About Memory

Memory is essential daily living.. It is also necessary for all new learning. Most adults worry about losing theirs. Forgetting keys or misplacing a paper can set of alarm bells. Is this the first sign of Alzheimer's?

Knowledge is power. It can also be reassuring. My aim is to give each reader the best and latest scientific information about Memory. Since there is so much new research being published, this section of the Anti-Aging-Articles web site will be revised more often than most. If you have subscribed to our RSS feed(See the left Navigation bar.) you will get notice of each addition and update.

But now to definitions and explanations....

Neuroscientists and neurologists are key figures in the field of Mind and Memory. Neuroscientists do laboratory research. Neurologists are the medical doctors who deal with living patients who report problems with their memory. Both groups can contribute to our knowledge. Recent studies seem to offer some real break throughs for understanding how we remember and why we forget.

What Science tell us

• Ordinary vs Vital memory Vernon H. Mark, M.D. is a neuroligist who often treats people who can not remember. At the opening of his book Reversing Memory Loss he says that that many persons get concerned when they forget where they left their keys, their glasses or the score of last weeks game. But he says that this type of forgetting he says is not so important. what is really important is forgetting how to do things that are involved in every day living: how to dress in the morning, how to fix lunch or even the fact that you ate lunch. These forgettings show loss in VITAL Memory and such a loss makes doing the ordinary tasks of daily life difficult or impossible.

  His work is devoted to this VITAL form and what can be done to reverse such losses. See: Reversing Memory Loss

• Three scientific classifications: Sensory, short term and long term memory.
  • Sensory is the term scientists use for what we rememeber after only a second of exposure to stimuli. Senory is usually explored by experimental scientists. They flash images on a screen or give a brief exposure to audio stimuli and then ask subjects to say what they saw or heard. Other experiments ask subjects to press a button each time they see or hear a specific stimuli during a presentation. Researchers are interested in how much the mind can take in during just a second of exposure.
  • Short term is the name given to what we can remember in after 2- 60 seconds of exposure. Some of what we notice in the sensory stage (explained above) can be transferred into our short term capacity.

    A quick test of your short term auditory short term capacity is to ask someone to tell you a phone number and then see if you can dial it correctly without writing it down. You can get a sense of your short term visual ability by looking up a number in the phone book and then immediately being able to dial it or write it down correctly without consulting the original as you do this.

    After a car accident, I found that I could not remember credit card numbers of customers and could only type in two numbers at a time when I wanted to process a charge. But I kept practicing and practicing this still. After about a year, I could remember 4 numbers at a time. Tne after about 2 years I found that I was able to do 8 numbers if I 'clumped' them in groups of 4.

  • Long term is the name given to our ability to remember things after longer periods of time, even indefinitely.For example, you might remember the phone number you use to call the plumber for a few seconds or minutes afterplacing the call but if you lived in a house with repeated plumbing problems and you were calling the plumber every few days for a month and then every few weeks for a year, you might not have to keep looking up the number.You just remembered it.

    Repetition is one of the keys to your long term capacity to remember. Another key is emotional intensity of the impression. Many people remember their first road test for a drivers license or winning an important game years after the event. Of course emotional intensity can work both ways. Sometimes we can repress or forget traumatic memories.

    As you can see, it is a complex subject.....

• Working - this is a term that is sometimes used to designate the things that we remember and can use without 'looking them up'. When you start a new job or learn a new technology or a language, you need to build up a working knowledge so that you do not have to keep looking things up or asking someone. When you are experienced you just recall and use things as you need them.

  Example: When you first learned to use the computer, it took you a bit of time and repetition before you had a working knowledge of how to turn it on, open your browser, find book marks etc. Over time all this became part of your working or functional memory and you no longer need to explicitly recall each step as you do it. (This is why businesses look for experienced workers when they need people ready from the 'get-go'.).

Additional articles on this subject

• All about Short Term Capacity for Remembering
• Loss of Short Term Capacity <
• Reversing Loss of the Ability to Remember
• DHEA - what science says about DHEA supplements for memory

• The Relation of Vitamin B12, Aging and Senility
• Cognitive Symptoms of Undiagnosed Lyme Disease