Remember the Positive and Forget the Negative
The mind has an amazing capacity. In fact, there are no limits to its power.
The power of mind can be extended to a limitless extent.
It is said that Lucius Scipio could remember the names of all the people who lived in Rome during his time.
There are teachers who know the names of all the children in the class and even those not in their class.
Imagine remembering the names of a few hundred children studying in various classes.
Remembering the relevant bits of information is necessary but it is neither advisable nor possible to retain each and every piece of information that our brain receives during our lifetime.
We simply remove the ones that are not relevant and retain the ones that are useful.
We know that we cannot possible remember nor want to remember everything.
To make our memories serve us intelligently, we have to be able to choose the things we want to remember and concentrate on developing selective type of memory.
It is worth remembering two fundamentals rules –
#Everyone has greater power of memory that he imagines
#Although intensive training produces great improvement in memory, training does not develop the general faculty of memory but simply increases the particular kind of memory job that is practiced.
The mind is like an endless shelf. We are constantly heaping information on it, just like we stack clothes in the cupboard.
What happens when we need a specific dress that we want to wear for the special party in the evening?
We spend a whole lot of time, searching for the specific dress amidst the chaotic clutter.
Similarly, the mind, which is heaped with a whole lot of irrelevant and useless information, takes time to dredge up the necessary information.
Sometimes it even fails to retrieve the useful stuff.
Remember the Positive and Forget the Negative
Sunday, November 08, 2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Procedural Memory
Procedural Memory
Procedural memory, also known as implicit memory refers to the memory of skills and routines.
You draw on procedural memories automatically to perform actions like getting dressed or driving your car.
How to ride a bicycle, write in cursive, operate a video recorder – each of these skills required effort and practice at one time but once you mastered it, you were able to perform it without remembering how you learned it or the separate steps involved.
The very fact that you are able to perform the skill demonstrates that learning and memory have taken place. When you take out your bike for a ride, you don’t say to yourself, “Okay first I straddle the seat, then I put my left foot on the left pedal and then I push off the ground with my right foot...” You just get on and go. It’s as though you body does your thinking for you.
In contrast to declarative memory, procedural memory is more resistant to aging and illness.
Individuals with Alzheimer’s can perform many routine tasks until well into the disease process.
Scientists aren’t sure why this happens, but it may be because this type of memory is more widely distributed throughout the brain.
Doctors learned how resilient procedural memory is in 1953, after operating on a young man in Connecticut (now famous in the medical literature as patient “H.M”) who sought relief from epileptic seizure.
Taking desperate measures to stop the seizure doctors removed his hippocampus, a structure deep within the brain that is often the focus of epilepsy and is a vital component of the brain’s memory system.
Although the surgery controlled H.M’s epilepsy, it left him with amnesia, a devastating impairment of memory.
Although H.M was utterly unable to learn new factual information and create new episodic memories, his procedural memory was largely unaffected.
Similarly, studies in which patients with amnesia depend time each day practicing new activities, such as playing computing games, suggest that they can learn new skills.
Although the amnesic patients often can’t recall ever having played or even seen the computer games, their performance improves over time and with practice indicating that they are capable of acquiring new procedural memories.
Procedural Memory
Procedural memory, also known as implicit memory refers to the memory of skills and routines.
You draw on procedural memories automatically to perform actions like getting dressed or driving your car.
How to ride a bicycle, write in cursive, operate a video recorder – each of these skills required effort and practice at one time but once you mastered it, you were able to perform it without remembering how you learned it or the separate steps involved.
The very fact that you are able to perform the skill demonstrates that learning and memory have taken place. When you take out your bike for a ride, you don’t say to yourself, “Okay first I straddle the seat, then I put my left foot on the left pedal and then I push off the ground with my right foot...” You just get on and go. It’s as though you body does your thinking for you.
In contrast to declarative memory, procedural memory is more resistant to aging and illness.
Individuals with Alzheimer’s can perform many routine tasks until well into the disease process.
Scientists aren’t sure why this happens, but it may be because this type of memory is more widely distributed throughout the brain.
Doctors learned how resilient procedural memory is in 1953, after operating on a young man in Connecticut (now famous in the medical literature as patient “H.M”) who sought relief from epileptic seizure.
Taking desperate measures to stop the seizure doctors removed his hippocampus, a structure deep within the brain that is often the focus of epilepsy and is a vital component of the brain’s memory system.
Although the surgery controlled H.M’s epilepsy, it left him with amnesia, a devastating impairment of memory.
Although H.M was utterly unable to learn new factual information and create new episodic memories, his procedural memory was largely unaffected.
Similarly, studies in which patients with amnesia depend time each day practicing new activities, such as playing computing games, suggest that they can learn new skills.
Although the amnesic patients often can’t recall ever having played or even seen the computer games, their performance improves over time and with practice indicating that they are capable of acquiring new procedural memories.
Procedural Memory
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Memory in Everyday Life
Memory in Everyday Life
Memory is far more than supply bringing to mind information encountered at some previous time. However the experiencing of some past event influences someone at a later time, the influence of the previous experience is a reflection of memory for that past event.
Systematic studies were conducted into this very topic in the 1970s and 1980s. Researchers found that, in fact, most people have very poor memories for familiar things – like coins.
This represents a types of memory which we tend to take for granted (but which - in sense – doesn’t really exist).
We tend remember the information that is most salient and useful for us. For instant, we may be much better at recalling the typical size, dimensions or color of coins than the direction of the head or the text on the coin, because the size dimensions or color may well be more relevant for us when we are using money.
And when remembering people, we will typically recall their faces and other distinguishing features that remain relatively invariant (and are, therefore, most useful in identifying them), rather than items which may change (such as individuals’ clothing).
Instead of thinking of coins and clothing, it is perhaps more straightforward for most people to consider the role of memory in the case of a student who attends a lecture and later brings to mind successfully what was taught in the lecture in the examination hall.
This is the type of ‘memory’ that we are all familiar with from our own school days.
Memory in Everyday Life
Memory is far more than supply bringing to mind information encountered at some previous time. However the experiencing of some past event influences someone at a later time, the influence of the previous experience is a reflection of memory for that past event.
Systematic studies were conducted into this very topic in the 1970s and 1980s. Researchers found that, in fact, most people have very poor memories for familiar things – like coins.
This represents a types of memory which we tend to take for granted (but which - in sense – doesn’t really exist).
We tend remember the information that is most salient and useful for us. For instant, we may be much better at recalling the typical size, dimensions or color of coins than the direction of the head or the text on the coin, because the size dimensions or color may well be more relevant for us when we are using money.
And when remembering people, we will typically recall their faces and other distinguishing features that remain relatively invariant (and are, therefore, most useful in identifying them), rather than items which may change (such as individuals’ clothing).
Instead of thinking of coins and clothing, it is perhaps more straightforward for most people to consider the role of memory in the case of a student who attends a lecture and later brings to mind successfully what was taught in the lecture in the examination hall.
This is the type of ‘memory’ that we are all familiar with from our own school days.
Memory in Everyday Life
Sunday, September 06, 2009
Human Memory
Human Memory
Memory of even the simplest, multicellular creature is not a matter of chance or skill, but is a well organized and extremely complicated system, determined fundamentally by genes and by experience.
Human memory is a highly developed and extremely efficient system. Memory means not only ‘the act of remembering’, but also ‘the person, thing, happening or act remembered’.
Other definitions include the use of the words ‘from memory’ to mean that something is remembered without the aid of notes, and the expression ‘in memory of’, meaning in honor of a certain person after their death.
An important feature of memory, or of the –process of remembering, is recall or recollecting at will.
‘At will’ is an interesting point, since learning is not usually automatic but involves attention, concentration and effort.
A good or a bad memory, in a singular, is an important part of everyone’s life.
Memories of pleasant or unpleasant things are often called ‘good’ or ‘bad’ memories.
What we called a ‘good’ memory varies from individual to individual. It has, in fact, become one of the main preoccupations of students and the major concern of people growing old.
People who complain about having poor or bad memory usually mean their fading ability to recall things.
The opposite of remembering is usually called forgetting. An important still open question is psychology is ‘learn to forget’, and if not, why not?
The common definitions of the word ‘forget; include ‘to put out of one’s mind’ meaning the active or intentional overlooking of an object, an insult and so on.
Finally, there is the odd phrase ‘to forget oneself’, meaning to lose control or behave without suitable dignity.
Human Memory
Memory of even the simplest, multicellular creature is not a matter of chance or skill, but is a well organized and extremely complicated system, determined fundamentally by genes and by experience.
Human memory is a highly developed and extremely efficient system. Memory means not only ‘the act of remembering’, but also ‘the person, thing, happening or act remembered’.
Other definitions include the use of the words ‘from memory’ to mean that something is remembered without the aid of notes, and the expression ‘in memory of’, meaning in honor of a certain person after their death.
An important feature of memory, or of the –process of remembering, is recall or recollecting at will.
‘At will’ is an interesting point, since learning is not usually automatic but involves attention, concentration and effort.
A good or a bad memory, in a singular, is an important part of everyone’s life.
Memories of pleasant or unpleasant things are often called ‘good’ or ‘bad’ memories.
What we called a ‘good’ memory varies from individual to individual. It has, in fact, become one of the main preoccupations of students and the major concern of people growing old.
People who complain about having poor or bad memory usually mean their fading ability to recall things.
The opposite of remembering is usually called forgetting. An important still open question is psychology is ‘learn to forget’, and if not, why not?
The common definitions of the word ‘forget; include ‘to put out of one’s mind’ meaning the active or intentional overlooking of an object, an insult and so on.
Finally, there is the odd phrase ‘to forget oneself’, meaning to lose control or behave without suitable dignity.
Human Memory
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