I’ve been reading a lot about memory this past week, and one of the things that strikes me is that we don’t yet have a good enough model for equating the biochemistry of the brain with the experiential phenomenon of memory.
When I say I remember my 10th birthday or I remember what happened at the party last night, you know what I mean. But there’s an amazing array of processes that go into that - in terms of imagery, emotional connection and recall of facts and impressions.
However, although you can remember an event that took a long time to transpire, the act of rememberance happens in a very short space of time.
Obviously, you’re not recalling a sequential series of instants, but an overall sense of the recalled event. But the ways we have to explain that are derived from various different fields: literary criticism (metaphor seems to be the most useful framework we have to understand this), psychology, biochemistry, sociology - and so on.
And each perspective gives us a different view of what is going on… but none of them really address the brain itself and the complexities that it really presents.
One thing that is clear is that the brain changes in a concrete and very real way as a result of experiences. The information that makes its way into the brain rewires pathways, causes physical impressions, creates and reinforces connections… and this is entirely mediated through our senses.
As we change the way in which we take in visual, auditory and other information - that is, if the mode of mediation shifts - so too do the resulting physical processes that occur in our brains change.
Culturally, as our technologies change - and those extensions of our senses provide new ways of processing and importing information - so too do the meanings that we create change, thereby altering and adapting ourselves to the media environment.
Even if not ‘evolutionary’, it has to be said that the process of memory is an adaptive one. There’s a lot more to be said about this, but I’m still processing…
This is your brain on music has some useful reference points on the way that different elements and different theories of brain science can help us make sense of this.
The act of memory is far more than just recall. In simple terms we now understand that the brain adds weight to certain memories almost like applying experiential filters which actually distort memories and regenerate them with extra social indicators that have meaning for us.
I wrote about some of them over here
http://www.dialogcrm.com/blog/2007/08/22/uses-not-innovations-drive-technology/
The book This is your brain on music puts it all more elegantly but our brains are not neutral data retrieval systems. And yes external triggers like music and other vivid experiences all help to build a kaleidoscope of memories.
Like the Heisenberg uncertainty principle often translated as something like “the act of observation changes the act being observed” which is a bit like what seems to happen.
Each time the brain learns something new it is either added to a matching pattern area or depending on age and experience might even carve out now pathways in the brain. (or both)
So memory and the act of remembering adds layers of extra meaning to the situation and effectively this results in a “memory” that looks different to differnt people even if they were all present and trying to remember the very same event.
Actually even trying to describe some of this is not so easy. That is one of the other key points about Daniel Levitin’s book.
Researchers and academics often describe the very same things with wildly conflicting viewpoints. Some of this is semantics and some of it is lack of meaningful collaboration.
Last point was supposed to say
“Some of this is semantics and some of it is lack of meaningful collaboration…..
and some of it is just another example of the way that memory works.”
Also “carve out now pathways in the brain” should have read new pathways.