording to this author, forgetting occurs progressively, so that a few days after studying a material you only remember a small part of what you have studied, having forgotten most of the information learned. Specifically, in the first 24 hours you can remember approximately 50% of the information learned; After 48 hours you can remember 30% and, after one week, you will only remember 3% of all the information you had learned a few days before.

·       That is, people remember better the beginning and the end of things, forgetting more easily the intermediate content. This can be modified if the intermediate content has great emotional significance for the person For this reason we remember the beginning and end of a telephone conversation, a reading, a song, a movie 

Improve and stimulate memory

·       eat well

·       exercise

·       read

·       puzzle

·       make alphabet soup

Conclusion

Thanks to memory we can make sense of the world around us, remember past experiences, plan the future and perform all the tasks that give meaning to our day to day

LINKS

https://www.cognifit.com/es/habilidad-cognitiva/memoria-a-corto-plazo
https://www.cognifit.com/es/memoria
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-psychology/chapter/memory-and-the-brain/



VALERIA BACA GONZALEZ
AHINARA SERNA ZAVALA