Infinite Memories: Fact Or Myth

How wonderful would it be if we could retain all our memories? However, that does not seem to be the case. While we are able to retain some memories for very long time, others fade and at times we have absolutely no recollection of the person, place or event. What we usually think when we say "memory" in our day to day life is actually "long term memory", however, we also have important "short term" and " sensory" memory processes, which must be worked through in order to establish long term memory. Memory is the ability to encode, store and recall information. The human memory goes through three processes of encoding, storage and recalling or retrieval.
Storage is kind of passive process of retaining information in the human brain; it can be in the sensory memory, the short term memory or the more permanent long term memory. These different stages of human memory function acts as a sort of filter that actually protects us from the flood of information that we process on a daily basis, avoiding an overload of information that could practically make us go crazy.
So how do we remember informations? The more the information is repeated or used the more likely it is to be retained in our long term memory. However, memories are not stored in our brains like books in a library shelf. On the contrary once information’s are received they consolidated and widely distributed throughout the cortex. The long term memories are stored throughout the brain as groups of neurons and these are primed to fire together in similar pattern to recreate the original experience. It also seems that these information’s might even be encoded redundantly, several times at various parts of the cortex as a result even when one loses the memory trace or enagram there happens to be duplicates or alternative pathways elsewhere that help retrieve the memory that initially seems to be lost.
The more we practice an action the better are the chances of remembering it later. Though memory loss usually occurs as a part of our normal ageing however, it can also be caused due to other factors like several diseases, trauma and most commonly and notably Alzheimer’s. So that leaves us with the thought what happens to the materials that we forget. Some believe that these long term memories actually decay and disappear completely over time while others say that the memory trace remains intact as long as we live but the bonds or cues that help us to retrieve the trace become broken even though the information might still exist somewhere in the brain.

By: Madhuchanda Saxena
Content: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/08/190823140729.htm