6 secrets to remembering and forgetting
The human brain is a complex and mysterious organ, and even now we do not know everything about how it works. Why are some events remembered and others forgotten? How to improve memory and preserve intellectual activity until old age?
Today we will talk about some interesting features of remembering and forgetting.
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Eraser effect
A person always dreams of preserving joyful, pleasant events in his memory and quickly forgetting everything that upsets him. Unfortunately, we are not always in control of our memory. The brain sometimes chooses what to remember and what to forget, without relying too much on our desires.
According to scientists, bright events (regardless of their emotional coloring) are best "stuck" in the memory. Routine everyday impressions are poorly remembered, although they are repeated much more often. This feature of the brain is called the eraser effect.
Memorization by speaking
The human body, as far as possible, protects itself from overloads, including emotional ones. That is why the memory mechanism is equipped with a kind of filter that cuts out those events and impressions that the brain considers unsuitable for long-term storage. However, if necessary, this "watchman" can be deceived by using the pronunciation method. It consists in the fact that a person mentally repeatedly repeats words and phrases describing an event that he would like to remember. Despite the simplicity of the method, it works, and such memories do last for years.
Using life experience when memorizing
Studying memory problems, scientists have found that people who read a lot, even at an advanced age, remember the events of their own lives faster and in more detail than their peers who do not bother reading.
As it turned out, the point here is not so much in mechanical training of memory (which also takes place), but in the ability of the brain to record information, correlating it with a person's life experience. And since reading people, in addition to purely eventful experience, also have emotional experience, gleaned from fiction, their memory works more efficiently.
Memorization with visualization
For most people, visual memory is better than auditory or tactile memory. This property can be used when you need to remember something. With a little practice, you can learn to mentally create a kind of video sequence, imagining pictures that are associated with you, for example, with any poem. Once this becomes a habit, remembering what you need will become easier.
Unconscious memorization
One of the properties of the human brain is the ability to involuntary memorization. Indeed, we sometimes do not even know what information we have. Many people who happened to be alone for a long time later noted that they easily recalled long poems and even entire prose chapters - parts of those books that they had once read, but did not try to memorize. This indicates that our memory may contain information that we did not intend to store, and reproduce it in an emergency.
Mental labor against age-related memory decline
It has long been known that people who have been engaged in scientific research all their lives retain a good memory to a ripe old age. Maintaining intellectual activity is promoted, first of all, by constant searches and assimilation of new information.
What about those people whose professional activities are not related to either science or teaching? They are also able to provide their memory with regular exercise. For a long time, it was believed that the role of such exercises should be mainly actions consisting in memorizing texts mechanically (memorizing poetry) or using and expanding vocabulary (solving crosswords). These classes are undoubtedly useful, but the most effective way to train memory is to assimilate information that is fundamentally new for a given person. It is it that allows you to form fresh neural connections in the cerebral cortex and increase their number.
According to modern ideas, memory is best preserved in those people who are simultaneously interested in the maximum number of a wide variety of things (they analyze political events, study foreign languages, do handicrafts, plant growing and cooking, follow the news of cultural life, read a lot of fiction, in adulthood drive a car, etc.). Simply put, breadth of interests is the most effective way to achieve intellectual longevity.
Scientists who have studied the features of human memory have established the following:
- in order to remember in the smallest detail what he needs, a person must remain in a very quiet room, completely alone. The fact is that the brain, avoiding overload, perceives any noise as a hindrance to the reproduction of information stored in memory;
- the process of memorization is facilitated when a person is full. After eating, the brain receives a loading dose of glucose, and its performance increases;
- a little stress also contributes to memorization, since in this case the events acquire an emotional connotation;
- heavy and prolonged stress, on the contrary, dulls memory.
The study of the peculiarities of the brain continues. Researchers have to uncover many secrets, the knowledge of which will help people maintain health, memory and intellectual activity until a ripe old age.
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Maria Kulkes Medical journalist About the author
Education: First Moscow State Medical University named after I. M. Sechenov, specialty "General Medicine".
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