The number of items that can be remembered is far greater than the total number of brain cells. It has been estimated that after 70 years of activity, the brain may contain as many as 15 trillion separate bits of information. Thus your memory is a treasure house whose size and strength are almost beyond human comprehension. It is a pity that so many of us store up so much less learning and experience than is possible. This may be due to the fact that we have not paid much attention to such areas of learning and the traditional education focuses on accumulation of knowledge without a holistic model of individual development.
The wisest person who ever lived came nowhere near using the full capacity of his wonderful mental storehouse. (Quite possibly, people in general employ only 10 to 15 percent of their brain’s capabilities)
How the brain stores its memories is still not fully known. Some scientists believe that each item of memory is contained in a loop of cells connected by tiny tendrils with an electrical current going around and around the loop, which might be hundreds or thousands of cells in length. Other theories suggest that the memory is somehow impressed, or “etched” on the cell, or exists on a chain of cells like knots in a string. We do know that for the first 30 to 60 minutes after being received, any sensory impression is “floating around,” so to speak, in the brain, not yet firmly registered. This may be why, after a sharp blow on the head, people often permanently forget what happened to them during the previous 15 or 20 minutes.
Why is the memory has often been compared to a storehouse? This conception goes back to the Greek philosophers and to St. Augustine who described the “roomy chambers of memory, where are the treasures of countless images” This spatial metaphor that likens memories to objects that are put into storage compartments, are held for a while, and are then searched for, is a recurrent theme in both ancient and modern thought.
The belief that there are several memory stores comes from the fact that memory may reach back for years but may also concern events that occurred just moments ago. We usually think of memory in terms of a past that is reckoned in hours, days, or years. But a moment’s reflection tells us that memory comes into play as soon as the stimulus has disappeared from the scene. An example is a telephone number we look up and retain just long enough to complete the dialling; here the interval between acquisition and retrieval is a matter of mere seconds, but it is a memory all the same.
These simple facts provide the starting points for the stage theory of memory. One of its assertions is that there are several memory systems. Of these, the most important are short-term memory, which holds information for fairly short intervals, and long-term memory, in which materials are stored for much longer periods, sometimes as long as a lifetime. The second, and even more important assertion of the theory is that information enters these two systems in successive stages, to get to the long-term system, information must first pass through the short – term store .
Today, however, most theorists believe that long-term memories are formed by a more active process in which the subject’s own ways of encoding and organising the material play a major role. As a result, they regard short-term memory not so much as a temporary storage platform but rather as a mental workbench on which various items of experience are held while they are sorted, manipulated, and organised. According to this view, whether the materials will be retained in memory and eventually retrieved does not depend upon a simple transfer from one storage container to another. Instead, it depends on how this material is processed (that is, encoded) The more elaborate the processing, the greater the likelihood of later recall and recognition.
Why are images such a powerful aid to memory and the difference in left and right brains?
One of the reasons may be that they are yet another way of forming a new chunk in memory. By creating a mental image, the subject joins two unrelated items so that they form a new whole. When part of the chunk (the imagined locus) is presented, the entire chunk is retrieved, yielding the part required for recall.
The right brain deals with the ability to appreciate and produce art, to be oriented in terms of space, to be creative, to be co-ordinated in sports or mechanical abilities, and to be able to appreciate anything visual.
It is possible that the right hemisphere is also the side of the brain that is most aware of the complexities of morality and evil ? Some evidence suggests that this might be so.
Armed with this knowledge, a novelist once wrote a murder mystery, based on his interpretation of the split brain experiments. The main character in the novel tried to deny his involvement in the crime when he spoke (using his left brain), but he felt a lot of guilt on the right side. According to the novelist, the poor man had disagreements within his own head.
But the human brain is an integrated unit, even though it tends to specialize in terms of its functioning. The left side usually deals with language and the right side with spatial awareness, but not always. We do know, however, that in normal human beings the two sides usually work together in harmony. It is only then that we are able to “appreciate the moral of a story, the meaning of a metaphor, words describing emotion, and the punch lines of jokes.
The harmony between hemispheres is especially apparent when an attempt is made to understand musical abilities. Appreciation for pitch and timbre appear to be right side features. Sensitivity to rhythm is housed in both hemispheres. Ability to read notes or compose a score may be left brain capabilities. Clearly music cannot be localized in one part of the brain.
It is a pity that modern man needs a calculator to perform even single digit calculations when men of by gone eras were committing large volumes of material to memory. Even today, we occasionally come across such talented individuals who display astonishing mental powers which are beyond the reach of ordinary men and women. The human brain has the capacity to simultaneously process millions of multi – tasks, thus surpassing any man made super computer.
Prof. Dr.Lakshman Madurasinghe PhD., LLD., D Litt