Brad Williams: The Mystery Of Human Memory

Holladay, April. "How Does Human Memory Work?" How Does Human Memory Work? USATODAY.com, 15 Apr. 2007. Web. 04 October 2015.

After a motor vehicle accident Tom was left with an acquired brain injury with damage to the frontal lobe and the left temporal lobe. As a result Tom has been experiencing many difficulties, in particular with his memory. Memory refers to the mental capacity to retain information and convert it into a form that can be stored and retrieved at a later time. Storing and retrieving memories involves passing information from one stage to the next and then retrieving that information from long-term memory. (Burton, Westen & Kowalski, 2012, p.261) Memory is an integral part of human survival and without it, learning new skills, such as the ones required by Tom to regain his loss of function, could never prevail.

Some historians still consider 1968 as one of the most tumultuous and convulsive years in American history since World War II. The Tet offensive was implemented in response to the Vietnam War, countercultural groups were reaching their peaks, and both presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. were assassinated. Sites that honor the memories of 1968 were given numerous forms in order to preserve the year in the way those present remembered it. Each form of preservation has some physical build. Some sites include a raised fist to symbolize the Black Panther Party’s uprising, the Fair Housing Act that represents the government’s stance

Richard F. Thompson was a memory scientist who conducted research on where and how memory is stored and transformed in the brain. He conducted research on the cerebellum, which is a lower brain structure that deals with physical movement, to see how reactions are created and reestablished every time a certain thing happens, which is basically a reflex (Hockenbury, Nolan, & Hockenbury, 2016). His research was to study how a basic function reflex occurs, and how the memory knows to react when something occurs again in the same manner. Thompson succeeded in his research, by conducting an experiment with rabbits and their blinking reflexes (Hockenbury, et al., 2016). He designed a way where rabbits would react to a tone in where they would blink to it (Hockenbury, et al., 2016). He then took an extra step away from the brain, and the rabbits would still react in the same way to the tone, which lead him to discover that the main memory function is stored in the cerebellum (Hockenbury, et al., 2016).

One particular memory sticks out when I think of a time I was a good influence on someone. I was playing with my neighbor Evelyn. It was late August and she was telling me how she was afraid to start kindergarten in the fall. I am two years older than her so I had already been through two years of school. I spent the entire day telling her all about how great kindergarten is and explaining how fun the games and other kids are. When we finished talking it was decided that we would pretend that it was the first day of school. I was the teacher and Evelyn was the student, at the end of the day Evelyn said she was no longer afraid of kindergarten, she was excited. Several weeks later after school started Evelyn's mother told me how I helped Evelyn

The two concepts that I resonated with are Memory and the Psychodynamic theory. Starting with the Psychodynamic theory is an approach to psychology that studies the psychological forces underlying human behavior, feelings, and emotions, and how they may relate to early childhood experience. This theory is most closely associated with the work of Sigmund Freud, and with psychoanalysis, a type of psychotherapy that attempts to explore the patient’s unconscious thoughts and emotions so that the person is better able to understand him or herself. The second one is Memory; understanding how memory works will help you improves your memory. Which is an essential key to attaining knowledge. Memory is one of the important cognitive processes. Memory involves remembering and forgetting. I chose the two concepts because throughout the class they stood out to the most. Understanding the conscious, subconscious mind and also memory. I’m interested in understanding the human behavior.

Oscar Wilde famously stated “Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us.” What happens to that diary, however, when our memories are forgotten. Is our diary forgotten too? The poem, “Forgetfulness” by Billy Collins, describes in vivid detail the nature of forgetting experiences and knowledge acquired over a lifetime. It is clear that the speaker is suffering from some form of memory loss, and throughout the poem, he portrays the emotions and experiences that go hand in hand with forgetting these memories, experiences, and his personal diary. The speaker uses excessive hyperbole, somber imagery, and a nostalgic, reflective tone to convey the pain associated with memory loss. These devices illuminate how memory loss slowly breaks down and tears apart someone’s personal experiences and emotions, leaving them in a painful, desolate solitude.

In the article, Memory as discrimination: what distraction reveals, the authors C. Philip Beaman, Maciej Hanczakowski, Helen M. Hodgetts, John E, Marsh, and Dylan M. Jones choose to determine whether or not correct or erroneous recall is impacted by semantic and nonsemantic factors discriminability. The researchers choose to conduct their experiment using the population of every student that attends Cardiff University. For their experiment they choose three different sample groups. The first experiment will use distractors visually, the second with auditory, and the third using language. For group one a sample size of forty-eight was chosen. This group was constructed with individuals that had English as their primary language and had sound hearing capabilities. The second group was also made up of forty- eight individuals. This groups were made up of people that had English as their primary language, had normal to correct to normal vision, and normal hearing. The third group of individuals was made up of only a sample size of twenty-nine persons. However, this third group had the same requirements for hearing that the second group had, yet they had to be qualified bilingual in Welsh-English language. This is to be an experiment study since the groups were

Music has always been a big part of my life. It has gotten me through the funnest of times and the hardest. My mom would incourage us to listen and express ourselves through the music we heard playing around us. My older sister used to sing to my little sister and I all the time and even got us involved. We would perform little shows where we would sing and dance for my mom after work. Pots and pans were the drums, we used a cardboard box and rubberbands to make a guitar, and we had a little toy microphone for the lead singer. I remember Respect by Aretha Franklin was always our favorite. We had a lot of sass and that song is all about the sass. To this day, that is one of my favorite memories.

I picked this article because I was fascinated by H.M.’s case and I think memory is a very interesting topic in psychology because its one of the things that defines and makes us human. Psychological movies have always been my thing and when I stumble upon movies about one of the characters losing their memory or already have memory loss, it intrigues me that actual people have actually experienced memory loss for different reasons. It’s crazy how one can lose their declarative memory but can still have their non-declarative memory, because most people would think that this particular person has no long term memory yet they may still be able to remember the things they love to do and be classically conditioned if its necessary.

Although visual art is looked upon differently by all, everyone has a either a favorite piece or at least something that catches their eye. Personally, I don’t have a piece of art that I would label my absolute favorite, but during a Spanish research project found that Salvador Dali’s work really stood out. “The Persistence of Memory” painted in 1931 by Dali, a highly renowned surrealist painter, is among the most interesting works I have ever seen. Even though the painting itself is rather simple in quality at first glance, what Dali’s must have been thinking about while creating this work is strikingly complex. The painting is attractive to me because it deals with the concept of time, something

Memory makes us. It is, to an extent, a collection of unique and personal experiences that we, as individuals, have amassed over our lifetime. It is what connects us to our past and what shapes our present and the future. If we are unable remember the what, when, where, and who of our everyday lives, our level of functioning would be greatly impacted. Memory is defined as or recognized as the “sum or total of what we remember.” Memory provides us the ability to learn and adjust to or from prior experiences. In addition, memory or our ability to remember plays an integral role in the building and sustaining of relationships. Additionally, memory is also a process; it is how we internalize and store our external environment and experiences. It entails the capacity to remember past experiences, and the process of recalling previous experiences, information, impressions, habits and skills to awareness. It is the storage of materials learned and/or retained from our experiences. This fact is demonstrated by the modification, adjustment and/or adaptation of structure or behavior. Furthermore, we as individuals, envision thoughts and ideas of the present through short-term memory, or in our working memory, we warehouse past experiences and learned values in long-term memory, also referred to as episodic or semantic memory. Most importantly, memory is malleable and it is intimately linked to our sense of identity and where we believe we belong in the world.

The results of the experiment indicate that recall is more accurate and easier when a set of numbers are smaller chunks as opposed to larger chunks. The mean recall of the control group was 8.81 compared to a mean of 4.69 in the experimental group. These findings are consistent with David W. Fendrich and Raina Arengo’s (2003) findings which indicate that the length of a string of numbers does affect the ability to recall. Although the participants found it significantly harder to remember the numbers in larger chunks, the results do indicate that it is difficult for participants to recall chunks when the number of chunks surpass the “Magical Number Seven” plus or minus two based on Miller’s (1956) findings. This supports the hypothesis of this experiment and confirms the findings of the original experiment. However, the results may have occurred because of the overwhelming amount of numbers in the experimental group as opposed to the minor amount of numbers in the control.

The purpose of the experiment was to find out if there are any mnemonic consequences of posting personal memories online. During their study, the researchers, (Wang, Lee, & Hou), compared the memory retention of events that were posted on social media versus those events which were not posted. The study consisted of 66 undergraduate students as the participants, who were told to complete a daily diary for a week. Also, at the end of the day, they were told to list all the unique events that had happened and also answer whether or not they had posted the event onto social media. Moreover, they were asked to differentiate the events as either pleasant or unpleasant, and further asked to rate the personal

In film, flashbacks are interruptions that take the narrative back in time from the current point in the story. They are often used to provide background and context to recount current events of a narrative filling in crucial backstories. In its basic form, the flashback is introduced when a presented image dissolves to another image of the past, which can be either as “a story-being-told or a subjective memory.” (Turim, pg. 1) For example, dream sequences and memories are methods used to present flashbacks. They become visual representation to the audience as an act of remembering past experiences of reality. Imagination also plays an important role in shaping the mind and the story similar to memories and the formation of reality. Imagination is usually integrated into animation as an artistic creation to express the artists’ ideas or memory. But where does the use of imagination and memories stop? By examining memory represented in animation and film, through Bartlett’s theory of schema, we can see how the film develops an active organized method to recognize reality through memory. This paper is examining five films based on the theme of memory, thus arguing that imagination does not distorted memory in animation, but create a role as a form of embellishment for the film to help memory.