In our memory are sedimented the emotions, the teachings we have learned and information, is an amazing machine that makes us unique.
We can define memory as our amazing unreliable safe, unreliable because it betrays us without our knowledge, in fact, our memories are not as faithful as we think. Our memory allows us to remember the essence of an event but not the details, and even the most significant memories, those that form the essence of our lives, are not perfect memories because they can change over time.
We can classify the various types of memory according to the duration of the memory, i.e.: short-term memory (stores a limited amount of information) and long-term memory (stores information for a variable length of time). Long-term memory in turn is divided into implicit memory, which stores unconscious habits (such as riding a bicycle), and explicit memory, which stores conscious memories. Finally, the latter is divided into semantic memory (stores facts, dates, numbers, words) and episodic memory (stores personal experiences).
When we have an experience, sensory information is processed by different parts of the brain, but it is the medial temporal lobe that is responsible for connecting the various elements, for reconstructing the memory, and it includes the hippocampus, an important structure.
Adolescence is the period in our lives when we experience most of the significant moments of our lives, those crucial moments that determine who we are, which is why in old age we tend to remember this period more clearly than others.
Have you ever wondered if you can improve your memory? Fortunately, the answer is yes, but you have to lead a healthier, more active life, so don't drink too much alcohol, get plenty of sleep and eat well. In addition, many studies have shown that meditation helps, because meditation improves concentration, which in turn improves memory.
Emotions, place and story are the foundations of our sharpest memories, they help us to strengthen them: when we have an emotional experience our amygdala, the emotional centre of the brain, which resides next to the hippocampus, allows us to form a more detailed and strong memory, furthermore, place plays an important role in memory because if we look at the hippocampus we can see that there are cells that are particularly sensitive to space and time, finally, the brain pays more attention to information if it is in the form of stories.
There are memory competitions in which various people compete against each other to memorise numbers, words and images. In order to remember something better using the power of place, the ancient technique 'the memory palace' can come to our rescue. It consists of imagining walking through a neighbourhood that you know well, adding surreal images along the way, helping to put abstract things in order, linking them to something you know. Memory athletes don't have bigger brains, but they change the connections in their brains by training with techniques such as the memory palace.
Generally with emotional memories we tend to remember the central aspect, we pay a lot of attention to the heart of the experience. Memory is unreliable because we cannot remember every detail of every experience, so we use pre-existing knowledge such as semantic memory to fill in those gaps.
The action our brain takes to reconstruct our episodic memory shows us that our episodic memories are very flexible.
When you let your mind wander you go back and forth remembering and imagining, we can compare the mind to a time machine that puts the pieces back together to relive the past, but is also able to put them together with others to imagine possible futures, in fact, according to some scientists the brain is able to weave together memories of the past with dreams of the future to create the perception of ourselves.
Mariacarla Frippa
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