Understanding the memory system to learn better

Memory? Neuroscience meets geography in the huge universe of memories, with uncharted areas, explorers, increasingly exact borders, and many and different communication pathways.memory-memories-functioning-brain-learning
Our word “memory” derives from the goddess

Mnemosyne. Its appeal was assured once Zeus fell for it for 9 nights, leaving Mnemosyne to create the 9 Muses of knowledge. It was important to Ancient Greeks. From Cicero to Charlemagne to the Renaissance, this curiosity persists.

Detractors appeared in the 17th century; logic was abandoned and Descartes flouted it, reducing memory to learning by heart or the "faculty of imbeciles" in France, according to Chateaubriand.

The 1950s computer revolution will bring engineers, psychologists, neurobiologists, and neurologists to Mnemosyne to research information coding, storage, and retrieval techniques.

As Mnemosyne recovers, we learn that there are multiple cortical memory regions involved in memorization. Memory is entering a “golden age” with brain imaging.

Memory is the sister of forgetting and the foundation of human identity. It organises our present and imagines our future.

Mnemosyne is in everyone...

Since memory is multiple—short-term and long-term, implicit and explicit, episodic and semantic, procedural—we will now speak of “memories” rather than “memory”.

Sensory memory, especially fleeting, fuels short-term memory.

brain-and-functioning-memory-journey-of-the-white-wolf-coaching-teenagersThis short-term memory is very brief. Only 7 units (+/- 2) can be recorded. Its 20s autonomy is vulnerable to distractibility and anxiety. Start from the beginning if the phone rings while reading this article! ;-)

The working memory stores sensory organ information for a few seconds after perception to process it. It is a “airlock” to the “black box” and the brain's first entryway to knowledge.

We see a denser information flow than we think. Short-term memory retains specific aspects based on relevance, appraisal, relationships, and learning. The elements chosen can be long-term and not just for a single activity.

Acquisition and conditioning of procedural memory (writing, walking, cycling, etc.) automates learning.
Procedure memory ensures “I know how to do…”
I can take notes while listening to a lecture since the writing process has become "automatic" and is stored in procedural memory, which helps me understand the course.

Semantic memory—from the Greek semios, meaning—includes all world and self-knowledge.
Semantic memory signals “I know…”
Our conceptual knowledge helps us understand the world.

a hierarchy of categories from specific to generic. The canary is a bird, a vertebrate, an animal, a living thing, etc.

This cognitive economy classifies just specified qualities with associated concepts. Properties like wings and beak are bird properties, whereas yellow is canary property.
We have two ways to do this in learning:

Reconstructing the information according to the tree structure, or reasoning from our network of knowledge, is inference. This is why memory boosts intelligence.

If I say it's a small animal with a beak and two wings, you think it's a bird, right? By inference, you found it.

This natural process validates the riches of knowledge: The more encyclopaedic memory we have, the more varied and accurate our inferences.

The more links you make between knowledge, the better you remember. Information alone, in peril! So do those who memorise codes by associating them to dates or departments.

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