Memory, Psychology. Brain

The Most Important Truth About Human Memory — It Sucks!

Can’t Remember Why You Entered that Room? It’s Not Your Fault.

It’s happened to all of us at some point in time. We remember we have to get something from the adjacent room, we walk in and have no idea what we’re doing there. It’s a blank space in our memory. Most often the result is we go back confused, cursing our damned stupid mind.

We as humans, love to celebrate the brain(probably because of our brain), make it the egotistical hero of every human escapade. But here’s the truth Human memory is fallible and it sucks.

The human brain is often likened to a computer. The comparison makes sense since both are required for processing information, storing it and recollecting it. But imagine if your computer changed information in your documents over time, or didn’t like certain file types, so it deleted them or in some cases just refused to store them. That’s our brain. We as humans love to celebrate it,(probably because of our brain), make it the egotistical hero of every human escapade. But here’s the truth Human memory is fallible, and it sucks.

You forgetting the reason to go into a room is not a personal insult to your memory. It’s a universal insult to human memory.

But the kind of memory we’re talking about is short term memory.

When we say the word “memory” we think of it as a prolonged process over several years. But our brain has two kinds of memories. The short term memory or working memory that assists us with daily tasks. And rightly named, this memory lasts about a minute. Yes, a maximum of sixty seconds.

Don’t believe me? Try this simple exercise. Here are 5 Numbers. Read them and then say them out loud without looking.

13…..45….78…..26….90

This simple task requires the usage of your short term memory. Yet, most people on average cannot remember more than four items at a time. I say ‘items’ because these items can be words, letters, numbers or sentences(similar to strings in a computer) when multiple terms are clumped together and make sense we can remember them with ease as a single item.

Short term memory gets exhausted quickly. Overwhelm it with a few too many words, or pieces of information, and it stops functioning. It’s the same reason it’s easier to study in a quiet library versus a chaotic dormitory. Or why people sometimes say “I need some space to think”. They literally need the space, because of the constant information hitting their hypothalamus. Any overbearing stimulus can simply make our short term memory crash.

That is the same thing that happens when you walk into the room. Maybe it’s another thought that distracted you, or the phone ringing or just some background music. And the memory of your task is wiped out clean.

So how do you overcome it?

While the short term memory is adequate to handle urgent jo, it can often be a frustrating glitch. A simple way to overcome the short term memory circuit break. Is to repeat and rehearse the task to yourself in your head. Its the same way you try to memorise a phone number. The repetition helps commit the task to long term memory, which is extremely helpful because long term memory is infinitely vast and forever.

The constant repetition of the action, causes neurons to fire, again and again, so they’re more likely store the activity and imprint it in the synapses, the space between the neurons where the electrical impulses between adjacent neurons travel. Research believes that synapses store memories, they are the small inter-neuronal space which helps in carrying information from one neuron to the next.

Long term memory is like Sherlock’s Mind Palace, a labyrinth stretching on forever. There is no known time frame or storage space for long term memory because no human has every exhausted it either spatially or temporally. Once we commit something to our long term memory can retrieve it at some point, in some form or another.

Some researchers also point out that all forms of memories, whether long term or short term, are stored in our brain in some capacity. The hippocampus receives information, where it is processed and converted to memories. These are sorted, then sent for storage, in the different regions of the brain.

Which probably explains why we suddenly remember the task we had come to complete in the particular room after a few mind racking annoying minutes.

Overall memory is a complex equation with multiple variables and uncertainties. Of course, living with such a moody, flawed yet brilliant machine embedded in our heads is not going to be an easy task.

But kudos to everyone who puts up with this mind-numbing organ each day.