In this series of articles, well-known experts answer questions that are usually awkward to ask: it seems that everyone already knows about it, and the questioner will look stupid. We have collected what you really wanted to know about, but were embarrassed to ask.
1. Is there a special part of the brain responsible for memory?
There is no such department. Thinking about the brain this way is a thing of the past. Separate groups of neurons are responsible for memory. The formation of a memory about an event is the formation of a neural group that is now associated with this event. And we cannot say that it is located in any specific place in the brain. This is wrong.
Today, scientists already know: when we cannot remember an event or fact, it means that we do not have access to the activity of the neural group that is responsible for this specific memory. You don’t remember something, which means you can’t “pull out” a certain neural group. For some reason she doesn’t get in touch, she doesn’t work.
Since there is no special place to store memories, there can be no backup copy of them. But she is not needed. And that’s why.
The neural groups themselves are vast and there are a lot of them. For example, you remember your name. Special neural networks are responsible for this. There are a lot of them, just like there are neurons in each. If a conditional couple of neurons stop working for some reason, you still won’t forget your name. After all, the network is vast, and there are parallel structures in it. We can say that the neural groups contain more material than is necessary for work; this system is built with a reserve. Therefore, no backups are needed.
2. Is it possible to specifically remember something that I have long forgotten if it is really necessary?
Yes, you can try to find access to the neural network that is responsible for this content. Try to do this by going to the place where the desired episode occurred. Or where you memorized important information. You can also try to unblock access to a neural group through smells, through sounds, or through some other sensations.
We perceive everything that happens as a whole, in episodes. Right now you and I are living through a certain episode. You are aware of where you are, what time it is, what stage of life you are going through. You understand what happened yesterday, what awaits you tomorrow. It’s all a unique combination of neuronal activity in your brain. It will change over time, and you may forget the details of what is happening. But if you want to return to this episode, then through numerous details you can try to do this.
3. Why do you need to repeat it several times in order to remember something?
Because through repetition, you increase the ability to access the desired recording in your brain. Yes, we all live in episodes. But most often, when we talk about memory, we only mean information that needs to be retained and then transferred somewhere. And no one will ask you about other details of the situation you were in when you memorized something. But they are important for memory.
Students, for example, memorize tons of information and then demonstrate their knowledge in the exam. Here’s what we can advise them.
Let’s say you learn something in one setting, then in another. Then you will tell the third person about it. This way you will experience more episodes related to this content. This means that every time you want to reactivate knowledge, it will be easier for you to get the information. After all, the neural group with the required content will be larger, and the number of access points to it will increase.
And the more dissimilar episodes there are that differ in smells, sounds, surroundings, the easier it will be for you to remember something.
4. Can the memory be overloaded? Does it happen that it is no longer possible to add more information?
Memory is usually divided into short-term, long-term and intermediate (intermediate). And the long-term one, apparently, cannot be overloaded. But short-term – it’s very easy. Imagine that something new is constantly happening to you. One thing now, another in half an hour. In addition, you need to remember some recent information, and after a quarter of an hour you will need to learn something else unfamiliar.
All new information that we perceive is stored in short-term memory due to the impulse activity of neurons. New drawings are created all the time in this memory. They are also neural groups.
When there are too many of them, the drawings begin to get confused. This is how overload occurs.
The ability to return to a specific group remains for about an hour. A neural network can become stable by increasing interactions and strengthening connections within it. But if there are too many such groups, then there is no way to determine which of those currently active need to be stabilized. And if it seems that you are tired, your head is not working and you can’t remember anything else, this means that it is your short-term memory that is overloaded.
Well, if we talk about long-term, then, as far as I know, no one has yet managed to exhaust all its possibilities. You just need to put everything there correctly, without overloading the short-term one.
5. What determines whether a person has a good memory or not?
As I understand it, this concept refers to long-term memory. Here we get the following thing. When we say that a person has very bad memory, we are talking only about neurodegenerative diseases in which neurons die. And accordingly, the information they stored disappears.
But in all other cases, a person forgets something, but still remembers something. You see, it may be difficult for you to cope with information that you have just become acquainted with, because you have no neural groups in this area of life at all. But in another area there are plenty of them.
If there are already neural networks in memory associated with a certain area, then new information on the same topic will be much easier to remember than completely unfamiliar information.
Thus, people who do what they love usually find it easy to store and accumulate knowledge about their hobby. And when they are told: they need to remember stupid information and then reproduce it, the majority begin to have problems. Because it is difficult to remember something if you have neither experience nor knowledge in a new field. This is why people complain about memory.
6. If a person wants to improve his memory, how can he achieve this? What to do?
Most often, we are talking about the fact that a person wants to better remember texts, numbers, etc. There are even competitions in this area. For example, in the United States, people come and remember competition a huge number of new texts, information and everything else for them. To train, they usually associate information with a specific space. That is, mentally arrange information that needs to be remembered about some familiar places.
Our brain has evolved to interact perfectly with space. That is, with the world around us. It has always been important for a person to understand where to find food, where not to go, where it is dangerous, and so on. There are even special place neurons that help you remember your surroundings. That’s why attract For memorizing space, this is probably one of the best tips.
People who trained their memory in this way performed excellently on memory tasks. It is very likely that it is the place neurons that work in them to a much greater extent than in others.
7. Can medications, vitamins, or some special food improve memory?
It’s all about making sure the neurons work correctly. They must be excited or generate impulses in a certain order. Each neuron must fire at the right time, just like musicians at a concert begin to play at a strictly defined moment.
In order to be active, excite or generate impulses, neurons need quite a lot of different substances. These are oxygen, glucose, various microelements, without which cells, including neurons, cannot live. These substances are provided to them by the body.
Most people believe that they can eat unhealthy foods and still be fine. They get energy – and enough. Not really.
The body must exist in a certain balance of microelements. But often it is disrupted, and this prevents neurons from working normally. They enter at the wrong time, at the wrong time, and their melody is distorted. Therefore, of course, it is worth eating more or less correctly. We need variety and balance.
And here’s another thing that’s important. A huge problem for neurons is poor blood flow, disruption of healthy circulation. This means that if you keep your cardiovascular system in order, your brain will be much more comfortable and your memory will be better. Unless, of course, you also forget about the balance of microelements and vitamins in food.
8. Why does memory get worse with age?
Cell function deteriorates with age. One could blame it on blood flow, because over the years the cardiovascular system can work worse. But this is only one of the reasons. More research is needed to find others.
Let’s look at the experimental data. We take students who memorize a bunch of pictures and words during research. And then we invite older people. And it turns out that they have results below. But it is believed that this is not necessarily for the worse. There was a tendency to interpret these results not as bad memory, but, on the contrary, as wisdom. After all, in fact, a person has no need to remember meaningless things.
In addition, today there is evidence that healthy aging does not show such serious changes in the cognitive sphere as previously imagined. Therefore, it probably cannot be said that memory always deteriorates with age.
9. Is it true that our brain can change and embellish memories?
Yes, the brain can actually modify memories. This happens all the time. And that’s why. When you observed an event, a certain neural group worked. Since then, she has been carrying information about that episode. But the problem is that every time you remember it, other things happen at the same time. And that group is activated against the background of some other neurons. Now the composition of the network changes slightly – neurons related to the current situation are added to it.
Therefore, if you want to keep some valuable episode in your memory, it would probably be a good recommendation not to remember it. Or remember as little as possible.
But if, on the contrary, something not very good happened and you want to experience this episode less acutely, it makes sense to share this memory, talk about it. In this way, you modify the neural group that is associated with this episode, and it gradually becomes different.
We can say that each time what comes to mind is not the original situation itself, but our previous memory of it. And now you don’t feel so much pain anymore. The previous severity of the experience has smoothed out, because the neural group is now slightly different.
10. Why don’t we remember ourselves when we were very small?
There are several interesting hypotheses here. The first is due to the fact that there is no language in the memories of tiny children. And they simply cannot consciously describe what happened then.
The second hypothesis says that the problem may be in young neurons, which are also born in an adult organism. We have at least two zones where new neurons are continuously produced from stem cells. And here on rodents was shownthat the number and increased activity of these new neurons is associated with early memories changing. After all, young neurons are needed not only for remembering new information. They have a dual role – they also change existing groups.
Perhaps it is young neurons that are to blame for the fact that we do not remember being very small. After all, experiments showedthat rodents also have childhood amnesia. But they hardly have a language like ours.
Other embarrassing questions 👇
