During the first ten minutes of class, write a summary of John Medina’s Brain Rules, Memory chapter. To help guide your summary, consider the difference between short term and long term memory. How long does it take for memories to form?
Remember to type up your summary and post it as a comment to this blog entry.
What is memory? Memory is the faculty by which the mind stores and remembers information. It can be of many things such as your past birthdays, the worst days of your life or the best days of your life, of your family and friends, and many more things. The brain has many types of memory systems and of them is encoding, storing, retrieving, and forgetting. This one is known as short term memory since we forget it easily. When information enters our brain it would split into little pieces and sent to our different regions in the cortex for storage and it is saved there. As this was the short term memory,, we also have the long term memory in which we remember things either for years or throughout our whole lives. John Medina said in his book that if we keep on repeating something, we would remember it and it would go into our long term memory part. Either you can keep on repeating at once and then at time intervals just look at it. And I agree with him because that is one of the ways I used to study. I kept on repeating one paragraph or sentence and would keep on repeating it until I remembered it so it helped me out and I still remember most of those things since I never looked back on some of them. Besides that I always thought that we have the stuff stored in our memories that we cherish the most or what means a lot to us. Such as family or our careers or even our pets. We keep on thinking and recalling those things that it gets hard for us to forget them and they’re glued in our memory permanently.
In the chapter, “Memory”, John Medina discusses the types of memory systems which are declarative, semantic and episode, and the four stages of processing: encoding, storing, retrieving, and forgetting. Declarative memory, also known as explicit memory, is facts and events that can be declared. Medina explained the encoding process. After information is encoded in different areas of your brain, it becomes stored as long term or short term memory. Medina mentioned that these memories take years to form. He explains the working memory, which is temporary information that aren’t repeated that will disappear in your short term memory. Information that is repeated in timed intervals will be stored in your long term memory. Medina discussed the retrieval process, how the brain tends to re-access events or information that are mixed between old and new ones, giving false information. He calls this the Sherlock Holmes. Forgetting memories helps us prioritize our cognitive space. Medina states that forgetting memories allows us drop pieces of information in favor of others. If information doesn’t have a meaning behind it or aren’t elaborative, it is considered irrelevant and will disappear.
According to John Medina’s chapter “Memory”, there are two types of memory: short and long term memory. The brain has many memory systems and one system does encoding, storing and retrieving. Something learned is best remembered when it was learned and remembered within two seconds of learning it. In order to make a short term memory into a long term memory, you have to incorporate the information gradually and repeat it over the time. It takes at least an hour or even a year for memory to be constellated. This fact is the absolute truth. I learned mathematics formulas in high school and I could not master or memorize them until College.
In John Medina’s, “Brain Rules, Memory,” Medina focuses on how the brain stores and remembers information on a short-term and long-term basis, which brings us to “Brain Rule #7: Repeat to remember.” The brain has many types of subunits of memory. Medina begins this chapter with short-term memory. Short-term memory lasts for about 30 seconds. If it is not repeated within the 30 seconds, it disappears. If repeated, it moves on to our “working memory,” which can lasts about an hour and if not repeated within that time, it can disappear as well. Amongst the different subunits of memory, we have declarative memory. Declarative memory, also known as explicit memory, happens in four stages: encoding, storing, retrieving, and forgetting. Encoding occurs when we organize incoming information so that we can get ready to store it. Medina explains two different types of encoding, automatic and effortful processing. Automatic processing occurs with minimum effort and in this processing you may be able to recall the location. Effortful processing is just the opposite of automatic. It requires lots thinking and repetition before you can remember anything. Because encoding and storage share pathways, the first few seconds of receiving information increases its chances to end up in long-term memory. In the retrieval process, our brain fills in spaces of our past memories with new memories. Long-term memories are memories acquired from our short term. Repetition is key to remembering and logging that information into long-term memory is best done over time. Lastly, forgetting helps us arrange the relevant and irrelevant memories needed in our life.
While reading John Medina’s, Brain Rules Memory chapter Medina discusses how our brains store our brains store our memories separately to create short term and long term memories. Short term memories are basically things that we have experienced that are not so important or amusing to us which is easy to forget. While our long term memories are experiences that were important to us or meaningful that causes us to remember them as if it just happened yesterday. John Medina’s point is basically that if we have experienced something relevant to us it’s always in our minds no matter what but if it’s something irrelevant that we have experienced then we forget about it by the next day. Our memories are formed by encoding what’s actually happening, figuring out whether it should be stored as a short term or long term memory, and retrieving the actual experience. Memory is essential to all our lives. Without a memory of the past we cannot operate in the present or think about the future.
The brain remembers things, that is nature. If you repeat an action numerous times, with each successive repetition you increase your chance of remembering said activity. The human mind, except for rare exceptions, does not remember everything. The mind picks and chooses what it thinks is important and remembers that. Sometimes, the brain needs to think about an item of information for a bit longer than normal, this is the purpose of short term memory. Patience with the mind, i theorize, is how one improves the mind. Other than the fact that the brain is rather selective in remembering things. The brain extrapolates information from a conversation or events and discards the rest. The extracted information moves to long term memory for storage. In speech and writing, the brain separates letters and the placement information for these letters as mentioned by JM.The brain works on a system comprised of electrical and chemical elements. The brains electrical signals form part of the memory. Memory is simply a certain combination of electrical pulses, each pulse been binary, as in simple on or off. The mind references what it has remembered to influence everyday thoughts and actions. I know it sounds like a paradox, it kind of is, but the mind thinks about things using information referenced from the mind itself.
In the Chapter “Memory”, Medina talks about the different types of memory and how humans register the memories we see in our daily lives. Medina described and compared the brain as an “open lid, blender”. Medina made that analogy due to how our brain stores our memories. Our memories that we experience are tossed around like an open lid blender and all the information is spread apart, in different parts of our brain. One specific thought can be stored in one area of the brain, and another can be stored in a completely different place. The difference between short/ term and long term memory is how they are stored. Our short term memory only last and doesn’t stay in our brain for very long due the significance of this memory, will not be as much compared to a long term memory. Long term memories are stored permanently or a very long period of time due to our brain making the specific memory with more significance or impact in our life.
In this chapter, Medina talked about how the brain encodes and stores memories. First, it is processed in short term memory, where it is encoded, stored, retrieved, and then forgotten. In order to convert this into long term memory, we must continue to repeat this information, or have it connect with something that is already learned so it is easier to remember. The more attention you pay to what you are trying to remember, the more elaborately it will be encoded and therefore the stronger that memory will be. I know personally I struggle to remember things. I usually forget them almost instantly or I remember when it is too late. Perhaps with this new information I can change my study techniques or memorization techniques and hopefully I will be able to remember things more.
In chapter memory from the brain rules , Medina talks about how brain keeps our memories stored . The most thing I liked in his chapter that he talks about different types of memories like declarative, semantic and episode, and the four stages of processing: encoding, storing, retrieving, and forgetting. He points that if we repeat something over and over it will stay in our mind permanently. From my experience I can agree with him because it does stay I memory.
I believe memories are very important to us. Memorizing experiences had help us evolved and survived. When I was reading this chapter, it reminded me about some tips my second grade teacher told the class to do to help us memories our vocabulary words. Those tips were to write it out at least two times. It would help us remember and become familiar with them. In this chapter I learned that declarative memory its responsible for us to remember our basic information like our birth date ,the basic math.