MEMORY

Intro: Some people are gifted with an elephant-like memory, others with a Dory-like recall. The key to a better memory is to repeat, repeat, repeat, with a touch of emotion  

THE PHOTOGRAPHER of the “documentary” that is your life story is an inch-long, slug-shaped region in the brain called the hippocampus, nestled within the head of the coiling snake of the emotional limbic circuit. Your emotions – good and bad – are the gatekeeper of what makes it in, and what gets left on the cutting-room floor. You won’t remember what you ate for breakfast last Wednesday because it wasn’t exciting, but if your lover got down on one knee to propose to you that morning, the fact you were eating a bowl of oatmeal at the time will be forever remembered, as clear as day.

That’s why dry lectures and seminars, dreary news bulletins, and boring books leave your head almost as soon as they are over. You’ll forget an arbitrary fact – such as 1769 being the year French ruler Napoleon Bonaparte was born – by the time you turn the page because it has no significance to you. However, if you’re a lover of all things locomotive, then you may have noted to yourself that this was the same year that the steam engine was invented, making Napoleon’s birthday easier to remember. The frontal lobe pathways for new memories and information will sprout from your established memory patterns, much like a new branch budding from an old grape vine.

Crucially, memories are only packaged into long-term storage once you have brought them back to mind at least once. Everyone loves stories – they are the lynchpin of our understanding of the world, and many people often entertain friends with fond memories that begin with “remember the time when…” and reminisce with family over tales from childhood. Each time you recall the memory, its neural pathways become strengthened and thickened, and more likely to weather the passage of time.

Your memory is at its worst when your body clock is slumping, for most of us, this will be the late afternoon and early evening. However, for night owls this will be in the morning.       

Even though memories are famously fallible – where we are often left grasping at straws after a disagreement when both parties are adamant their version of events is true – there are various things we can do to improve memory recall. Keeping a diary is one such method which should be used to record memories as soon as possible after the event, before they are contaminated by emotions or misty recollections. Telling stories is another effective method because repeating anecdotes to others will help form very strong memories by tying positive emotions to them, making the memory more likely to be stored long-term. Another method to improve memory includes creating mind maps which help to make visual connections between pieces of information that you want to learn. The more connections you make within a topic, the more likely you’ll retain information.

Why can I still remember skills, even years later?

When it comes to learned skills, especially those involving repeated movements, your brain’s most primal regions are like a memory-foam mattress

TEN, TWENTY, THIRTY, or more years may have passed since you last mounted your childhood BMX, but you haven’t forgotten how to ride. Like writing, swimming, driving, or typing on a keyboard, the ability stays with you, long after the hours of learning are forgotten. Sometimes called “muscle memory” (correctly termed procedural memory), muscles themselves have little to do with it.

Rather, these skills are stored in the cerebellum, far from your conscious memories of events. A large-wrinkled region tucked under the back of the brain, the cerebellum is under the orchestration of a curved tadpole-shaped structure in the middle of the brain called the basal ganglia.

With each attempt at a skill, slowly but surely, a path of neural connections forms in the brain. Through repetition and practice, these abilities build a well-trodden walkway deep inside your brain’s circuitry. The weeds of time are slow to obscure this path, so you will be able to retrace your steps and get back into the saddle well into your old age, even if you’re a bit rusty. It takes an estimated 20 hours of deliberate, focused practice to gain basic skills in a new hobby. Expert craftspeople and athletes take somewhere in the region of 10,000 hours firming up brain pathways before they reach the top of their game.

It’s not only the highly skilled who rely on procedural memory: most of what you do everyday is executed on “autopilot”, such as brushing your teeth or getting dressed. These tasks require very little conscious thought because they run via the basal ganglia rather than being under the direct control of the frontal, decision-making brain regions, which are free to focus on other things. If we didn’t have these programs, we would have to concentrate every time we tie our shoelaces.

These “unthinking” skills become so well established that they actually outperform our conscious brain’s ability for that task. When we try to think too much about something we’re good at, we can “choke”, which has been an athlete’s undoing on the day of the big event.

The Unforgettable Brain of Molaison

In 1953, pioneering neurosurgeon Dr William Scoville performed neurosurgery on Henry Molaison. Henry was alert as his skull was opened and portions of his brain removed, but anaesthetised. At the time no one knew what the hippocampus did, but Dr Scoville had a misguided hunch that this structure was the reason for the epilepsy that had plagued Henry. Sadly, the operation left the 27-year-old unable to ever make a new conscious memory.

Henry’s epilepsy mercifully settled, and his personality and intellect were unaffected, but he would forget events after a few minutes. Incredibly though, his “habit hub” (basal ganglia) and procedural memory circuitry were intact. He was able to learn new skills even though he instantly forgot how he had learned them.

Through studying Henry’s brain, scientists found that our regular memory and our “muscle” memory are stored in separate areas. From what we’ve learnt from his brain, patients suffering memory loss can be rehabilitated faster by teaching them new techniques and skills.

. Appendage