What makes memory important

Those with severely deficient autobiographical memory SDAM , however, are unable to vividly recall specific events in their lives. As a result, they also have trouble imagining what might happen in the future. The integration of new neurons green into the hippocampus red bands degrades stored memories.

Credit: Jagroop Dhaliwal. Various symptoms of these conditions — including flashbacks, obsessive thoughts, depressive rumination and difficulty controlling thoughts — have been linked to an overactive hippocampus. A better understanding of how to help people make traumatic memories less intrusive could help researchers to treat some of the most intractable cases.

When Anderson and his colleagues looked at what happens when volunteers suppress unwanted memories — a process he calls motivated forgetting — they found that people who reported more traumatic experiences were particularly good at repressing specific memories 5. Understanding the cognitive psychology that underlies that ability, as well as the mental resilience that is necessary for developing it, could help to improve treatment for PTSD.

If forgetting is truly a well-regulated, innate part of the memory process, he says, it makes sense that dysregulation of that process could have negative effects. More from Nature Outlooks. That question is yet to be answered. But more memory researchers are shifting their focus to examine how the brain forgets, as well as how it remembers.

In the past decade, researchers have begun to view forgetting as an important part of a whole. Memory, first and foremost, is there to serve an adaptive purpose. It endows us with knowledge about the world, and then updates that knowledge. This article is part of Nature Outlook: The brain , an editorially independent supplement produced with the financial support of third parties. About this content. Berry, J. Neuron 74 , — PubMed Article Google Scholar.

Migues, P. Akers, K. Science , — Schmitz, T. Nature Commun. Hulbert, J. Download references. Technology Feature 09 NOV Research Highlight 29 OCT Article 10 NOV News 04 NOV Research Highlight 03 NOV News 22 OCT Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

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Your primary email address. You can revoke this access at any time through your LinkedIn account. Sign In with LinkedIn. Already have an account? Login here. Summary: Memory is the superior logical or intellectual cognitive process that defines the temporal dimension of our mental organization. What is its role in learning? Memory is an active, subjective, intelligent reflection process of our previous experiences. There are 3 main processes involved in human memory: Encoding Transforming information into a form that can be stored in memory.

Storing Maintaining the encoded information in memory. Retrieving Re-accessing information from the past which has been encoded and stored. There are 3 types of factors that can influence encoding efficiency: Content factors Related to the type of material to be encoded.

Environmental factors Related to the conditions under which the encoding takes place. Subjective factors Related to variables in effect when encoding takes place.

The content factors are: The volume of the material the greater the volume, the more difficult the encoding. The degree of organization of the material the better organized, the easier the encoding.

The degree of familiarity. The place occupied by the information in the structure of the content; that is, at the beginning, middle, or end of the material information placed at the beginning and at the end tends to be stored more easily than that placed in the middle. The nature of the material. And seeing them again and again helps us keep our memories fresh.

But if our photos are spread in loose folders on the computer, we can hardly revive them without feeling the cold sweat down our forehead imagining the day we have to sit down to organize them. Therefore, organizing our memories is as important as capturing them. It is a job that is best done slowly.

If we have made a trip and we have the photos with our smartphone, it is best to dump them into the computer when arriving home and put in a separate folder those that belong to the trip. The day you want to make an album or relive them you will always know where to look. That is why it is important that we have a system to store and organize our memories. We have Kuicco. Do you have one? Tell us about it in the comments! Thank you so much for this piece!

You have contributed immensely on accounting for memories, which I just need right now. Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.