Memory

Remember is to recall knowledge and information from your memory. To keep in mind for attention or consideration. To recall knowledge from memory and to have a recollection. To keep in mind for attention or consideration. To have a recollection or summon to return a memory. To recapture the past and indulge in memories. To have in mind or be able to bring to one's mind an awareness of someone or something that one has seen, known, or experienced in the past. To do something that one has undertaken and to do what is necessary or advisable. A memory used to emphasize the importance of something or someone. The process of recovering information by mental effort. The cognitive processes whereby past experience is remembered. The power of retaining and recalling past experiences. To exercise or to have the power of memory. To have the power of memory and to exercise it. To go back to something earlier to be remembered. Machine Code - Thinking - Knowledge Management - Learning.



Memory is the faculty or the ability of the brain by which information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. A process often known as Learning. A memory is something that is remembered. The cognitive processes of retaining and recalling past experiences. Memorize is to commit something to memory or learn something by heart.

Memory Improving Techniques - Memory Flaws (vulnerabilities) - Memory Proteins.

If you don't Remember the Things that Matter, than having a good memory doesn't matter. So if you don't learn the things that matter, then learning will not matter. If you use most of your memory just to remember insignificant details, then you will fail to remember the most important things in life. But in order to do that you first have to learn everything that is valuable that would increase your understanding of yourself and the world around you. You have to strengthen the most important information that you have stored in your memories, and you also have to keep adding to your knowledge base by continually adding more valuable knowledge and information that you can find. Remember to Count the things that matter. Forgetting only becomes bad when you forgot the things that matter. Songs about Remembering.

Consideration is the process of giving careful thought to something. Information that should be kept in mind when making a decision. Kind and considerate regard for others. A considerate and thoughtful act.

Thoughtfulness is kind and considerate regard for others. The trait of thinking carefully before acting. A considerate and thoughtful act.

Remembering is part of your awareness. You have to recall information from your past in order to understand the moment that you are in. All that you see is what you have learned to see. Some people learn to see more. So what would happen if you looked at the world with no memory?

Remember versus Know Judgments suggests that different processes are involved in remembering something versus knowing whether it is familiar. It appears that remembering and knowing represent relatively different characteristics of memory as well as reflect different ways of using memory.

One of the failures of Rote Learning is Garbage in, Garbage Out. The dangerous part of forcing students to memorize irrelevant and unimportant information, is that it tricks the student into thinking that this information is important, which much of it is not, at least not at this time in their life. So now the student doesn't know what's important, which is a kind of forced brain damage, and the unsuspecting student has no idea how ignorant they truly are. And they are also fooled into believing that learning is boring and irrelevant, which it is not. Average Person can Recall 5,000 faces in their Lifetime.

Our Memory gives us incredible abilities. But if your memory is not used properly, or if you don't understand your ability to remember, you will never experience the memories true power, which is to continually develop a person into being more intelligent each day as their life progresses. So it's not how much you can remember, it's knowing how to extract the most important information and knowledge from your experiences, and remembering those details, so that they are correctly applied to future moments in time. So how do you choose what to remember? Information Literacy, define what's important.

Memory Types

Explicit Memory or Declarative Memory is one of the two main types of long-term human memory. It is the conscious, intentional recollection of factual information, previous experiences and concepts. Explicit memory can be divided into two categories: episodic memory, which stores specific personal experiences, and semantic memory, which stores factual information.  Explicit memories are of a person’s own life and general facts about the world. This is knowledge you are very aware of and can talk about. The other type of memory, non-declarative, is commonly called Implicit Memory. This is information that’s difficult to verbalize but enables someone to ride a bike or to bow a viola or apply skilled brushstrokes.

Sensory Memory - Body Memory - Memory Processes (wiki)

Implicit Memory is one of the two main types of Long-Term Human Memory. It is acquired and used unconsciously, and can affect thoughts and behaviors. One of its most common forms is Procedural Memory, which helps people performing certain tasks without conscious awareness of these previous experiences.

Episodic Memory is the memory of autobiographical events that can be explicitly stated. It is the collection of past personal experiences that occurred at a particular time and place, along with associated emotions and other contextual who, what, when, where, why knowledge. For example, if one remembers the party on his or her 6th birthday, this is an episodic memory. They allow an individual to figuratively travel back in time to remember the event that took place at that particular time and place. Episodic memory allows previous experiences to be relived or rehearsed once resources are available so it can be reanalyzed with new knowledge or additional experiences. Episodic Memory is defined as the ability to recall and mentally re-experience specific episodes from one's personal past and is contrasted with semantic memory that includes memory for generic, context-free knowledge. Hippocampus.

Retrospective Memory is the memory of people, words, and events encountered or experienced in the past. It includes all other types of memory including episodic, semantic and procedural. It can be either implicit or explicit. In contrast, prospective memory involves remembering something or remembering to do something after a delay, such as buying groceries on the way home from work. However, it is very closely linked to retrospective memory, since certain aspects of retrospective memory are required for prospective memory.

Prospective Memory is a form of memory that involves remembering to perform a planned action or recall a planned intention at some future point in time. Prospective memory tasks are common in daily life and range from the relatively simple to extreme life-or-death situations. Examples of simple tasks include remembering to put the toothpaste cap back on, remembering to reply to an email, or remembering to return a rented movie. Examples of highly important situations include a patient remembering to take medication or a pilot remembering to perform specific safety procedures during a flight.

Humans have the ability to creatively combine their memories to solve problems and draw new insights, a process that depends on memories for specific events known as episodic memory.

Prospective Memory is a form of memory that involves remembering to perform a planned action or intention at some future point in time. Prospective memory tasks are common in daily life and range from the relatively simple to extreme life-or-death situations. Awareness.

Metamemory a type of metacognition, is both the introspective knowledge of one’s own memory capabilities (and strategies that can aid memory) and the processes involved in memory self-monitoring. This self-awareness of memory has important implications for how people learn and use memories, like judgments of learning. Reflecting on Memories Improves Memory Quality. Being able to assess our own memories helps us to avoid errors and prompts us to collect more information to fill the gaps. The ability to assess memory quality appears in children. A Brain Knows When It Can't Remember.

Introspective is examining your own sensory and perceptual experiences or spending time examining ones own thoughts and feelings.

Affective Emotional Memory requires actors to call on the memory of details from a similar situation (or more recently a situation with similar emotional) and import those feelings to those of their characters.

Recognition Memory is a subcategory of declarative memory. Essentially, recognition memory is the ability to recognize previously encountered events, objects, or people. When the previously experienced event is re-experienced, this environmental content is matched to stored memory representations, eliciting matching signals. Location-updating effect.

Attention - Focus

Semantic Memory is one of the two types of declarative memory or explicit memory, which is our memory of facts or events that is explicitly stored and retrieved. Semantic memory refers to general world knowledge that we have accumulated throughout our lives. This general knowledge of facts, ideas, meaning and concepts is intertwined in experience and dependent on culture. Semantic memory is distinct from episodic memory, which is our memory of experiences and specific events that occur during our lives, from which we can recreate at any given point. For instance, semantic memory might contain information about what a cat is, whereas episodic memory might contain a specific memory of petting a particular cat. We can learn about new concepts by applying our knowledge learned from things in the past. The counterpart to declarative, or explicit memory, is procedural memory, or implicit memory. Synesthesia.

Visual Memory is the ability to recollect information from things that you have seen. Auditory Memory is the ability to recollect information that you have heard. Tactile Memory is the ability to recollect information from things that you held or touched.

How the Brain forms Sensory Memories. A new study identifies a region of the thalamus as a key source of signals encoding past experiences in the neocortex. The brain encodes information collected by our senses. However, to perceive our environment and to constructively interact with it, these sensory signals need to be interpreted in the context of our previous experiences and current aims.

Short-Term Memory is the capacity for holding, but not manipulating, a small amount of information in mind in an active, readily available state for a short period of time. The duration of short-term memory (when rehearsal or active maintenance is prevented) is believed to be in the order of seconds. The Magic number 7 plus or minus two provides evidence for the capacity of short term memory. Most adults can store between 5 and 9 items in their short-term memory. Volatile Memory.

Working Memory is information that can be quickly recalled, "always on your mind" - "off the top of my head". Working Memory is the system responsible for the transient holding and processing of new and already-stored information, recalling past experiences and knowledge from memory. To Keep in mind for attention or consideration. This is an important process for reasoning, comprehension, learning and memory updating. Thinking, Processing, Output. Working memory is a theoretical framework that refers to structures and processes used for temporarily storing and manipulating information. What information do we have? What information are we receiving? What is the appropriate action? Most of the time people are in automatic mode, and rarely use the processing power of the human brain. That's because not enough people are teaching this skill or learning this skill. Memory Consolidation is when existing memories are recalled and modified with new knowledge. Working Memory (PDF).

Computational model reveals how the brain manages short-term memories. Scientists have developed a new computational model showing how the brain maintains information short-term using specific types of neurons. Their findings could help shed light on why working memory is impaired in a broad range of neuropsychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia, as well as in normal aging.

Remembrance Agent are a set of applications that watch over a user’s shoulder and suggest information relevant to the current situation. While query-based memory aids help with direct recall, remembrance agents are an augmented associative memory. For example, the word-processor version of the RA continuously updates a list of documents relevant to what’s being typed or read in an emacs buffer. These suggested documents can be any text files that might be relevant to what you are currently writing or reading. They might be old emails related to the mail you are currently reading, or abstracts from papers and newspaper articles that discuss the topic of your writing.

Researchers use machine learning tools to reveal how memories are coded in the brain. These findings indicate that stable short-term memory information exists within a population of neurons with dynamic activity. In the human brain, the frontal lobe plays an important role in processing short-term memories. Short-term memory has a low capacity to retain information. "It can usually only hold six to eight items. Think for example about our ability to remember a phone number for a few seconds -- that uses short-term memory. Researchers studied how the frontal lobe represents short-term memory information by measuring the activity of many neurons. Previous results from the researchers had shown that if a distraction was presented during the memory maintenance period, it changed the code used by frontal lobe neurons that encode the memory. Researchers showed that stable information can be found within the changing neural population code. This means that the NUS team demonstrated that memory information can be read out from a population of neurons that morphs their code after a distractor is presented.

Long-Term Memory - Storage of Memories

Memories create 'Fingerprints' that reveal how the Brain is Organized. While the broad architecture and organization of the human brain is universal, new research shows how the differences between how people reimagine common scenarios can be observed in brain activity and quantified. These unique neurological signatures could ultimately be used to understand, study, and even improve treatment of disorders such as Alzheimer's disease.

Involuntary Memory also known as involuntary explicit memory, involuntary conscious memory, involuntary aware memory, and most commonly, involuntary autobiographical memory, is a subcomponent of memory that occurs when cues encountered in everyday life evoke recollections of the past without conscious effort. Voluntary memory, its binary opposite, is characterized by a deliberate effort to recall the past.

Muscle Memory doesn’t rely on the Hippocampus, it's stored in a separate place or in a separate way. Skill-related knowledge is a possible subcategory of declarative knowledge.

Memory Consolidation - Sleep Learning

Sensory Memory - Spatial Intelligence (understanding 3 dimensional spaces)

Body Memory - Body Smart (understanding how your body moves) - Human Operating System

Loss of Brain Synchrony may explain Working Memory Limits and Working Memory Capacity. The total number of images a person can hold in working memory at the same time – varies between individuals but averages about seven. New study tries to understand what causes the memory to have this intrinsic limit. The researchers found that trying to retain too much information in our working memory leads to a communication breakdown between parts of the brain responsible for maintaining it. Using sophisticated mathematical techniques, they found that the regions essentially work as a committee, without much hierarchy, to keep working memory going. They also found changes as working memory approached and then exceeded capacity. In particular, the researchers found that above capacity the PFC’s coupling to the FEF and LIP at low frequency stopped. Prefrontal Cortex (PFC), Frontal Eye Fields (FEF), Lateral Intraparietal Area (LIP). As previous studies have suggested that the PFC’s role might be to employ low-frequency waves to provide the feedback the keeps the working memory system in sync, the researchers suggest that when that signal breaks down, the whole enterprise may as well. This observation may also explain why memory capacity has a finite limit.

Baddeley proposed a model of working memory in 1974, in an attempt to describe a more accurate model of short-term memory.

Storage of Information - Long Term Memory

Encoding in memory is the ability to encode, store and recall information. Memories give an organism the capability to learn and adapt from previous experiences as well as build relationships. Encoding allows the perceived item of use or interest to be converted into a construct that can be stored within the brain and recalled later from short-term or long-term memory. Working memory stores information for immediate use or manipulation which is aided through hooking onto previously archived items already present in the long-term memory of an individual.

Spaced Repetition - Memory Consolidation - Brain Information Storage Capacity

Memory Management is a form of resource management applied to computer memory. The essential requirement of memory management is to provide ways to dynamically allocate portions of memory to programs at their request, and free it for reuse when no longer needed. This is critical to any advanced computer system where more than a single process might be underway at any time. Several methods have been devised that increase the effectiveness of memory management. Virtual memory systems separate the memory addresses used by a process from actual physical addresses, allowing separation of processes and increasing the size of the virtual address space beyond the available amount of RAM using paging or swapping to secondary storage. The quality of the virtual memory manager can have an extensive effect on overall system performance.

Storage in memory is the ability of the mind to store and recall information that was previously acquired. Memory is processed through three fundamental processing stages: storage, encoding, and retrieval. Storing refers to the process of placing newly acquired information into memory, which is modified in the brain for easier storage. Encoding this information makes the process of retrieval easier for the brain where it can be recalled and brought into conscious thinking. Modern memory psychology differentiates between the two distinct types of memory storage: short-term memory and long-term memory. In addition, different memory models have suggested variations of existing short- and long-term memory to account for different ways of storing memory. Human Brain Memory Capacity.

Long Term Storage of Information and Knowledge.

Long-Term Memory is the stage of the dual memory model, and informative knowledge can be stored for long periods of time. While short-term and working memory persist for only about 18 to 30 seconds, informative knowledge can remain as long-term memory indefinitely. Long-term memory is commonly labeled as explicit memory (declarative), as well as episodic memory, semantic memory, autobiographical memory, and implicit memory (procedural memory). Long term memories creates new structures with proteins and MRNA and different types of memories are stored in different places.

When you organize things in your house it makes it easier to find things. If you organize memories in your mind then you will make it easier to remember things. Associations.

Memory Trace is a hypothetical permanent change in the nervous system brought about by memorizing something.

Engram in neuropsychology are theorized to be means by which memories are stored as biophysical or biochemical changes in the brain (and other neural tissue) in response to external stimuli.

Long-Term Potentiation is a persistent strengthening of synapses based on recent patterns of activity. These are patterns of synaptic activity that produce a long-lasting increase in signal transmission between two neurons. The opposite of LTP is long-term depression, which produces a long-lasting decrease in synaptic strength. Plasticity - Old Memories.

The transfer of memories from the hippocampus to the neo-cortex for long-term storage is thought to be enabled by synchronization of these parts of the brain during sleep. A natural process of overnight reactivation or neural replay to improve memory with a closed-loop transcranial alternating current stimulation system matching the phase and frequency of ongoing slow-wave oscillations during sleep. Computer Memory.

Long-term memory controlled by protein synthesis in inhibitory cells. There are at least two distinct processes taking place in two different brain networks -- the excitatory and inhibitory networks. The excitatory neurons are involved in creating a memory trace, and the inhibitory neurons block out background noise and allow long-term learning to take place. EIF2A protein is pivotal for both neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative diseases. Proteins.

Recall - Remembering

Memory Retrieval is the process of remembering information stored in long-term memory. Some theorists suggests that there are three stores of memory: sensory memory, long-term memory (LTM), and short-term memory (STM). Only data that is processed through STM and encoded into LTM can later be retrieved. Songs about Remembering.

Recall refers to the mental process of retrieval of information from the past. Along with encoding and storage, it is one of the three core processes of memory. There are three main types of recall: free recall, cued recall and serial recall. Psychologists test these forms of recall as a way to study the memory processes of humans and animals. Two main theories of the process of recall are the Two-Stage Theory and the theory of Encoding Specificity.

Spaced Repetition - Location Effect

Memory Span is the longest list of items that a person can repeat back in correct order immediately after presentation on 50% of all trials. Items may include words, numbers, or letters. The task is known as digit span when numbers are used. Memory span is a common measure of short-term memory. It is also a component of cognitive ability tests such as the WAIS. Backward memory span is a more challenging variation which involves recalling items in reverse order. Attention.

10,000 Hour Rule - Rote Learning - Deleting (pruning) - Forgetting

Procedural Memory is a type of implicit memory and unconscious memory and long-term memory which aids the performance of particular types of tasks without conscious awareness of these previous experiences.

Remembering Everyday of your Life, but not Everything

Autobiographical Memory is the ability to remember almost everyday of your life along with the exact dates when things happened. It's a memory system consisting of episodes recollected from an individual's life, based on a combination of episodic memory or personal experiences and specific objects, people and events experienced at particular time and place, and semantic memory or general knowledge and facts about the world.. It is thus a type of explicit memory. Autobiographical memories only comes with the power of speech. Language helps provide a structure, or organization, for our memories that is a narrative. By creating a story, the experience becomes more organized, and therefore easier to remember over time. The visual cortex is the key to having a good memory, especially when remembering numbers. Some blind people are great with math because they use the visual cortex. Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory.

Autobiographical Memory shows that human memory has enormous capacity for information. People seem to have a a direct path to the brains memory storage, and they also know how to effectively use a date or number file system. But there seems to be a lack of processing or the lack of examination of information. "Now that I have collected all this information, what does this information mean? And how can I best explain this information?" "I don't remember every day of my life, but I do remember a lot of the good days and a lot of the bad days. But of course I remember the good days a lot more then the bad days. But when I do remember the bad days, It makes remembering the good days that much better. Remembering the bad days also helps you to appreciate the good days a lot more. So it's good to remember, even if some of those memories aren't so good."

Mind Maps - Imagery - First Memories

Visual Memory describes the relationship between perceptual processing and the encoding, storage and retrieval of the resulting neural representations. Blind Mathematicians (PDF)

Hyperthymesia is the condition of possessing an extremely detailed autobiographical memory. Hyperthymestics remember an abnormally vast number of their life experiences. Not Total Recall, but close.

Iconic Memory is the visual sensory memory (SM) register pertaining to the visual domain and a fast-decaying store of visual information.

Eidetic Memory or Photographic Memory is an ability to vividly recall images from memory after only seeing it once, with high precision for a brief time after exposure, without using a mnemonic device. Although the terms eidetic memory and photographic memory may be used interchangeably, they are also distinguished, with eidetic memory referring to the ability to view memories like photographs for a few minutes, and photographic memory referring to the ability to recall page or text numbers, or similar, in great detail. In the case of distinguishing the concepts, eidetic memory has been documented while photographic memory has mostly been seen in people like Kim Peek or Daniel Tammet or Stephen Wiltshire who can draw detailed accurate depictions of cityscapes after seeing it only once or twice. Savant is a condition in which someone with certain mental limitations can also demonstrate exceptional abilities that are far beyond the average person. The skills at which savants excel are generally related to memory. This may include rapid calculation, artistic ability, map making, or musical ability. Usually just one special skill is present. Memory Sports.

Calendrical Calculation is the ability to calculate Calendar Dates far into the past and far into the future just using the mind.

The Boy Who Can't Forget (Medical Documentary) - Real Stories (youtube)

Memoir is a collection of memories that an individual writes about moments or events, both public or private, that took place in the subject's life. The assertions made in the work are understood to be factual. Truth.

Areas of the Brain used in Memory

Hippocampus is a major component of the brain of humans and other vertebrates. Humans have two hippocampi, one in each side of the brain. It belongs to the limbic system and plays important roles in the consolidation of information from short-term memory to long-term memory and spatial navigation. The hippocampus is located under the cerebral cortex. Hippocampus is responsible for making new memories. Hippocampus Anatomy (wiki)

The Hippocampus and Episodic Memory (youtube) - Episodic Memory - Time Cells

First evidence for necessary role of human Hippocampus in Planning.

Perirhinal Cortex in managing this learning process. Researchers observed that the perirhinal cortex was serving as a waystation between the nearby hippocampus, which processes place and context, and the outer layer of the cortex.
The perirhinal cortex happens to be at the very top of the hierarchy of processing of information in the cortex.

Pattern Separation in the hippocampus enables memories to be stored by separate groups of neurons, so that memories don't get mixed up, neuronal representation, devoid of specific contextual details. When recording the activity of individual neurons, there is an alternative model to pattern separation storing our memories. Pattern separation is a basic principle of neuronal coding that precludes memory interference in the hippocampus.

Neuroanatomy of Memory encompasses a wide variety of anatomical structures in the brain.

Why are only particular neurons involved in forming a memory?

Researchers discover the source of New Neurons in Brain's Hippocampus. It was once believed that mammals were born with the entire supply of neurons they would have for a lifetime. However, over the past few decades, neuroscientists have found that at least two brain regions -- the centers of the sense of smell and the hippocampus, the seat of learning and memory -- grow new neurons throughout life.

Protein Complex NCOR1/2 regulates memory and has revealed an unexpected connection between the lateral hypothalamus and the hippocampus.

Astrocyte are characteristic star-shaped glial cells in the brain and spinal cord. They perform many functions, including biochemical support of endothelial cells that form the blood–brain barrier, provision of nutrients to the nervous tissue, maintenance of extracellular ion balance and a role in the repair and scarring process of the brain and spinal cord following traumatic injuries. The proportion of astrocytes in the brain is not well defined; depending on the counting technique used, studies have found that the astrocyte proportion varies by region and ranges from 20% to 40% of all glia. Research since the mid-1990s has shown that astrocytes propagate intercellular Ca2+ waves over long distances in response to stimulation, and, similar to neurons, release transmitters (called gliotransmitters) in a Ca2+-dependent manner. Data suggest that astrocytes also signal to neurons through Ca2+-dependent release of glutamate. Such discoveries have made astrocytes an important area of research within the field of neuroscience. Adult astrocytes are key to learning and memory. Researchers have discovered that astrocytes, the most abundant cells in the brain, play a direct role in the regulation of adult neuronal circuits involved in learning and memory.

The mechanisms for pattern completion and pattern separation in the hippocampus CA3 region weighs the evidence and the whole region comes to a decision and then sends the decision out to the rest of the brain.

Region I of Hippocampus Proper (wiki)

Uncinate Fasciculus is a white matter tract in the human brain that connects parts of the limbic system such as the hippocampus and amygdala in the temporal lobe with frontal ones such as the orbitofrontal cortex.

Parahippocampal Gyrus is a grey matter cortical region of the brain that surrounds the hippocampus and is part of the limbic system. This region plays an important role in memory encoding and retrieval. It has been involved in some cases of hippocampal sclerosis.

Dentate Gyrus is part of the hippocampus and/or hippocampal formation, as some texts include the latter structure in the former or vice versa. The dentate gyrus is thought to contribute to the formation of new episodic memories, the spontaneous exploration of novel environments, and other functions. It is notable as being one of a select few brain structures currently known to have high rates of neurogenesis in adult rats (other sites include the olfactory bulb and cerebellum).

Neocortex - Brain Knowledge - Neurons (brain)

Amygdala are two almond-shaped groups of nuclei located deep and medially within the temporal lobes of the brain in complex vertebrates, including humans. Shown in research to perform a primary role in the processing of memory, decision-making, and emotional reactions, the amygdalae are considered part of the limbic system. Gaze Detection - Oxytocin.

Serotonin helps to speed Learning. And around 90% of serotonin is in the gut. You are what you eat.

Temporal Lobe is one of the four major lobes of the cerebral cortex in the brain of mammals. The temporal lobe is located beneath the lateral fissure on both cerebral hemispheres of the mammalian brain. The temporal lobe is involved in processing sensory input into derived meanings for the appropriate retention of visual memory, language comprehension, and emotion association.

Rhythm of Memory. Inhibited neurons set the tempo for memory processes. Researchers have suspected for a long time that frequencies over 30 Hertz coordinate the synchronous cooperation of various cell networks of the brain. But how do these signals, which are known as gamma waves, occur in several places simultaneously? When they are roused from their rest, the surrounding cells are receptive to certain information. Then they are stimulated to develop a common potential for action, so that a signal can be transmitted to other neurons. This in turn can be measured electrophysiologically as a discharge of gamma waves. The interesting aspect of this is that the micro-circuits do not interfere with one another, but can store or access various information in parallel, such as the attribute form and color of an object. This allows simultaneous, parallel processing and the storage of information. The more we know about the billions of nerve cells in the brain, the less their interaction appears spontaneous and random. Posterior Cingulate Cortex.

Synchronized Brain Waves: Old Brains Come Uncoupled in Sleep: Slow Wave-Spindle Synchrony, Brain Atrophy, and Forgetting. During deep sleep, some people could have less coordination between two brain waves that are important to saving new memories. When those two brain waves were perfectly coinciding, that's when you seem to get this fantastic transfer of memory within the brain from short term vulnerable storage sites to these more permanent, safe, long-term storage sites. If it's 50 milliseconds too early, or 50 milliseconds too late, this storing mechanism actually doesn't work. People with more atrophy, the area of the brain involved in producing deep sleep, had less rhythm in the brain.

Neural Network (ai)

Neuroscientists Construct First Whole-brain Map Showing Electrical Connections Key to Forming Memories. Alignment between brain regions tends to strengthen with slow waves of activity but weaken at higher frequencies. Low-frequency connectivity of a brain region was associated with increased neural activity at that site. This suggests that, for someone to form new memories, two functions must happen simultaneously: brain regions must individually process a stimulus, and then those regions must communicate with each other at low frequencies.

Tickling the Brain with Electrical Stimulation Improves Memory. Low-intensity electrical stimulation on the brain's lateral temporal cortex in the regions on the sides of the head by the temples and ears, can improve verbal short-term memory. (Temporal Lobe).

Cognitive Load (working memory)

A Brain wide Chemical Signal that Enhances Memory

Specific Neurons that map memories now identified in the human brain. Neuroengineers have found the first evidence that individual neurons in the human brain target specific memories during recall. Columbia biomedical engineers correlate neuronal activity in the human entorhinal cortex.

Protein Kinase B or AKT, is a serine/threonine-specific protein kinase that plays a key role in multiple cellular processes such as glucose metabolism, apoptosis, cell proliferation, transcription and cell migration. Akt1 is involved in cellular survival pathways, by inhibiting apoptotic processes. Akt1 is also able to induce protein synthesis pathways, and is therefore a key signaling protein in the cellular pathways that lead to skeletal muscle hypertrophy, and general tissue growth. Akt2 is an important signaling molecule in the insulin signaling pathway. It is required to induce glucose transport. The role of Akt3 is less clear, though it appears to be predominantly expressed in the brain. AKT has more recently been identified as a key player in promoting "synaptic plasticity," the brain's ability to strengthen cellular connections in response to experience. DNA.

Protein Kinase C Zeta Type is thought to be responsible for maintaining long-term memories in the brain.

Long-Lasting Brain Proteins offer clues to how Memories Last a Lifetime. In the tiny brain space where two nerve cells meet, chemical and electric signals shuttle back and forth, a messaging system that ebbs and flows in those synaptic spaces, sometimes in ways that scientists believe aid and abet learning and memory. But because most of the proteins found in those synapses die and renew themselves so rapidly, scientists have had a hard time pinning down how synapses are stable enough to explain the kind of learning and memory that lasts a lifetime. 164 proteins within synapses in mice that outlast neighboring proteins by weeks and months. These stable proteins, they say, may be part of the molecular machinery that governs long-term memory and learning -- as well as loss of memory. Computer Memory - Machine Code.

Changes to RNA aid the process of Learning and Memory. When the researchers injected knockout mice with a virus carrying Ythdf1, their performance on memory and learning tasks improved dramatically. RNA carries pieces of instructions encoded in DNA to coordinate the production of proteins that will carry out the work to be done in a cell. But the process isn't always straightforward. Chemical modifications to DNA or RNA can alter the way genes are expressed without changing the actual genetic sequences. These epigenetic or epitranscriptome changes can affect many biological processes such as immune system response, nervous system development, various human cancers and even obesity. Most of these changes happen through methylation, a process in which chemical molecules called methyl groups are added to a DNA or RNA molecule. Proteins that add a methyl group are known as "writers," and proteins that can remove the methyl groups are "erasers." For the methylation to have a biological effect, there must be "reader" proteins that can identify the change and bind to it. The most common modification on messenger RNA in mammals is called N6-methyladenosine (m6A). It is widespread in the nervous system. It helps coordinate several neural functions, working through reader proteins in the YTH family of proteins. Ythdf1 is a member of the YTH family that specifically recognizes m6A, it plays an important role in the process of learning and memory formation. Using CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing tools to knock out Ythdf1in mice, they demonstrated how it promotes translation of m6A-modified messenger RNA (mRNA) in response to learning activities and direct nerve cell stimulus.

Using Virtual Reality to Identify Brain Areas Involved in Memory. Different areas of the hippocampus are activated for different types of memories.

Acetylcholine is an organic chemical that functions in the brain and body of many types of animals, including humans, as a neurotransmitter—a chemical released by nerve cells to send signals to other cells. Its name is derived from its chemical structure: it is an ester of acetic acid and choline. Parts in the body that use or are affected by acetylcholine are referred to as cholinergic. Substances that interfere with acetylcholine activity are called Anticholinergics, which is a substance that blocks the neurotransmitter acetylcholine in the central and the peripheral nervous system. Anticholinergics inhibit parasympathetic nerve impulses by selectively blocking the binding of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine to its receptor in nerve cells. The nerve fibers of the parasympathetic system are responsible for the involuntary movement of smooth muscles present in the gastrointestinal tract, urinary tract, lungs, and many other parts of the body. Anticholinergics are divided into three categories in accordance with their specific targets in the central and/or peripheral nervous system: antimuscarinic agents, ganglionic blockers, and neuromuscular blockers.

Engram - Memory Trace - Levels of Processing

Neurons in Brain regions that store memory can form networks in the absence of Synaptic Activity. Results imply that assembly of neural circuits in areas required for cognition is largely controlled by intrinsic genetic programs that operate independently of the external world.

Biologists 'transfer' a memory through RNA injection

Reading Transforms Brain Networks (words and thoughts)

Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence (Body Smart) - Spatial intelligence (3D Space Smart)

CREB is a cellular transcription factor. It binds to certain DNA sequences called cAMP response elements (CRE), thereby increasing or decreasing the transcription of the genes. CREB was first described in 1987 as a cAMP-responsive transcription factor regulating the somatostatin gene.

CAMP Response Element is the response element for CREB which contains the highly conserved nucleotide sequence, 5'-TGACGTCA-3’. CRE sites are typically found upstream of genes, within the promoter or enhancer regions. There are approximately 750,000 palindromic and half-site CREs in the human genome. However, the majority of these sites remain unbound due to cytosine methylation which physically obstructs protein binding.

Transcription Factor is a protein that controls the rate of transcription of genetic information from DNA to messenger RNA, by binding to a specific DNA sequence. The function of TFs is to regulate - turn on and off - genes in order to make sure that they are expressed in the right cell at the right time and in the right amount throughout the life of the cell and the organism. Groups of TFs function in a coordinated fashion to direct cell division, cell growth, and cell death throughout life; cell migration and organization (body plan) during embryonic development; and intermittently in response to signals from outside the cell, such as a hormone. There are up to 2600 TFs in the human genome. TFs work alone or with other proteins in a complex, by promoting (as an activator), or blocking (as a repressor) the recruitment of RNA polymerase (the enzyme that performs the transcription of genetic information from DNA to RNA) to specific genes.

Activator is a protein (transcription factor) that increases gene transcription of a gene or set of genes. Most activators are DNA-binding proteins that bind to enhancers or promoter-proximal elements. Most activators function by binding sequence-specifically to a DNA site located in or near a promoter and making protein–protein interactions with the general transcription machinery (RNA polymerase and general transcription factors), thereby facilitating the binding of the general transcription machinery to the promoter. The DNA site bound by the activator is referred to as an "activator site". The part of the activator that makes protein–protein interactions with the general transcription machinery is referred to as an "activating region". The part of the general transcription machinery that makes protein–protein interactions with the activator is referred to as an "activation target".

Repressor is a DNA- or RNA-binding protein that inhibits the expression of one or more genes by binding to the operator or associated silencers. A DNA-binding repressor blocks the attachment of RNA polymerase to the promoter, thus preventing transcription of the genes into messenger RNA. An RNA-binding repressor binds to the mRNA and prevents translation of the mRNA into protein. This blocking of expression is called repression.

Are memories stored as protein signatures? Is the Nogo Receptor-1 (NgR1) in brain regions linked to memory formation, storage, and the formation of lasting memories?

Memory reconsolidation and extinction have distinct temporal and biochemical signatures. J Neurosci. 2004 May 19;24(20):4787-95. Suzuki A1, Josselyn SA, Frankland PW, Masushige S, Silva AJ, Kida S.

Signal coupling between neuron-glia super-network may lead to improved memory formation. Scientists have revealed glial cells act as amplifiers for synaptic signals and artificial control of the glial state can potentially be used for enhanced memory function of the brain.

Memory Improving Skills - Memory Tips - Good Memory Techniques

"There should be a memory trick for remembering memory tricks."

Mnemonic is a way of aiding the memory and recall using initials or letters, or memorable phrases, rhymes, acronyms, numbers, colors, or other forms of information that makes remembering easier. Mnemonics make use of elaborative encoding, retrieval cues, and imagery as specific tools to encode any given information in a way that allows for efficient storage and retrieval. Mnemonics aid original information in becoming associated with something more accessible or meaningful—which, in turn, provides better retention of the information. Mnemonics can be used for other types of information and in visual or kinesthetic forms. 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. Mnemonics is any learning technique that aids information retention in the human memory. Mantra - Word Games.

Acronyms is a word or name formed as an abbreviation from the initial components in a phrase or a word, usually individual letters. EGBDF Every Good Boy Does Fine, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour or Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge.

Acrostics is a poem or other form of writing in which the first letter or syllable, or word of each line or paragraph, or other recurring feature in the text, spells out a word, message or the alphabet. Acrostics.

One Key to Remembering Someone's Name is making a connection or visual association between their name and something that you can easily remember. To get an individual's name to go hand in hand with their face is to say their name aloud in conversation. Another way of remembering peoples names is to visualizing their names written across their foreheads after being introduced.

Listening - Comprehension - Memory Flaws

Chunking in psychology is a process by which individual pieces of information are bound together into a meaningful whole.
Break things down into more Manageable Chunks.

Loci is a method of memory enhancement which uses visualizations with the use of spatial memory, familiar information about one's environment, to quickly and efficiently recall information. Imagine yourself walking through your Memory Palace and telling a Story as you go from room to room or go from place to place, with each area you visit having a unique memory.

Mnemonic Peg System is a memory aid that works by creating mental associations between two concrete objects in a one-to-one fashion that will later be applied to to-be-remembered information. Typically this involves linking nouns to numbers and it is common practice to choose a noun that rhymes with the number it is associated with. These will be the pegs of the system. These associations have to be memorized one time and can be applied repeatedly to new information that needs to be memorize.

Imagining an action-consequence relationship can boost memory. The next time you hear about the possibility of rain on the weather forecast, try imagining the umbrella tip being lodged in your home's door lock, blocking you from locking it. This mental exercise could prevent you from leaving home without an umbrella.

Encoding allows the perceived item of use or interest to be converted into a construct that can be stored within the brain and recalled later from short-term or long-term memory. Working memory stores information for immediate use or manipulation which is aided through hooking onto previously archived items already present in the long-term memory of an individual.

Memory Techniques
Methods for improving Memory
Memory Improvement Tips
Memorizing like the Pros
Memoryzine
Memory Key
Memory Techniques
Memory Improvement Course
How To Improve Your Memory (youtube)
Joshua Foer: Feats of Memory anyone can do (youtube)
Memory Tips (PDF)
Memory Improvement (amazon)
Cognitive Fun

Phonics (reading) - Sleep Learning

Retrieval Practice - Long Term Memory

Visual Cortex - Sight - Spatial Intelligence - Information Visualization - Mind Maps.

Mnemonist refers to an individual with the ability to remember and recall unusually long lists of data, such as unfamiliar names, lists of numbers, entries in books, etc.

Memory Consolidation

Memory Consolidation is a category of processes that stabilize a memory trace after its initial acquisition. Consolidation is distinguished into two specific processes, synaptic consolidation, which is synonymous with late-phase long-term potentiation and occurs within the first few hours after learning, and systems consolidation, where hippocampus-dependent memories become independent of the hippocampus over a period of weeks to years. Recently, a third process has become the focus of research, reconsolidation, in which previously-consolidated memories can be made labile again through reactivation of the memory trace. Organize.

Memorization is the process of committing something to memory. Mental process undertaken in order to store in memory for later recall items such as experiences, names, appointments, addresses, telephone numbers, lists, stories, poems, pictures, maps, diagrams, facts, music or other visual, auditory, or tactical information.

Mnemonic Major System is a mnemonic technique used to aid in memorizing numbers. The system works by converting numbers into consonant sounds, then into words by adding vowels. The system works on the principle that images can be remembered more easily than numbers. Number Associations.

Memory Champion Teaches You How to Memorize Anything (youtube)

Hypnosis

The Molecular Biology of Memory Storage: A Dialogue Between Genes and Synapses

To Refresh My Memory or to Refresh Someone else's Memory is to help someone remember a moment in time by giving them the details of the event in order to help Jog their Memory and help them to recall the event more clearly.

Spaced Repetition

Always review what you have learned 10 minutes after learning, 1 day after learning, 1 week after learning, 1 month after learning and 6 months after learning. People who are given information and then tell someone about it immediately, recall the details better and longer by telling someone the particulars of what they have learned, as opposed to just simply re-reading the textbook or class notes and studying it again later. Reviewing and replaying what you have learned strengthens memories. Writing out some questions for yourself about the information, then later answering them yourself, you are more likely to remember the information. Visual cue's also improve memories. Routines - Retrieval Based Learning.

Spaced Repetition is a learning technique that incorporates increasing intervals of time between subsequent review of previously learned material in order to exploit the psychological spacing effect. Alternative names include spaced rehearsal, expanding rehearsal, graduated intervals, repetition spacing, repetition scheduling, spaced retrieval and expanded retrieval. Episodic Memory - Forgetting.

Spacing Effect is the phenomenon whereby learning is greater when studying is spread out over time, as opposed to studying the same amount of content in a single session. That is, it is better to use spaced presentation rather than massed presentation. Practically, this effect suggests that "cramming" (intense, last-minute studying) the night before an exam is not likely to be as effective as studying at intervals in a longer time frame. Important to note, however, is that the benefit of spaced presentations does not appear at short retention intervals, in which massed presentations tend to lead to better memory performance. This effect is a desirable difficulty; it challenges the learner but leads to better learning in the long-run.

N-Back task is a continuous performance task that is commonly used as an assessment in cognitive neuroscience to measure a part of working memory and working memory capacity. The subject is presented with a sequence of stimuli, and the task consists of indicating when the current stimulus matches the one from n steps earlier in the sequence. The load factor n can be adjusted to make the task more or less difficult. To clarify, the visual n-back test is similar to the classic memory game of "Concentration". However, instead of different items that are in a fixed location on the game board, there is only one item, that appears in different positions on the game board during each turn. "1-N" means that you have to remember the position of the item, one turn back. "2-N" means that you have to remember the position of the item two turns back, and so on.

Dual n-Back dual-task paradigm is when two independent sequences are presented simultaneously, typically using different modalities of stimuli, such as one auditory and one visual. The "dual n-back" is a memory sequence test in which people must remember a constantly updating sequence of visual and auditory stimuli. but instead of just recalling sounds and colors, you have to remember the current sequence and the one a few rounds back.

Dual-Task Paradigm is a procedure in experimental (neuro) psychology that requires an individual to perform two tasks simultaneously, in order to compare performance with single-task conditions. When performance scores on one and/or both tasks are lower when they are done simultaneously compared to separately, these two tasks interfere with each other, and it is assumed that both tasks compete for the same class of information processing resources in the brain. For instance, reciting poetry while riding a bike are two tasks that can be performed just as well separately as simultaneously. However, reciting poetry while writing an essay should deteriorate performance on at least one of these two tasks, because they interfere with each other. The interpretation of dual-task paradigms follows the view that human processing resources are limited and shareable and that they can be subdivided into several classes. 

Eideticapp - Graduated Interval Recall (youtube) 

Practice is to Perform an activity or exercise a Skill repeatedly or regularly in order to improve or maintain one's Proficiency.

10,000 Hour Rule - Rote Learning - Ear Worms (music)

Memorizing pi doesn’t have to be done through numbers—it can also be done through words. This sentence "How I wish I could calculate pi" gives you pi to seven places. Just count the number of letters in each word—3, 1, 4, 1, 5…—and you get 3.141592. World record holder Chao Lu has recited it to 67,890 digits without an error. Sasha Volokh composed a passage that takes pi out to 167 digits. Mike Keith’s Cadaeic Cadenza takes it out to nearly 4000 digits (the last line is “I end, whispering ad infinitums").

Super-Sized Memory is Trainable and Long Lasting. The ability to perform astonishing feats of memory, such as remembering lists of several dozen words, can be learned, researchers report. After 40 days using a strategic memory improvement technique, individuals who had typical memory skills at the start and no previous memory training more than doubled their memory capacity, going from recalling an average of 26 words from a list of 72 to remembering 62. Four months later, recall performance remained high.

Training and Plasticity of Working Memory. Working memory (WM) capacity predicts performance in a wide range of cognitive tasks. Although WM capacity has been viewed as a constant trait, recent studies suggest that it can be improved by adaptive and extended training. This training is associated with changes in brain activity in frontal and parietal cortex and basal ganglia, as well as changes in dopamine receptor density. Transfer of the training effects to non-trained WM tasks is consistent with the notion of training-induced plasticity in a common neural network for WM. The observed training effects suggest that WM training could be used as a remediating intervention for individuals for whom low WM capacity is a limiting factor for academic performance or in everyday life.

Keeping Your Memory Sharp (youtube) - Hermann Ebbinghaus (wiki)

One-month worth of memory training results in 30 minutes. A new study shows that when participants are taught an effective strategy for a working memory training task, they quickly improve their performance in the same way as those who have undergone typical working memory training without strategy instructions for a month or longer. The significance of strategies was evident also in the controls who did not receive any strategy advice: use of self-generated strategies was associated with better working memory task performance at post-test.

Attention Restoration Theory (focus) - Flash Cards - Contests

If you are going to do memory building exercises and memory tests then use things that are relevant to you and your life. Use relevant numbers and make a puzzle that means something. Brain Games (education toys)

Testing Effect is the finding that long-term memory is increased when some of the learning period is devoted to retrieving the to-be-remembered information through testing with proper feedback. The effect is also sometimes referred to as retrieval practice, practice testing, or test-enhanced learning.

Memory Improvement Tips - Processing Speed.

Quizzes improve academic performance. Students who are quizzed over class material at least once a week tend to perform better on midterm and final exams compared to students who did not take quizzes, according to a new meta-analysis. The researchers found in addition to frequency, immediate feedback from instructors also seemed to positively impact student performance.

Location Effect - State-Dependent Memory

Location Effect is when you sometimes have to return to the room where you were thinking of something in order to remember what your were thinking about. Walking through a doorway sometimes causes forgetting. Doorway Effect is the way our memory sometimes changes when we enter a new room. Sometimes our memories can be tied to a particular place and time. Memories can come flooding back when we visit places from your past.

Recognition Memory is a subcategory of declarative memory. Essentially, recognition memory is the ability to recognize previously encountered events, objects, or people. When the previously experienced event is re-experienced, this environmental content is matched to stored memory representations, eliciting matching signals.

Cue-Dependent Forgetting is the failure to recall information without memory cues. The term either pertains to semantic cues, state-dependent cues or context-dependent cues. Triggers.

Memory Cue is any type of stimulus that helps to jog your memory or help you recall information that is stored in your memory.

Semantic Cues refer to the meaning in language that assists in comprehending texts, including words, speech, signs, symbols, and other meaning-bearing forms. Semantic cues involve the learners' prior knowledge of language, text, and visual media, and their prior life experiences.

State-Dependent Cues are governed by the state of mind and being at the time of encoding. The emotional or mental state of the person, such as being inebriated, drugged, upset, anxious or happy are key cues.

Context-Dependent Memory is the phenomenon of the environmental reinstatement effect. This effect occurs when the reinstatement or revisiting of an environmental context acts as a cues for past memories related to that particular environmental context.

Context-Dependent Memory is the improved recall of specific episodes or information when the context present at encoding and retrieval are the same.

Reinstatement effects refers to a better memory when the learning environment is reinstated during a test, than when testing occurs in a different environment.

Encoding Specificity Principle is the general principle that matching the encoding contexts of information at recall assists in the retrieval of episodic memories. It provides a framework for understanding how the conditions present while encoding information relate to memory and recall of that information.

Recency Effect is the tendency to remember the most recently presented information best. For example, if you are trying to memorize a list of items, the recency effect means you are more likely to recall the items from the list that you studied last.

The Influence of Location and Visual Features on Visual Object Memory.

Sensory Cues is a statistic or signal that can be extracted from the sensory input by a perceiver, that indicates the state of some property of the world that the perceiver is interested in perceiving.

Cicero is a mnemonic technique, based off of the method of loci, which allows memorization of sequential information.

State-Dependent Memory is the phenomenon through which memory retrieval is most efficient when an individual is in the same state of consciousness as they were when the memory was formed. The term is often used to describe memory retrieval while in states of consciousness produced by psychoactive drugs – most commonly, alcohol, but has implications for mood or non-substance induced states of consciousness as well.

When remembering the details of an event, some people remember more details when they close their eyes.

Shower Effect is when ideas and memories are triggered by an event, like when taking a warm shower, exercising or driving. Things that make us feel good and relaxed can give us an increased dopamine flow, which can increase the chances of having good ideas. Breathing.

Artists showed lower activity in part of their frontal lobes called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during improvisation, and increased activity in another area, called the medial prefrontal cortex. The areas that were found to be ‘deactivated’ are associated with regulating other brain functions.

Sleeping and Memory

Sleep and Memory is the cognitive process whereby experiences, learning and recognition are recalled. Memory "formation" is a product of brain plasticity, the structural changes within synapses that create associations between stimuli. Stimuli are encoded within milliseconds; however, the long-term maintenance of memories can take additional minutes, days, or even years to fully consolidate and become a stable memory (more resistant to change or interference). Therefore, the formation of a specific memory occurs rapidly, but the evolution of a memory is often an ongoing process. Memory processes have been shown to be stabilized and enhanced (sped up and/or integrated) by nocturnal sleep and even daytime naps. Certain sleep stages are noted to improve an individual's memory, although this is task specific. Generally, declarative memories are enhanced by slow-wave sleep, while non-declarative memories are enhanced by rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, although there are some inconsistencies among experimental results. Sleep progresses in a cyclical fashion through five stages. Four of these stages are collectively referred to as non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep whereas the last cycle is a rapid eye movement period. A cycle takes approximately 90–110 minutes to complete. Wakefulness is found through EEG measures to be characterized by beta waves which are the highest in frequency and lowest in amplitude and tend to move inconsistently due to the vast amount of stimuli a person encounters while awake. Pre-sleep is the period of decreased perceptual awareness where brain activity is characterized by alpha waves which are more rhythmic, higher in amplitude and lower in frequency compared to beta waves. Stage one is characterized by light sleep and lasts roughly 10 minutes. Brain waves gradually transition to theta waves. Stage two also contains theta waves; however, random short bursts of increased frequency called sleep spindles are a defining characteristic of this stage. Stage three and four are very similar and together are considered to be "deep sleep". In these stages brain activity transitions to delta waves which are the lowest in frequency and highest in amplitude. These two stages combined are also called Slow wave sleep (SWS). Stage five, REM sleep, is one of the most interesting stages as brain wave patterns are similar to those seen in relaxed wakefulness. This is referred to as "active sleep" and is the period when most dreaming occurs. REM sleep is also thought to play a role in the cognitive development of infants and children as they spend much more of their sleep in REM periods opposed to adults. During the first half of the night, the largest portion of sleep is spent as SWS, but as the night progresses SWS stages decrease in length while REM stages increase. Stabilization vs. enhancement. Stabilization of a memory is the anchoring of a memory in place, in which a weak connection is established. Stabilization of procedural memories can even occur during waking hours, suggesting that specific non-declarative tasks are enhanced in the absence of sleep. When memories are said to be enhanced, however, the connection is strengthened by rehearsal as well as connecting it to other related memories thereby making the retrieval more efficient. Whereas stabilization of non-declarative memories can be seen to occur during a wakeful state, enhancement of these sensory and motor memories has most been found to occur during nocturnal sleep. Brain activity that occurs during sleep is assessed in two ways: Use-dependency, and Experience-dependency. Use-dependent brain activity is a result of the neuronal usage that occurred during the previous waking hours. Essentially it is neuronal regeneration, activity that occurs whether you have learnt anything new or not. Experience-dependent brain activity is a result of a new situation, environment, or learned task or fact that has taken place in the pre-sleep period. This is the type of brain activity that denotes memory consolidation/enhancement. Methods of measuring memory. Behavioral measures. A self-ordered pointing task is a task of memory where a participant is presented with a number of images (or words) which are arranged on a display. Several trials are presented, each with a different arrangement and containing some of the previous words or images. The task for the participant is to point to a word or image they had not previously pointed to in other trials. In a recency discrimination task participants are shown two trials of image presentation and then a third trial containing a mixture of images from the first and second trial. Their task is to determine whether the image was from the most recent presentation or the previous one. In a route retrieval task spatial learning occurs where a participant virtual tours a particular place (such as a town or maze). Participants are asked to virtually tour the same thing at a later time while brain imaging is used to measure activity. A paired word associative task consists of two phases. During the first phase (acquisition), the responses of the paired-associate task are learned and become recallable. In the second phase (associative phase), the subject learns to pair each response to a separate stimulus. For example, a visual cue would provide information as to what words must be recalled after the stimulus and words are removed. In a mirror tracing task participants are asked to trace several figures as fast and as accurately as possible which they can only see in a mirror. Speed is recorded as well as how much they deviate from the original image (accuracy). In the Morris water maze task rats are used to test their spatial learning in two kinds of conditions: spatial and nonspatial. In the spatial condition, a platform is hidden by using murky water and in the nonspatial condition, the platform is visible. The spatial condition the rat must rely on their spatial memory to find the platform whereas the nonspatial condition is used for comparison purposes. A rat undergoing a Morris water navigation test. The serial reaction time task (SRT task) is a task whereby subjects face a computer screen where several markers are displayed that are spatially related to relevant markers on their keyboard. The subjects are asked to react as fast and accurately as possible to the appearance of a stimulus below one of the markers. Subjects can be trained on the task with either explicit instructions (e.g. there are colour sequences presented which must be learned) or implicit ones (e.g. the experimentor does not mention colour sequences, thus leaving the subjects to believe that they are taking place in a speed test). When this task is used in sleep studies, after a time delay, subjects are tested for retention. In the reach-to-grasp task rodents learned a skilled forelimb task. Sleep improved movement speed with preservation of accuracy. These offline improvements were linked to both replay of task-related ensembles during non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep and temporal shifts that more tightly bound motor cortical ensembles to movements. In a neuroprosthetic task rodents trained to perform a simple brain–machine interface task in which the activity of a set of motor cortical units was used to control a mechanical arm attached to a feeding spout. After successful learning, task-related units specifically experienced increased locking and coherency to slow-wave activity (SWA) during sleep. The time spent in SWA predicted the performance gains upon awakening. In a block tapping task participants are asked to type a sequence of five numbers with their dominant or non-dominant hand (specified in experiment), for an allotted period of time, followed by a rest period. A number of these trials occur and the computer records the number of sequences completed to assess speed and the error rate to assess accuracy. A finger tapping test is commonly used when a pure motor task is needed. A finger tapping test requires subjects to continuously press four keys (typically numerical keys) on a keypad with their nondominant hand in a sequence, such as 4-3-1-2-4, for a given amount of time. Testing is done by determining the number of errors made. Temporal memory. Temporal memory consists of remembering when a specific memory has occurred. Measure the brain's response to verbal learning following sleep deprivation. An fMRI recorded brain activity during a verbal learning task of participants either having a normal night of sleep or those deprived of 34.7 (± 1.2) hours of sleep. The task alternated between a baseline condition of determining whether nouns were upper or lower case and an experimental condition of memorizing a list of nouns. The results of the study indicate that performance is significantly worse on free recall of the list of nouns when sleep deprived (an average of 2.8 ± 2 words) compared to having a normal night of sleep (4.7 ± 4 words). In terms of brain regions activated, the left prefrontal cortex, premotor cortex, and temporal lobes were found to be activated during the task in the rested state and discrete regions of the prefrontal cortex were even more activated during the task in the sleep deprived state. As well, the bilateral parietal lobe, left middle frontal gyrus, and right interior frontal gyrus were found to be activated for those sleep deprived. The implication of these findings are that the brain can initially compensate for the effects of sleep deprivation while maintaining partially intact performance, which declines with an increasing time-on-task. This initial compensation may be found in the bilateral regions of both frontal and parietal lobes and the activation of the prefrontal cortex is significantly correlated with sleepiness. Cognitive performance. Cerebral activation during performance on three cognitive tasks (verbal learning, arithmetic, and divided attention) were compared after both normal sleep and 35 hours of total sleep deprivation (TSD) in a study by Drummond and Brown. Use of fMRI measured these differences in the brain. Slow wave sleep (SWS) has been often associated with successful performance in declarative memory recall tasks. For example, declarative and procedural memory recall tasks applied over early and late nocturnal sleep, as well as wakefulness controlled conditions, have been shown that declarative memory improves more during early sleep (dominated by SWS) while procedural memory during late sleep (dominated by REM sleep). Based on targeted memory reactivation (TMR) that use associated memory cues for triggering memory traces during sleep, recent studies have been reassuring the importance of nocturnal SWS for the formation of persistent memories in neocortical networks, as well as highlighting the possibility of increasing people’s memory performance at declarative recalls. Increased slow activity and sleep time spent in SWS have been also related to better performance in implicit learning. The brain is an ever-changing, plastic, model of information sharing and processing. In order for the brain to incorporate new experiences into a refined schema it has to undergo specific modifications to consolidate and assimilate all new information. Synaptic plasticity can be described as the changing in strength between two related neurons. Neuroplasticity is most clearly seen in the instances of REM sleep deprivation during brain maturation. Regional brain measurements in neo-natal REM sleep deprived rats displayed a significant size reduction in areas such as the cerebral cortex and the brain stem. The rats were deprived during critical periods after birth and thus anatomical size reduction is observed. Using a pursuit task (used to test visuomotor capabilities) in combination with an fMRI, Maquet et al., 2003, found that increases in activation were seen in the supplementary eye field and right dentate nucleus of subjects who were allowed to sleep as compared to sleep deprived individuals. The right superior temporal sulcus was also noticed to have higher activation levels. When functional connectivity was analyzed it was found that the dentate nucleus was more closely involved with the functions of the superior temporal sulcus. The results suggest that performance on the pursuit task relies on the subject's ability to comprehend appropriate movement patterns in order for recreation of the optimal movements. Sleep deprivation was found to interrupt the slow processes that lead to learning of this procedural skill and alter connectivity changes that would have normally been seen after a night of rest. Neuroplasticity has been thoroughly researched over the past few decades and results have shown that significant changes that occur in our cortical processing areas have the power to modulate neuronal firing to both new and previously experienced stimuli. Neurotransmitter regulation. The changes in quantity of a certain neurotransmitter as well as how the post-synaptic terminal responds to this change are underlying mechanisms of brain plasticity. During sleep there are remarkable changes in modulatory neurotransmitters throughout the brain. Acetylcholine is an excitatory neurotransmitter that is seen to increase to near waking levels during REM sleep while compared to lower levels during slow-wave sleep. Evidence has shown that functioning of the hippocampus dependent memory system (episodic memory and autobiographical memory) is directly affected by cholinergic changes throughout the wake-sleep cycle. High levels of ACh would promote information attained during wakefulness to be stored in the hippocampus. This is accomplished by suppressing previous excitatory connections while facilitating encoding without interference from previously stored information. During NREM sleep, and especially slow-wave sleep, low levels of Ach would cause the release of this suppression and allow for spontaneous recovery of hippocampal neurons resulting in the facilitation of memory consolidation. Gene expression. Recently, approximately one hundred genes whose brain expression is increased during periods of sleep have been found. A similar number of genes were found to promote gene expression during wakefulness. These sets of genes are related to different functional groups which may promote different cellular processes. The genes expressed during wakefulness may perform numerous duties including energy allocation, synaptic excitatory neurotransmission, high transcriptional activity and synaptic potentiation in learning of new information. There was a sleep related increase in processes that involve the synthesis and maintenance of the synapse. Such processes include membrane trafficking, synaptic vesicle recycling, myelin structural protein formation, and cholesterol and protein synthesis. In a different study it was found that there was a sleep related increase in calmodulin-dependent protein kinase IV that has been specifically involved in synaptic depression and in the consolidation of long-term memory. These findings encourage an association between sleep and different aspects of neural plasticity. Much like motor skills learning, verbal skills learning increased after a daytime nap period. Shift workers who work throughout the night have been known to have far more accidents as opposed to daytime workers. The positive correlation between sleep and memory breaks down with aging. In general, older adults suffer from decreased sleep efficiency. The amount of time and density of REM sleep and SWS decreases with age. Consequently, it is common that the elderly receive no increase in memory after a period of rest. Patients with Alzheimer's disease experience more sleep disruption than the healthy elderly. Studies have shown that in patients with Alzheimer's disease, there is a decrease in fast spindles. It has also been reported that spindle density the night before a memory test correlate positively with accuracy on an immediate recall task. A positive correlation between time spent in SWS and next day autobiographical memory recall has also been reported in Alzheimer's patients.

Physical Exercise Improves Memory - Brain Foods - Smart Drugs

Sleeping (Knowledge) - Awareness (perception) - Theories and Processes

Memory Vulnerabilities (false memories) - Information Overload

Learning Methods - 10,000 Hours

Evidence that human brains replay our waking experiences while we sleep. When we fall asleep, our brains are not merely offline, they're busy organizing new memories -- and now, scientists have gotten a glimpse of the process. Researchers report the first direct evidence that human brains replay waking experiences while asleep, seen in the brains of two participants who had been implanted with microelectrode arrays as part of a brain-computer interface pilot clinical trial.

Sleep Learning

Sleep-Learning is an attempt to convey information to a sleeping person, typically by playing a sound recording to them while they sleep.

Learning Styles - Mantras Before Sleep - Hypnosis - Memory Consolidation

Sometimes if you learn something right before go to sleep, you can improve your memory of that particular information. So there might be a particular phase of sleep that will allow you to take in certain auditory information.

Learning New Vocabulary during Deep Sleep. Researchers showed that we can acquire the vocabulary of a new language during distinct phases of slow-wave sleep and that the sleep-learned vocabulary could be retrieved unconsciously following waking. Memory formation appeared to be mediated by the same brain structures that also mediate wake vocabulary learning. Wake-learned information undergoing a recapitulation by replay in the sleeping brain. The replay during sleep strengthens the still fragile memory traces und embeds the newly acquired information in the preexisting store of knowledge. Not all memory formation requires consciousness. Learning Styles.

Sound Stimulation at low intensities during Slow-Wave Sleep, synchronized to the rhythm of the slow brain oscillations of people who are Sleeping, enhances and boosts their memory. Meditation.

Sound waves boost older adults' memory, deep sleep. Pink Noise synced to brain waves deepens sleep and triples memory scores in older adults. Pink Noise is a signal or process with a frequency spectrum such that the power spectral density (energy or power per frequency interval) is inversely proportional to the frequency of the signal. In pink noise, each octave (halving/doubling in frequency) carries an equal amount of noise energy. The name arises from the pink appearance of visible light with this power spectrum. Within the scientific literature the term pink noise is sometimes used a little more loosely to refer to any noise with a power spectral density of the form where f is frequency, and 0 < α < 2, with exponent α usually close to 1. These pink-like noises occur widely in nature and are a source of considerable interest in many fields. The distinction between the noises with α near 1 and those with a broad range of α approximately corresponds to a much more basic distinction. The former (narrow sense) generally come from condensed-matter systems in quasi-equilibrium, as discussed below. The latter (broader sense) generally correspond to a wide range of non-equilibrium driven dynamical systems. The term flicker noise is sometimes used to refer to pink noise, although this is more properly applied only to its occurrence in electronic devices. Mandelbrot and Van Ness proposed the name fractional noise (sometimes since called fractal noise) to emphasize that the exponent of the power spectrum could take non-integer values and be closely related to fractional Brownian motion, but the term is very rarely used. Hypnagogia - Learning and Sleep.

Auditory Closed-Loop Stimulation of the Sleep Slow Oscillation Enhances Memory.

Can chewing the same flavored gum while studying for an exam, and then while taking the exam, increase memory performance?

Superior Memory and Higher Cortical Volumes in Unusually Successful Cognitive Aging
The Brain

UNF Researchers Show Running Barefoot Improves Working Memory

Memory Techniques

Brain Maintenance (maintaining your internal memory bank) - Brain Food

External Memory Devices (off loading)

Senstone records your thoughts on the go. Just tap, speak and your ideas turn into organized text notes.

Memory Contests

World Memory Championships is an organized competition of memory sports in which competitors memorize as much information as possible within a given period of time. Memory Contest - Memory Challenge.

Memory Sport is sometimes referred to as competitive memory or the mind sport of memory, refers to competitions in which participants attempt to memorize then recall different forms of information, under certain guidelines. The sport has been formally developed since 1991 and features national and international championships. The primary worldwide organizational bodies are the IAM (International Association of Memory) and WMSC (World Memory Sports Council). Memory Sports.

Recall Test is a test of memory in which participants are presented with stimuli and then, after a delay, are asked to remember as many of the stimuli as possible. Memory performance can be indicated by measuring the percentage of stimuli the participant was able to recall. An example of this would be studying a list of 10 words and later recalling 5 of them. This is a 50 percent recall. Participants' responses also may be analyzed to determine if there is a pattern in the way items are being recalled from memory. For example, if participants are given a list consisting of types of vegetables and types of fruit, their recall can be assessed to determine whether they grouped vegetables together and fruits together. Recall is also involved when a person is asked to recollect life events, such as graduating high school, or to recall facts they have learned, such as the capital of Florida.

Concentration Game is a card game in which all of the cards are laid face down on a surface and two cards are flipped face up over each turn. The object of the game is to turn over pairs of matching cards. Concentration can be played with any number of players or as solitaire. It is a particularly good game for young children, though adults may find it challenging and stimulating as well. The scheme is often used in quiz shows and can be employed as an educational game.

Superior memorizers employ different neural networks for encoding and recall.

Learning Games - Word Recall Games - Testing - Photographic Memory

"If your memory is not making you smarter each day, then you're remembering insignificant details, or, insignificant details where force on you by some educational institution, or by the media, or by another person, which of course includes you."

"Just because you remember something does not mean that you learned something, why?"

"When I see kids memorizing presidents names and countries, it's like child abuse. I would rather see kids use their memory to remember the most important things, things that will make their lives richer, fuller and more meaningful."

Scrabble Champ Wins French Tournament After Memorizing French Dictionary, but he can't speak French.

If you don't fully understand what information and knowledge is to a human, then you will never be effective enough when teaching. You have to Learn the right things in the right order, and at the right time. So what are the right things? And how should you remember them? This is exactly what I'm working on, and so should you. The more people who try to answer this question the better. We can then compare notes and learn even more. Self Directed Learning.

Everything that you learn will require a good Memory. It is extremely important that you learn how to use your memory and know exactly how the human brain stores, retains, and retrieves memories, information and knowledge. Everything that you are and everything that you will become is closely related to ' what you remember, why you remember it, how you remember it, and when you remember it '. Understanding is often the best way to remember but memorization does not always mean that you will understand, or does it mean that you will remember the right things at the right time.

"Even with so much to remember and so much to make sense, It's choosing what to remember that will always make a difference. Our memory is so important, we need to use it every day, Never take it for granted, for there's always a price to pay." Poem about Memory.

Memory Vulnerabilities - Memory Errors

False Memory describes a condition in which a person's identity and relationships are affected by memories that are factually incorrect, but that they strongly believe. Every time that you recall a memory you may change that memory a little. So don't lie. False Memory is a psychological phenomenon in which a person recalls a memory that did not actually occur. Misleading Questions can sometimes create false memories.

Cognitive Bias - Memory Biases - Recall Bias - Cognition

Memory Error refers to the incorrect recall, or complete loss, of information in the memory system for a specific detail and/or event. Memory errors may include remembering events that never occurred, or remembering them differently from the way they actually happened. These errors or gaps can occur due to a number of different reasons, including the emotional involvement in the situation, expectations and environmental changes. As the retention interval between encoding and retrieval of the memory lengthens, there is an increase in both the amount that is forgotten, and the likelihood of a memory error occurring.

Conformity - History Misconceptions - Lying - Psychosis - Fallacies

Reconstructive Memory is a theory of elaborate memory recall proposed within the field of Cognitive Psychology, in which the act of remembering is influenced by various other cognitive processes including perception, imagination, semantic memory and beliefs, amongst others. People view their memories as being a coherent and truthful account of episodic memory and believe that their perspective is free from error during recall. However the reconstructive process of memory recall is subject to distortion by other intervening cognitive functions such as individual perceptions, social influences, and world knowledge, all of which can lead to errors during reconstruction. Pretending to Know.

Misinformation Effect happens when a person's recall of episodic memories becomes less accurate because of post-event information, like Propaganda.

Confabulation is a memory error defined as the production of fabricated, distorted, or misinterpreted memories about oneself or the world. People who confabulate present incorrect memories ranging from "subtle alterations to bizarre fabrications", and are generally very confident about their recollections, despite contradictory evidence. Confabulation is a symptom of various memory disorders in which made-up stories fill in any gaps in memory. Confabulation in psychiatry is a plausible but imagined memory that fills in gaps in what is remembered. Confabulation is a disturbance of memory, defined as the production of fabricated, distorted or misinterpreted memories about oneself or the world, without the conscious intention to deceive.

Tip of the Tongue is the phenomenon of failing to retrieve a word or term from memory, combined with partial recall and the feeling that retrieval is imminent. The phenomenon's name comes from the saying, "It's on the tip of my tongue." The tip of the tongue phenomenon reveals that lexical access occurs in stages.

Most Life Experiences are Fabricated from Memories. We may not be able to change recent events in our lives, but how well we remember them plays a key role in how our brains model what's happening in the present and predict what is likely to occur in the future. Event Memory Retrieval and Comparison Theory proposes that current event features cue retrieval of recent related event representations. Both those representations and ongoing perceptual information inform predictions about upcoming event features. Changed features in upcoming events lead to prediction error and event model updating, whereas repeated features tend to lead to maintaining stable event models. Things that decrease memory abilities.

Brain's 'updating mechanisms' may create false memories. The brain can update or 'edit' poorly formed memories with the wrong information.

Source-Monitoring Error is a type of memory error where the source of a memory is incorrectly attributed to some specific recollected experience. For example, individuals may learn about a current event from a friend, but later report having learned about it on the local news, thus reflecting an incorrect source attribution. This error occurs when normal perceptual and reflective processes are disrupted, either by limited encoding of source information or by disruption to the judgment processes used in source-monitoring. Depression, high stress levels and damage to relevant brain areas are examples of factors that can cause such disruption and hence source-monitoring errors.

Remember versus Know Judgments. There is evidence suggesting that different processes are involved in remembering something versus knowing whether it is familiar. It appears that "remembering" and "knowing" represent relatively different characteristics of memory as well as reflect different ways of using memory. To remember is the conscious recollection of many vivid contextual details, such as "when" and "how" the information was learned. Remembering utilizes episodic memory and requires a deeper level of processing (e.g. undivided attention) than knowing. Errors in recollection may be due to source-monitoring errors that prevent an individual from remembering where exactly a piece of information was received. On the other hand, source monitoring may be very effective in aiding the retrieval of episodic memories. Remembering is a knowledge-based and conceptually-driven form of processing that can be influenced by many things. It is relevant to note that under this view both kinds of judgments are characteristics of individuals and thus any distinctions between the two are correlational, not causal, events. To know is a feeling (unconscious) of familiarity. It is the sensation that the item has been seen before, but not being able to pin down the reason why. Knowing simply reflects the familiarity of an item without recollection. Knowing utilizes semantic memory that requires perceptually based, data-driven processing. Knowing is the result of shallow maintenance rehearsal that can be influenced by many of the same aspects as semantic memory. Remember and know responses are quite often differentiated by their functional correlates in specific areas in the brain. For instance, during "remember" situations it is found that there is greater EEG activity than "knowing", specifically, due to an interaction between frontal and posterior regions of the brain. It is also found that the hippocampus is differently activated during recall of "remembered" (vs. familiar) stimuli. On the other hand, items that are only "known", or seem familiar, are associated with activity in the rhinal cortex.

Henry Molaison was an American memory disorder patient who had a bilateral medial temporal lobectomy to surgically resect the anterior two thirds of his hippocampi, parahippocampal cortices, entorhinal cortices, piriform cortices, and amygdalae in an attempt to cure his epilepsy. He was widely studied from late 1957 until his death in 2008. His case played an important role in the development of theories that explain the link between brain function and memory, and in the development of cognitive neuropsychology, a branch of psychology that aims to understand how the structure and function of the brain relates to specific psychological processes. He resided in a care institute in Windsor Locks, Connecticut, where he was the subject of ongoing investigation.

The Human Brain Recalls Visual Features in Reverse Order Than It Detects Them. Columbia study challenges traditional hierarchy of brain decoding; offers insight into how the brain makes perceptual judgments.

Forgetting

Baker-baker Paradox explains why people's names slip away from you, while their other details stay embedded in your head. This happens, even if the name and the detail are the same. Not listening, not interested, not effectively using memory.

Forgetting Curve hypothesizes the decline of memory retention in time. This curve shows how information is lost over time when there is no attempt to retain it. A related concept is the strength of memory that refers to the durability that memory traces in the brain. The stronger the memory, the longer period of time that a person is able to recall it. A typical graph of the forgetting curve purports to show that humans tend to halve their memory of newly learned knowledge in a matter of days or weeks unless they consciously review the learned material.

Forgetting things is not always bad. A new review paper proposes that the goal of memory is not to transmit the most accurate information over time, but to guide and optimize intelligent decision making by only holding on to valuable information. Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.

Autobiographical Memory

Forward Error Correction is a technique used for controlling Errors in data transmission over unreliable or noisy communication channels. The central idea is the sender encodes the message in a redundant way by using an error-correcting code (ECC).

Learning Methods - Comprehension

Spaced Repetition (recalling what you learned at different times)

Eyewitness Memory is a person's episodic memory for a crime or other dramatic event that he or she has witnessed. Eyewitness testimony is often relied upon in the judicial system. It can also refer to an individual's memory for a face, where they are required to remember the face of their perpetrator, for example. However, the accuracy of eyewitness memories is sometimes questioned because there are many factors that can act during encoding and retrieval of the witnessed event which may adversely affect the creation and maintenance of the memory for the event. Experts have found evidence to suggest that eyewitness memory is fallible. It has long been speculated that mistaken eyewitness identification plays a major role in the wrongful conviction of innocent individuals. A growing body of research now supports this speculation, indicating that mistaken eyewitness identification is responsible for more convictions of the innocent than all other factors combined. The Innocence Project determined that 75% of the 239 DNA exoneration cases had occurred due to inaccurate eyewitness testimony. It is important to inform the public about the flawed nature of eyewitness memory and the difficulties relating to its use in the criminal justice system so that eyewitness accounts are not viewed as the absolute truth.

Present Sense Impression is a statement that is spontaneously made while the person was perceiving the event or condition, or immediately thereafter. Their is a belief that a statement is likely reliable and true if there is no time for reflection, distortion, or fabrication. The witness must have personal knowledge of declarant's making of the statement, but need not have personal knowledge of the event or the content of the statement. Of course a person can be wrong in their observation, this is because people make mistakes and don't always understand what they see, and their eyes can play tricks on them, so the truth is debatable. Hearsay.

Excited Utterance is a statement that is spontaneously made while the person was perceiving the event or condition, or immediately thereafter. The subject matter and content of the statement are limited to descriptions or explanations of the event or condition, therefore opinions, inferences, or conclusions about the event or condition are not present sense impressions.

Keeping innocent people out of jail using the science of perception. Scientists devise a new lineup method to help eyewitnesses more accurately identify suspects.

Weapon Focus signifies a witness to a crime diverting his or her attention to the weapon the perpetrator is holding, thus leaving less attention for other details in the scene and leading to memory impairments later for those other details.

Verbal Overshadowing is the phenomenon where giving a verbal description of a face (or other complex stimuli) impairs recognition of that face or stimuli.

Articulatory Suppression is the process of inhibiting memory performance by speaking while being presented with an item to remember.

Elizabeth Loftus: The Fiction of Memory (video)

Eyewitness (pdf) - Expert Witness

Mistaken Identity is a defense in criminal law which claims the actual innocence of the criminal defendant, and attempts to undermine evidence of guilt by asserting that any eyewitness to the crime incorrectly thought that they saw the defendant, when in fact the person seen by the witness was someone else. The defendant may question both the memory of the witness (suggesting, for example, that the identification is the result of a false memory), and the perception of the witness (suggesting, for example, that the witness had poor eyesight, or that the crime occurred in a poorly lit place). Social Scientists have shown that the Reliability of Eyewitness Identifications is much worse than laypersons tend to believe. Supreme Court Releases Eyewitness Identification Criteria for Criminal Cases. Doppelganger - Imposter.

Jury Instructions - Media Literacy

Instant Replay is a great reminder and a great example of human flaws and vulnerabilities. Instant replay is so important because we know that even professionals don't always see things accurately enough the first time they see them happen. We sometimes need to slow things down and take another closer look in order to make things a lot clearer and easier to understand. And seeing something again can also increase our odds of making the best decision possible. But sadly, not all things in life have an instant replay.

Confidence accuracy is the assumption that as one's confidence increases so does their level of accuracy in recall.

Anticipating performance can hinder memory. Anticipating your own performance at work or school may hinder your ability to remember what happened before your presentation. Performance anticipation could weaken memory because people tend to focus on the details of their upcoming presentation instead of paying attention to information that occurs before their performance. People who experience performance anxiety may be particularly likely to experience this phenomenon.

The brain stores more details about certain moments then we are aware of. Can Hypnosis help with recall? - Memory Hypnosis.

Memory Improvement and Recall Skills - Free Hypnosis Session (youtube)

Recovered-Memory Therapy is catch-all psychotherapy term for therapy using one or more method or technique for the purpose of recalling memories.

Past Life Regression is a technique that uses hypnosis to recover what practitioners believe are memories of past lives or incarnations, though others regard them as fantasies or delusions or a type of confabulation. "I believe that the reason why we don't remember past lives is so that life feels like it's the very first time. You start life over fresh, and you experience life as if it were the very first time that you were ever alive. This is most likely by design, because it just makes sense." History - Age Regression.

False Memory

Forty percent of people have a fictional first memory. As many of these memories dated before the age of two and younger, the authors suggest that these fictional memories are based on remembered fragments of early experience -- such as a pram, family relationships and feeling sad -- and some facts or knowledge about their own infancy or childhood which may have been derived from photographs or family conversations. As a result, what a rememberer has in mind when recalling these early memories is a mental representation consisting of remembered fragments of early experience and some facts or knowledge about their own childhood, instead of actual memories. Over time, such mental representations come to be recollectively experienced when they come to mind and so for the individual they quite simply are 'memories' with content strongly tied to a particular time. In particular, fictional very early memories were seen to be more common in middle-aged and older adults and about 4 in 10 of this group have fictional memories for infancy.

Anomic Aphasia problems with recalling words or names. Refresh your memory with important information.

Serial Position Effect is the tendency of a person to recall the first and last items in a series best, and the middle items worst.

Interference Theory - Adult Learning

Forgetfulness might depend on time of day. Can't remember something? Try waiting until later in the day. BMAL1is a protein that regulates the expression of many other genes. BMAL1 normally fluctuates between low levels just before waking up and high levels before going to sleep.

ARNTL is a protein that in humans is encoded by the Bmal1 gene. BMAL1 encodes a transcription factor with a basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) and two PAS domains. The human Arntl gene has a predicted 24 exons and is located on the p15 band of the 11th chromosome. The BMAL1 protein is 626 amino acids long and plays a key role as one of the positive elements in the mammalian auto-regulatory transcription-translation negative feedback loop (TTFL), which is responsible for generating molecular circadian rhythms. Research has revealed that Bmal1 is the only clock gene without which the circadian clock fails to function in humans. Bmal1 has also been identified as a candidate gene for susceptibility to hypertension, diabetes, and obesity, and mutations in Bmal1 have been linked to infertility, gluconeogenesis and lipogenesis problems, and altered sleep patterns. BMAL1, according to genome-wide profiling, is estimated to target more than 150 sites in the human genome, including all of the clock genes and genes encoding for proteins that regulate metabolism.

Brain Vulnerabilities - Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor 

Why babies don't always remember what they have learned. If and how babies recall what they have learned depends on their mood: what they've learned when feeling calm is inaccessible when they're active and vice versa. This was shown in a study with 96 children aged nine months.

State-Dependent Memory is the phenomenon where people remember more information if their physical or mental state is the same at time of encoding and time of recall. State dependent memories are memories that are triggered or enhanced by a person's current mood because of the relationship to memories formed when you were in a similar state. For instance, happy memories are more easily or intensely remembered when one is already feeling happy and the same goes for sadness or anger.

Sudden Memories

Flashback is a psychological phenomenon in which an individual has a sudden, usually powerful, re-experiencing of a past experience or elements of a past experience. These experiences can be happy, sad, exciting, or any other emotion one can consider. The term is used particularly when the memory is recalled involuntarily, and/or when it is so intense that the person "relives" the experience, unable to fully recognize it as memory and not something that is happening in "real time". Stress.

Traumatic Memories - When some memories become a curse instead of a blessing. - Reconsolidation Therapy.

Cryptomnesia occurs when a forgotten memory returns without it being recognized as such by the subject, who believes it is something new and original. It is a memory bias whereby a person may falsely recall generating a thought, an idea, a song, or a joke, not deliberately engaging in plagiarism but rather experiencing a memory as if it were a new inspiration.

Déjà vu is the phenomenon of having the strong sensation that an event or experience currently being experienced has already been experienced in the past, "already seen". Déjà vu is a feeling of familiarity, and déjà vécu is the feeling of having already lived through something, a feeling of recollection. Past Life Regression.

Emotion and Memory can have a powerful effect on humans and animals. Numerous studies have shown that the most vivid autobiographical memories tend to be of emotional events, which are likely to be recalled more often and with more clarity and detail than neutral events.

It's better to deal with a bad memory and understand it then it is to just try to about forget it. Once you have come to terms with a bad experience, the less likely you will be negatively effected by recalling that bad memory. And you will also be more likely to remember the good memories more often. Then eventually all bad memories will lose their grip on your well being. This is a learned skill, the good news is that everyone is capable of learning. Changing Bad Habits - Brain Plasticity.

Forgetting - Problems Remembering

Forgetting is the apparent loss or modification of information already encoded and stored in an individual's long term memory. It is a spontaneous or gradual process in which old memories are unable to be recalled from memory storage. Forgetting also helps to reconcile the storage of new information with old knowledge. Problems with remembering, learning and retaining new information are a few of the most common complaints of older adults. Memory performance is usually related to the active functioning of three stages. These three stages are encoding, storage and retrieval. Many different factors influence the actual process of forgetting. An example of one of these factors could be the amount of time the new information is stored in the memory. Events involved with forgetting can happen either before or after the actual memory process. The amount of time the information is stored in the memory, depending on the minutes hours or even days, can increase or decrease depending on how well the information is encoded. Studies show that retention improves with increased rehearsal. This improvement occurs because rehearsal helps to transfer information into long term memory – practice makes perfect.

Memory Erasure is the selective artificial removal of memories or associations from the mind. There are many reasons that research is being done on the selective removal of memories. Potential patients for this research include patients suffering from psychiatric disorders such as post traumatic stress disorder, or substance use disorder, among others. Memory erasure has been shown to be possible in some experimental conditions; some of the techniques currently being investigated are: drug-induced amnesia, selective memory suppression, destruction of neurons, interruption of memory, reconsolidation, and the disruption of specific molecular mechanisms. Removed from the Record in Law.

Repressed Memory are memories that have been unconsciously blocked due to the memory being associated with a high level of stress or trauma. The theory postulates that even though the individual cannot recall the memory, it may still be affecting them consciously. These memories can emerge later into the consciousness. Age Regression.

Psychological Repression is the psychological attempt made by an individual to direct one's own desires and impulses toward pleasurable instincts by excluding the desire from one's consciousness and holding or subduing it in the unconscious. In psychoanalytic theory repression plays a major role in many mental illnesses, and in the psyche of the average person.

Decay Theory proposes that memory fades due to the mere passage of time. Information is therefore less available for later retrieval as time passes and memory, as well as memory strength, wears away. When we learn something new, a neurochemical "memory trace" is created. However, over time this trace slowly disintegrates. Actively Rehearsing information is believed to be a major factor counteracting this temporal decline. It is widely believed that neurons die off gradually as we age, yet some older memories can be stronger than most recent memories. Thus, decay theory mostly affects the short-term memory system, meaning that older memories (in long-term memory) are often more resistant to shocks or physical attacks on the brain. It is also thought that the passage of time alone cannot cause forgetting, and that decay theory must also take into account some processes that occur as more time passes.

Time of day affects global brain fluctuations. As the day progresses, the strength of the brain's global signal fluctuation shows an unexpected decrease, according to a new study. Circadian rhythms govern diverse aspects of physiology including sleep/wake cycles, cognition, gene expression, temperature regulation, and endocrine signaling. But despite the clear influence of circadian rhythms on physiology, most studies of brain function do not report or consider the impact of time of day on their findings.

Catastrophic Forgetting is the tendency of an artificial neural network to completely and abruptly forget previously learned information upon learning new information.

Amnesia is a deficit in memory caused by brain damage, disease, or psychological trauma. Amnesia can also be caused temporarily by the use of various sedatives and hypnotic drugs. The memory can be either wholly or partially lost due to the extent of damage that was caused. There are two main types of amnesia: retrograde amnesia and anterograde amnesia. Retrograde amnesia is the inability to retrieve information that was acquired before a particular date, usually the date of an accident or operation. In some cases the memory loss can extend back decades, while in others the person may lose only a few months of memory. Anterograde amnesia is the inability to transfer new information from the short-term store into the long-term store. People with this type of amnesia cannot remember things for long periods of time. These two types are not mutually exclusive. Both can occur within a patient at one time. Forgetting History.

Childhood Amnesia is the inability of adults to retrieve episodic memories which are memories of specific events (times, places, associated emotions, and other contextual who, what, when, and where) before the age of 2–4 years, as well as the period before age 10 of which adults retain fewer memories than might otherwise be expected, given the passage of time. Age Regression.

Posthypnotic Amnesia is the inability in hypnotic subjects to recall events that took place while under hypnosis. This can be achieved by giving individuals a suggestion during hypnosis to forget certain material that they have learned either before or during hypnosis. Individuals who are experiencing post-hypnotic amnesia cannot have their memories recovered once put back under hypnosis and is therefore not state dependent. Nevertheless, memories may return when presented with a pre-arranged cue. This makes post-hypnotic amnesia similar to psychogenic amnesia as it disrupts the retrieval process of memory. It has been suggested that inconsistencies in methodologies used to study post-hypnotic amnesia cause varying results.

Retrograde Amnesia is a loss of memory-access to events that occurred, or information that was learned, before an injury or the onset of a disease. Alzheimer's - Deleting (pruning).

Anterograde Amnesia is a loss of the ability to create new memories after the event that caused amnesia, leading to a partial or complete inability to recall the recent past, while long-term memories from before the event remain intact. 50 First Dates (wiki) - Groundhog Day (wiki) - Time Loop.

Psychogenic Amnesia is a memory disorder characterized by sudden retrograde autobiographical memory loss, said to occur for a period of time ranging from hours to years. More recently, "dissociative amnesia" has been defined as a dissociative disorder "characterized by retrospectively reported memory gaps. These gaps involve an inability to recall personal information, usually of a traumatic or stressful nature." In a change from the DSM-IV to the DSM-5, dissociative fugue is now subsumed under dissociative amnesia.

The Man With The Seven Second Memory (Medical Documentary) - Clive Wearing has one of the worst cases of amnesia in the world. (youtube) (he still remembers how to walk, play the piano and remembers how to talk, still retains a vocabulary.)

Total Recall is a 1990 American science fiction action film that tells the story of a construction worker who suddenly finds himself embroiled in espionage on Mars and unable to determine if the experiences are real or the result of memory implants.

Blackout or lost time, is a common symptom of dissociative amnesia and dissociative identity disorder.

Blackout Drug-Related Amnesia is a phenomenon caused by the intake of any substance or medication in which short-term and long-term memory creation is impaired, therefore causing a complete inability to recall the past. Blackouts are most frequently associated with GABAergic drugs. Blackouts are frequently described as having effects similar to that of anterograde amnesia, in which the subject cannot recall any events after the event that caused amnesia. Blackouts can generally be divided into 2 categories, en bloc blackouts and fragmentary blackouts. En bloc blackouts are classified by the inability to later recall any memories from the intoxication period, even when prompted. These blackouts are characterized also by the ability to easily recall things that have occurred within the last 2 minutes, yet being unable to recall anything prior to this period. As such, a person experiencing an en bloc blackout may not appear to be doing so, as they can carry on conversations or even manage to accomplish difficult feats. It is difficult to determine the end of this type of blackout as sleep typically occurs before they end, although it is possible for an en bloc blackout to end if the sufferer has stopped drinking in the meantime. Fragmentary blackouts are characterized by a person having the ability to recall certain events from an intoxicated period, and yet being unaware that other memories are missing until reminded of the existence of those 'gaps' in memory. Research indicates that such fragmentary blackouts, also known as brownouts, are far more common than en bloc blackouts. Memory impairment during acute intoxication involves dysfunction of episodic memory, a type of memory encoded with spatial and social context. Recent studies have shown that there are multiple memory systems supported by discrete brain regions, and the acute effects of alcohol and learning and memory may result from alteration of the hippocampus and related structures on a cellular level. A rapid increase in Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) is most consistently associated with the likelihood of a blackout. However, not all subjects experience blackouts which implies that genetic factors play a role in determining central nervous system (CNS) vulnerability to the effects of Alcohol. The former may predispose an individual to alcoholism, as altered memory function during intoxication may affect an individual’s alcohol expectancy, one may perceive positive aspects of intoxication while unintentionally ignoring the negative aspects. Memory disruptions by alcohol leading to blackout have been linked to inhibition of long-term potentiation, particularly in the hippocampus, by affecting gamma-Aminobutyric acid (GABA) and N-methyl-D-aspartate neurotransmission (see Effects of alcohol on memory). Alcohol acts as an agonist of the GABAA type receptor, leading to memory disruption (see Effects of alcohol on memory). Benzodiazepines (such as flunitrazepam, midazolam, and temazepam), barbiturates (such as phenobarbital), and other drugs which also act as GABAA agonists, are known to cause blackouts as a result of high dose use. Dizzy - Fainting.

Too much activity in one of the brain's key memory regions is bad for your memory and attention. Hippocampal neural disinhibition causes attentional and memory deficits.

Reality - Awareness

She can't remember her marriage, but can tell you how to fly a plane (youtube) 

"You don't have to change or suppress memories, you just need to change how you remember those memories, and also, create new and better memories so that the not so good memories become distant and less significant. One example is when you install new and better software, you will eventually forget all those bad experiences that you had with the old software."

We understand our world by how we interpret our memories and our ability to use that information and knowledge from those memories effectively. Even though we share the same experiences, this does not mean that we share the same memories. Sometimes we remember things a little differently even though we experience the same things. And we edit our memories based on what we learn, and you can't be a good editor if you never learn how to be a good editor. There are skills involved.

We can't always trust our early memories to be accurate - sometimes they will have been molded by later conversations about the event, sometimes creating imaginary memories.

Smoking Tobacco damages the brain by impairing its blood supply, and by the accumulation of abnormal proteins which impair the brain's ability to process and relay information. 

High-Fat and Trans Fats creates stress hormones influence an area of the brain area that controls working memory.

Chronic Stress can be harmful. Regular exposure to elevated glucocorticoids (a hormone released by the adrenal gland) also causes our brain cells to reduce receptors, making brain cells less capable of responding to neurochemical (brain chemicals) cues. Anxiety and Depression everyday stress increase cortisol levels in the brain, which causes our brain cells to lose synapses (the bridges that connect our brain cells to one another), and make it more difficult to create and retrieve memories.
Infections when the body is fighting infections the memory is not at its best. Viruses.

Effects of Stress on Memory include interference with a person's capacity to encode memory and the ability to retrieve information. During times of stress, the body reacts by secreting stress hormones into the bloodstream. Stress can cause acute and chronic changes in certain brain areas which can cause long-term damage. Over-secretion of stress hormones most frequently impairs long-term delayed recall memory, but can enhance short-term, immediate recall memory. This enhancement is particularly relative in emotional memory. In particular, the hippocampus, prefrontal cortex and the amygdala are affected. One class of stress hormone responsible for negatively affecting long-term, delayed recall memory is the glucocorticoids (GCs), the most notable of which is cortisol. Glucocorticoids facilitate and impair the actions of stress in the brain memory process. Cortisol is a known biomarker for stress. Under normal circumstances, the hippocampus regulates the production of cortisol through negative feedback because it has many receptors that are sensitive to these stress hormones. However, an excess of cortisol can impair the ability of the hippocampus to both encode and recall memories. These stress hormones are also hindering the hippocampus from receiving enough energy by diverting glucose levels to surrounding muscles. Stress affects many memory functions and cognitive functioning of the brain. There are different levels of stress and the high levels can be intrinsic or extrinsic. Intrinsic stress level is triggered by a cognitive challenge whereas extrinsic can be triggered by a condition not related to a cognitive task. Intrinsic stress can be acutely and chronically experienced by a person. The varying effects of stress on performance or stress hormones are often compared to or known as "inverted-u" which induce areas in learning, memory and plasticity. Chronic stress can affect the brain structure and cognition. Studies considered the effects of stress on both intrinsic and extrinsic memory functions, using for both of them Pavlovian conditioning and spatial learning. In regard to intrinsic memory functions, the study evaluated how stress affected memory functions that was triggered by a learning challenge. In regard to extrinsic stress, the study focused on stress that was not related to cognitive task but was elicited by other situations. The results determined that intrinsic stress was facilitated by memory consolidation process and extrinsic stress was determined to be heterogeneous in regard to memory consolidation. Researchers found that high stress conditions were a good representative of the effect that extrinsic stress can cause on memory functioning. It was also proven that extrinsic stress does affect spatial learning whereas acute extrinsic stress does not.

Prescription Drugs also can reduce your ability to remember. 

Hot flashes also can reduce your ability to remember. Dysfunctional thyroid can also reduce your ability to remember.

Scientists have found in a study of 3,000 people living in France, that those who worked rotating shifts performed significantly worse in memory and cognitive speed tests than people who had worked regular hours. Not Getting Enough Sleep.

Researchers found participants who engaged in artistic hobbies such as painting, drawing or sculpture in both middle and old age were 73 percent less likely to develop mild cognitive impairment than those who didn't.

Does being over-reliant on computers, search engines and cell phones to remember things, weaken people's memories? That depends on what you are using your Working Memory for. You don't want to memorize useless information or irrelevant details, but you do want to memorize the important knowledge and skills that provide you with the best control and awareness. If you don't need to be technology dependent, then you should be Brain Dependent, and use technology to expand your abilities, and not use technologies to lower your abilities. Digital Amnesia comes from Technology Abuse.

Artificial Memory. Memory is coded by patterns of neural activity in distinct circuits. Therefore, it should be possible to reverse engineer a memory by artificially creating these patterns of activity in the absence of a sensory experience. In olfactory conditioning, an odor conditioned stimulus (CS) is paired with an unconditioned stimulus (US; for example, a footshock), and the resulting CS–US association guides future behavior. Here we replaced the odor CS with optogenetic stimulation of a specific olfactory glomerulus and the US with optogenetic stimulation of distinct inputs into the ventral tegmental area that mediate either aversion or reward. In doing so, we created a fully artificial memory in mice. Similarly to a natural memory, this artificial memory depended on CS–US contingency during training, and the conditioned response was specific to the CS and reflected the US valence. Moreover, both real and implanted memories engaged overlapping brain circuits and depended on basolat-eral amygdala activity for expression. Experience and memory are inexorably linked, or at least they seemed to be before a recent report on the formation of completely artificial memories. Using laboratory animals, investigators reverse engineered a specific natural memory by mapped the brain circuits underlying its formation. They then “trained” another animal by stimulating brain cells in the pattern of the natural memory. Doing so created an artificial memory that was retained and recalled in a manner indistinguishable from a natural one. Earlier studies had shown that specific nerve pathways leading to a structure known as the ventral tegmental area (VTA) were important for the aversive nature of the foot shock. To create a truly artificial memory, the researchers needed to stimulate the VTA in the same way as they stimulated the olfactory sensory nerves, but the transgenic animals only made the light-sensitive proteins in those nerves. In order to use optogenetic stimulation, they stimulated the olfactory nerves in the same genetically engineered mice , and they employed a virus to place light-sensitive proteins in the VTA as well. They stimulated the olfactory receptors with light to simulate the odor of cherry blossoms, then stimulated the VTA to mimic the aversive foot shock. The animals recalled the artificial memory, responding to an odor they had never encountered by avoiding a shock they had never received.

Memory Bias is a cognitive bias that either enhances or impairs the recall of a memory (either the chances that the memory will be recalled at all, or the amount of time it takes for it to be recalled, or both), or that alters the content of a reported memory. There are many different types of memory biases. Boundary extension is remembering the background of an image as being larger or more expansive than the foreground. Childhood amnesia is the retention of few memories from before the age of four. Choice-supportive bias is remembering chosen options as having been better than rejected options (Mather, Shafir & Johnson, 2000). Confirmation bias the tendency to search for, interpret, or recall information in a way that confirms one's beliefs or hypotheses. Conservatism or Regressive bias is tendency to remember high values and high likelihoods/probabilities/frequencies lower than they actually were and low ones higher than they actually were. Based on the evidence, memories are not extreme enough. Consistency bias is incorrectly remembering one's past attitudes and behaviour as resembling present attitudes and behaviour. Context effect is that cognition and memory are dependent on context, such that out-of-context memories are more difficult to retrieve than in-context memories (e.g., recall time and accuracy for a work-related memory will be lower at home, and vice versa). Cryptomnesi is a form of misattribution where a memory is mistaken for imagination, because there is no subjective experience of it being a memory. Egocentric bias is recalling the past in a self-serving manner, e.g., remembering one's exam grades as being better than they were, or remembering a caught fish as bigger than it really was. Fading affect bias is a bias in which the emotion associated with unpleasant memories fades more quickly than the emotion associated with positive events. Generation effect or Self-generation effect is that self-generated information is remembered best. For instance, people are better able to recall memories of statements that they have generated than similar statements generated by others. Gender differences in eyewitness memory is the tendency for a witness to remember more details about someone of the same gender. Hindsight bias is the inclination to see past events as being predictable; also called the "I-knew-it-all-along" effect. Humor effect is that humorous items are more easily remembered than non-humorous ones, which might be explained by the distinctiveness of humor, the increased cognitive processing time to understand the humor, or the emotional arousal caused by the humor. Illusion-of-truth effect is that people are more likely to identify as true statements those they have previously heard (even if they cannot consciously remember having heard them), regardless of the actual validity of the statement. In other words, a person is more likely to believe a familiar statement than an unfamiliar one. Illusory correlation is inaccurately seeing a relationship between two events related by coincidence. Lag effect is see spacing effect. Leveling and sharpening are memory distortions introduced by the loss of details in a recollection over time, often concurrent with sharpening or selective recollection of certain details that take on exaggerated significance in relation to the details or aspects of the experience lost through leveling. Both biases may be reinforced over time, and by repeated recollection or re-telling of a memory. Levels-of-processing effect is that different methods of encoding information into memory have different levels of effectiveness (Craik & Lockhart, 1972). List-length effect is a smaller percentage of items are remembered in a longer list, but as the length of the list increases, the absolute number of items remembered increases as well. Memory inhibition is when being shown some items from a list makes it harder to retrieve the other items (e.g., Slamecka, 1968). Misattribution of memory: when information is retained in memory but the source of the memory is forgotten. One of Schacter's (1999) seven sins of memory, misattribution was divided into source confusion, cryptomnesia and false recall/false recognition. Misinformation effect is when misinformation affects people's reports of their own memory. Modality effect is when memory recall is higher for the last items of a list when the list items were received via speech than when they were received via writing. Mood congruent memory bias is the improved recall of information congruent with one's current mood. Next-in-line effect is when a person in a group has diminished recall for the words of others who spoke immediately before or after this person. Peak-end rule is when people seem to perceive not the sum or average of an experience, but how it was at its peak (e.g. pleasant or unpleasant) and how it ended. Persistence is the unwanted recurrence of memories of a traumatic event. Picture superiority effect: that concepts are much more likely to be remembered experientially if they are presented in picture form than if they are presented in word form. Placement bias is tendency to remember ourselves to be better than others at tasks at which we rate ourselves above average (also Illusory superiority or Better-than-average effect) and tendency to remember ourselves to be worse than others at tasks at which we rate ourselves below average (also Worse-than-average effect). Positivity effect is when older adults favor positive over negative information in their memories. Primacy effect, Recency effect & Serial position effect is when items near the end of a list are the easiest to recall, followed by the items at the beginning of a list; items in the middle are the least likely to be remembered. Processing difficulty effect Reminiscence bump is the recalling of more personal events from adolescence and early adulthood than personal events from other lifetime periods (Rubin, Wetzler & Nebes, 1986; Rubin, Rahhal & Poon, 1998). Rosy retrospection is the remembering of the past as having been better than it really was. Saying is Believing effect is communicating a socially tuned message to an audience can lead to a bias of identifying the tuned message as one's own thoughts. Self-reference effect is the phenomena that memories encoded with relation to the self are better recalled than similar information encoded otherwise. Self-serving bias is  perceiving oneself responsible for desirable outcomes but not responsible for undesirable ones. Source confusion is misattributing the source of a memory, e.g. misremembering that one saw an event personally when actually it was seen on television. Spacing effect is that information is better recalled if exposure to it is repeated over a longer span of time. Stereotypical bias is memory distorted towards stereotypes (e.g. racial or gender), e.g. "black-sounding" names being misremembered as names of criminals. Subadditivity effect is the tendency to estimate that the likelihood of a remembered event is less than the sum of its (more than two) mutually exclusive components. Suffix effect is the weakening of the recency effect in the case that an item is appended to the list that the subject is not required to recall (Morton, Crowder & Prussin, 1971). Suggestibility is a form of misattribution where ideas suggested by a questioner are mistaken for memory. Telescoping effect is the tendency to displace recent events backward in time and remote events forward in time, so that recent events appear more remote, and remote events, more recent. Testing effect is that frequent testing of material that has been committed to memory improves memory recall. Tip of the tongue is when a subject is able to recall parts of an item, or related information, but is frustratingly unable to recall the whole item. This is thought to be an instance of "blocking" where multiple similar memories are being recalled and interfere with each other. Verbatim effect is that the "gist" of what someone has said is better remembered than the verbatim wording (Poppenk, Walia, Joanisse, Danckert, & Köhler, 2006). Von Restorff effect is that an item that sticks out is more likely to be remembered than other items (von Restorff, 1933). Zeigarnik effect is that uncompleted or interrupted tasks are remembered better than completed ones.

Memory retrieval is not a passive phenomenon. Instead, it triggers a number of processes that either reinforce or alter stored information. Retrieval is thought to activate a second memory consolidation cascade (reconsolidation) that requires protein synthesis. Here, we show that the temporal dynamics of memory reconsolidation are dependent on the strength and age of the memory, such that younger and weaker memories are more easily reconsolidated than older and stronger memories. We also report that reconsolidation and extinction, two opposing processes triggered by memory retrieval, have distinct biochemical signatures: pharmacological antagonism of either cannabinoid receptor 1 or L-type voltage-gated calcium channels blocks extinction but not reconsolidation. These studies demonstrate the dynamic nature of memory processing after retrieval and represent a first step toward a molecular dissection of underlying mechanisms.

Human Memory is Similar to Computer Memory, well almost.

The amazing thing about our memory is that it stores and saves our experiences, our knowledge, and our information. And all you have to do to recall your past experiences, knowledge and information, is to ask for it, and some how the information you asked for is retrieved and presented to you in the form of internal images, emotions and information. Wow, this thing is awesome! The human memory is an incredible tool with amazing abilities. But the memory has certain vulnerabilities. Like not being able to remember something when you need to, or remembering the wrong things at the wrong time. So is our memory a little imperfect, or is it just that we're not using our memory properly? In order to ask that question you would first have to answer this question, "what are the best ways to use our memory, effectively and efficiently?" First you want your information to be organized and easy to locate when needed. So learning the right things at the right time, in the right way, is a must. Second, you want to control the flow of information. You want to recall the right information at the right time. Third, you only want to see the information that you've requested. You don't want irrelevant information to suddenly appear in your mind and distract you from accessing more important information that you need. Fourth, you want to make sure that your current information is continually updated when needed, which is almost always needed. Fifth, you have to make sure that the perception of your stored information is logical. And in order to make sure that your information is logically perceived is to learn logical information and learn how to perceive it properly. Easier said then done but it can be done. The power of your memory is directly related to the quality of information and knowledge that you learn, as long as it learned at the right time and in the right way. Computer Memory.

Memory Storage Capacity of the Human Brain

The adult brain has been estimated to store a limit of up to 2.5 petabytes of binary data equivalent. Humans also have enormous amounts of information capacity in our DNA, so information is not just in our brains, it's in our whole body. And humans also have the ability to carry in their pockets large amounts of external memory capacity when we have our smartphones with us. Memory Storage.

Kim Peek, the real Rain Man, shows just how much information and knowledge a human brain can handle, it seems almost limitless.

Daniel Tammet shows just how incredible Human Brain processing abilities are.

Autistic Savant or High-functioning Autism seems to make certain processing abilities stand out more. It's not that they have enhanced abilities, it's just that Autistic people use certain human brain abilities more effectively. 99% of all humans have these abilities, so it's just learning how to use them.

Autobiographical memory also shows the enormous memory capacity of the Human Brain.

Learning Methods - AI (artificial intelligence)

Procedural Memory - Memory Management - Logic Gate

"That saying that humans only use 10% of their Brain, that is now a fact. People only know 10% of the 100% of what is known in 2017. People are being under utilized, and you can see the negative effects throughout society. The great awakening is about people finally taking the activity of learning seriously. The human brain has enormous memory capacity, more then a million computers added together. Use it or lose it, which is another fact of life."

Immersed in Old Memories - Nostalgia

Once in a while you have to visit old memories. Just to see what you can remember. Sometimes sparking old memories by playing songs that you use to listened to as a child, or looking at old photographs. Have you ever heard a song that sparked a distant memory? Why do songs connect us to moments in time? Memory Trace - Episodic Memory.

Retro is looking back or looking backward or behind. To bring to mind something in the past.

Retrospect is to review a past course of events or remember a period of time. To look back upon a period of time or sequence of events. A contemplation of things past. A long and thoughtful observation. Introspect - Backstory.

Retroactive is something taking effect from a date in the past. Retroactive in psychology is a descriptive of any event or stimulus or process that has an effect on the effects of events or stimuli or process that occurred previously. Affecting things past.

Rosy Retrospection refers to the psychological phenomenon of people sometimes judging the past disproportionately more positively than they judge the present. Although rosy retrospection is a cognitive bias, and distorts a person's view of reality to some extent, some people theorize that it may in part serve a useful purpose in increasing self-esteem and a person's overall sense of well-being. False Memories in History.

Nostalgia is a sentimentality for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. Smell and touch are strong evokers of nostalgia due to the processing of these stimuli first passing through the amygdala, the emotional seat of the brain. These recollections of one's past are usually important events, people one cares about, and places where one has spent time. Music and weather can also be strong triggers of nostalgia. Nostalgia is a longing for something past.

Sentimental is nostalgic feelings of tenderness and sadness. A personal belief or judgment that is not founded on proof or certainty. Sentimentality commonly connotes a reliance on shallow, uncomplicated emotions at the expense of reason. Originally indicated the reliance on feelings as a guide to truth.

Reminiscing is to indulge in enjoyable recollection of past events. To recall the past. Day Dreaming.

Recollection is the act of recollecting, or recalling to the memory; the operation by which objects are recalled to the memory, or ideas revived in the mind; reminiscence; remembrance. The power of recalling ideas to the mind, or the period within which things can be recollected; remembrance.

Memory Lane is the act of remembering past journeys or remembering the experiences of ones childhood or younger years. "Memory Lane, oh how I love thee". Taking a Walk Down Memory Lane is when you're thinking about things that happened a long time ago, and you remember who you were as a person back then and what you thought of the world in those times. So much has changed while some things have stayed the same.

Blast from the Past is something that you had almost forgotten about and have not seen or heard of for a long time, something nostalgic that returns after a long period of obscurity or absence that suddenly and strongly makes you remember a previous time in your life, reminding you of some incredible memories of past experiences, things that have not thought about in years.

Flashback in a story is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point in the story. Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story's primary sequence of events to fill in crucial backstory. In the opposite direction, a flashforward (or prolepsis) reveals events that will occur in the future. Both flashback and flashforward are used to cohere a story, develop a character, or add structure to the narrative. In literature, internal analepsis is a flashback to an earlier point in the narrative; external analepsis is a flashback to a time before the narrative started. In film, flashbacks depict the subjective experience of a character by showing a memory of a previous event and they are often used to "resolve an enigma". Flashbacks are important in film noir and melodrama films. In movies and television, several camera techniques, editing approaches and special effects have evolved to alert the viewer that the action shown is a flashback or flashforward; for example, the edges of the picture may be deliberately blurred, photography may be jarring or choppy, or unusual coloration or sepia tone, or monochrome when most of the story is in full color, may be used. The scene may fade or dissolve, often with the camera focused on the face of the character and there is typically a voice-over by a narrator (who is often, but not always, the character who is experiencing the memory).

Age Regression in therapy is a technique in a psycho-therapeutic process that facilitates access to childhood memories, thoughts and feelings. Age regression includes hypnotherapy, a process where patients move their focus to memories of an earlier stage of life in order to explore these memories or to get in touch with some difficult-to-access aspects of their personality. Past Life Regression.

I can see my younger self saying, "Remember me, I was you once. It's been a while since we talked, so, how have you been?" It's good to think about things that you have not thought of in a long time. Even though they may bring back sad memories, I believe that you have to go back once in a while and see how much you can still remember. Like an exercise for your memory.

Emotion and Memory have shown that the most vivid autobiographical memories tend to be of emotional events, which are likely to be recalled more often and with more clarity and detail than neutral events. The activity of emotionally enhanced memory retention can be linked to human evolution; during early development, responsive behavior to environmental events would have progressed as a process of trial and error. Survival depended on behavioral patterns that were repeated or reinforced through life and death situations. Through evolution, this process of learning became genetically embedded in humans and all animal species in what is known as flight or fight instinct. Artificially inducing this instinct through traumatic physical or emotional stimuli essentially creates the same physiological condition that heightens memory retention by exciting neuro-chemical activity affecting areas of the brain responsible for encoding and recalling memory. This memory-enhancing effect of emotion has been demonstrated in a large number of laboratory studies, using stimuli ranging from words to pictures to narrated slide shows, as well as autobiographical memory studies. However, as described below, emotion does not always enhance memory.

Traumatic Memories - Music helps us to Remember

Memories of past events retain remarkable fidelity even as we age. Even though people tend to remember fewer details about past events as time goes by, the details they do remember are retained with remarkable fidelity, according to a new study. This finding holds true regardless of the age of the person or the amount of time that elapsed since the event took place. Scientists studying the complex relationship between aging and memory have found that in a controlled experiment, people can remember the details about past events with a surprising 94% accuracy, even accounting for age. These results, published in the journal Psychological Science, suggest that the stories we tell about past events are accurate, although details tend to fade with time.

Interpret is to make sense of; assign a meaning to. Give an interpretation or explanation to. Create an image or likeness of. Restate (words) from one language into another language. Make sense of a language.

Make Sense is to be reasonable or logical or comprehensible.

Comprehensible is capable of being comprehended or understood.

Memoir is a collection of memories that an individual writes about moments or events, both public or private, that took place in the subject's life.

Contemplation is a long and thoughtful observation. A calm, lengthy, intent consideration. - Meditation.

Reflection is a calm, lengthy, intent consideration. Expression without words. A remark expressing careful consideration. The image of something as reflected by a mirror (or other reflective material) The ability to reflect beams or rays. The phenomenon of a propagating wave (light or sound). A likeness in which left and right are reversed. (mathematics) a transformation in which the direction of one axis is reversed.

Dreams - Abstract

Why do some things go into our long-term memory, it's not like I asked my brain to store this information, it seems to save it on its own, unless subconsciously or consciously there's a trigger that activates the release of Protein Kinase A that's used in creating long-term memories. We know there are control mechanisms in long-term memory because some people have the ability to remember what they see in incredible detail when they want to. It's like a computer, you don't have to know how it works, you just have to know how to operate it. But you don't have to remember everything in detail, you just have to remember what's important.

We start out our lives creating memories. Then we spend a lot of our time remembering our memories. The most important thing we need to do is to keep learning and to increase our knowledge, because the most important thing about our memories is how we process our memories. So we must continue to learn and develop. Having memories is not enough. We must have the intelligence to realize how valuable our memories are. We have to keep on creating new memories so that our old memories can be compared to our new memories. Pattern Recognition.

"I like it how your brain reminds you what you were thinking about a few minutes ago. I was thinking about doing something and then I got distracted, but a few minutes later, my thoughts returned to that action that I was thinking about doing. Thanks Brain, I knew I could count on you."

Songs About Remembering

Naked Eyes - Always Something There to remind me (youtube)
Barbra Streisand - The Way We Were (1975) (youtube)
The Plimsouls - A Million Miles Away (youtube)

Songs about Looking Back on Fond Memories.

Maroon 5 - Memories (youtube)
Here's to the ones that we got
Cheers to the wish you were here, but you're not
'Cause the drinks bring back all the memories
Of everything we've been through
Toast to the ones here today
Toast to the ones that we lost on the way
'Cause the drinks bring back all the memories
And the memories bring back, memories bring back you
There's a time that I remember, when I did not know no pain
When I believed in forever, and everything would stay the same
Now my heart feel like December when somebody say your name
'Cause I can't reach out to call you, but I know I will one day, yeah
Everybody hurts sometimes
Everybody hurts someday, ayy ayy
But everything gon' be alright
Go and raise a glass and say, ayy.

Unforgettable (Duet with Nat King Cole) (youtube)
Unforgettable
That's what you are
Unforgettable
Though near or far
Like a song of love that clings to me
How the thought of you does things to me
Never before
Has someone been more
Unforgettable
In every way
And forever more (And forever more)
That's how you'll stay (That's how you'll stay)
That's why, darling, it's incredible
That someone so unforgettable
Thinks that I am
Unforgettable too
No never before
Has someone been more
Ooh, unforgettable (Unforgettable)
In every way (In every way)
And forever more (And forever more)
That's how you'll stay (That's how you'll stay)
That's why, darling, it's incredible
That someone so unforgettable
Thinks that I am
Unforgettable too.

Little Things to Remember

Remember that your memory is an amazing gift, use it wisely, for it has unlimited potential.
Remember that you can learn anything that you want, as long as can read, listen and learn effectively.
Remember to learn something new everyday, especially things that are important and informative.
Remember to learn things in logically ordered steps, at the right time and in the right way.
Remember to not to believe everything that you read, hear or see, analyze information carefully.
Remember that intelligence is a journey, and if you stop learning, you will never know how great you can be.
Remember to dream and to visualize, think of new ideas, no matter how big or how small they are.
Remember to write about anything that you feel like writing about. Writing down your thoughts can be liberating and immortal.
Remember to write down things that you want to do, and things that you need to do. Responsibilities. 
Remember to read your things to do list everyday, and take the steps to reach your goals.
Remember to keep things simple, learn to manage time, use moderation, and learn to stay balanced.
Remember to always eat healthy foods, and do not over eat. Learn to savor the moment.
Remember to drink enough clean water everyday.
Remember to practice good hygiene.
Remember to exercise and to be active, but know your limitations.
Remember to rest when you're tired. Learn to relax every part of your body, especially the face and the stomach area.
Remember to do different breathing exercises throughout the day, understand how they effect you, focus only on your breathing.
Remember to exercise your focus and attention, staying sharp takes practice.
Remember to be aware of yourself, and your surroundings, several times a day. Keep an open mind.
Remember that you have vulnerabilities, so learn what they are.
Remember to understand how you feel, and that you can control your feelings.
Remember that you have abilities, and you also have a brain, which means that you have controls, so don't stress yourself.
Remember to relax and take breaks, but don't sit for long periods of time.
Remember to be nice to the planet, it's the only home we have, and we share it with all life forms.
Remember to be nice to people, learn to be honest, especially with yourself. Take an oath.
Remember to Learn how to respect other people, and learn how to respect yourself.
Remember to Learn how to forgive, and learn why forgiveness is important.
Remember to Learn how to understand people and learn to understand yourself.
Remember to Learn how to understand and control your emotions, and learn how to understand the emotions of others, especially when others have trouble controlling their emotions.
Remember to not allow other people to control your thinking, and don't allow outside forces to intrude on your wellbeing.
Remember to Learn how to control your fears. Thinking logically is a lot healthier than worrying.
Remember to keep in touch with people, even if its only for a moment.
Remember to love.
Remember to love yourself, be proud but be modest.
Remember that mistakes and accidents can happen, and the only time that you fail is when you don't learn from your mistakes. Remember to learn from experiences, good or bad.
Remember to share your knowledge.
Remember to laugh, especially at yourself.
Remember to listen to music, practice dancing, or play learning games or do something entertaining. Celebrate life.
Remember that you can solve any problem, as long as you learn how to solve it.
Remember to measure value and cost accurately.
Remember, as long as you keep learning, you will always have control, power, freedom, potential and possibilities.
Remember to Remember.


A Poem about Remembering
Our memory is so important, we need to use it every day,
never take it for granted, for there's always a price to pay.
It shapes our personalities, and makes us who we are,
sometimes making us laugh, and sometimes leaving a scar.
We'll always have good memories, and we'll always have bad,
but we learn from our experiences, so that knowledge we'll always have
We know it's not perfect, for sometimes we forget,
it doesn't mean it's lost, it just means we misplaced it.
Even with so much to remember, and so much to make sense,
it's choosing what to remember, that will always make a difference.

It’s remembering your ideas your thoughts your dreams your goals,
it’s remembering to write them down, so everyone knows.
It’s remembering that time that song that poem that movie,
it’s remembering to say I love you, and being proud to say I’m me.
It’s remembering to exercise our body, and that incredible mind of ours,
for our body will carry us through life, and our mind beyond the stars.
So let us not forget, especially in the month of December,
that life is a miracle full of magic, and we should always remember to remember.


"Little Things To Remember was a book that I started working on in 2008. I stopped working on the book when this website BK101 became more important. I will finish the book one day, though it will not be the same book that I started out with."


Would you rather lose all of your old memories, or lose your ability to make new memories?

It's not just what you remember, but more importantly, it's how you perceive that memory. Is your opinion of that memory correct?