Memory Synthesis Essay

How is memory encoded and what methods can lead to greater recall? There have been many different models suggested for human memory and many different attempts at defining a specific method of encoding that will lead to greater recall. In this experiment subjects are asked to do a semantic task on a word related to them and an orthographic task in which they analyze the letter in the word. The results of the experiment indicate that the words which where encoded semantically and are related to the self have greater recall.

Memory refers to the persistence of learning in a state that can be revealed at a later time (Squire, 1987). A memory is a network of neocortical neurons and the connections that link them. That network is formed by experience as a result of the concurrent activation of neuronal ensembles that

Messages become shorter when passed from one person to the next. Memories can be modified to fit one’s personal social experiences (i.e., conventionalization). Memory is unreliable, sensory stimuli are not stored as is but are actively transformed by the brain for storage depending on individual factors such as personal relevance and expectations. The most essential information is better remembered, but what is considered “most essential” may depend on an individual’s experiences. This suggests memory does not function as a video recording, but is a highly complex process that is influenced by an individual’s levels of attention, motivation, expectations, experiences, emotional state, etc. It also suggests that memory is an active process that involves constructing narratives out of events rather than passively recording

Some researchers hypothesize that the hippocampus is involved in some types of memory processes but not others. This particular study measured brain activity using fMRI during two types of memory tasks: remember (episodic memory) and know (familiarity). A memory was considered “episodic” if the person could recall the moment it was learned and “familiar” if they felt they recognized the word but could not retrieve the specidic moment it was learned. The a priori (pre-selected) region of interest( ROI) in the hippocampus

Research has shown that there is “greater activation in the left inferior frontal and medial temporal lobes” (Stanford, 2006, p. 208) during the encoding of words which were later remembered as compared to those which were forgotten. The sensations perceived by sensory nerves are decoded in the hippocampus of the brain into a single experience (Mastin, 2010). The hippocampus analyses new information and compares and asssociates it with previously stored memory (Mastin, 2010). Human memory is associative in that new information can be remembered better if it can be associated to previously acquired, firmly consolidated information (Mastin, 2010). The various pieces of information are then stored in different parts of the brain (Mastin, 2010). Though the exact method by which this information is later identified and recalled has yet to be discovered, it is understood that ultra-short term sensory memory is converted into short term memory which can then later be consolidated into long term memory (Mastin, 2010).

The combined findings provide the foundation for the hypothesis that there is more than one kind of memory, or rather that skill-based memories must be organised differently from fact-based memories since the former seem to be preserved in amnesia as opposed to the latter.

Memory is a cognitive function of the brain that is often taken for granted. Memory may have many purposes, but most importantly it is essentially a record of an entire life span. From this perspective memory is the most important aspect of consciousness. Unfortunately, through formal experimentation it has been shown that memory is fairly inaccurate, inconsistent, and often influenced by our own experiences as well as the bias of others. Memory is not only affected during an observed event, but there are instances where memory can be influenced after an event as well. There are also instances where memory can be affected retroactively due to personal experiences and biases. Incorrectly recalling the memories of one’s life is usually not

Accumulating evidence has shown that age-related episodic memory differences are closely associated with the development of hippocampal subregions. In particular, area CA1 is believed to play a significant role in the encoding of related experience. Prior work has pointed out that memory integration occurs during the encoding of two related events. Previous studies have also suggested that the developmental changes in CA1 volume are related to the improvement in associative inference from childhood to adulthood. However, it remains an open question whether contextual information of two related episodes will influence memory integration and the ability to make associative inference. Also, little is known about whether this impact changes

It records and uses an inner voice to repeatedly replay them. This might bugging them so that they could remind of what they were working on.

Context-dependent memory is the concept that things are often best recalled in the same environment that they were learned. Smith and Vela (2001) provide four hypotheses as to how context-dependent memory works. They appear as follows; “reinstatement” is the idea that memory is better when testing occurs in a reinstated environment as opposed to a different environment (Smith & Vela, 2001) and this is true across all studies (Smith & Vela, 2001), “outshining” implies that non contextual cues when used for guiding memory often diminish or eliminate the effects of contextual cues (Smith & Vela, 2001), “Overshadowing” is the concept that “if one’s incidental environmental context is suppressed during learning, then environmental information will not be encoded and stored in memory, thereby reducing or eliminating effects of experimenter-manipulated environments on memory” (Smith & Vela, 2001), and finally “mental reinstatement”

When the research participant in Test C1 focused on the way the words look, she recalled a lesser number of words compared to Test C2. The result was consistent with the researcher participant`s performance. In Test C2, the research participant used the model of the semantic network to connect the words by imagining that she is on the balcony eating a cookie and typing a story written by her about a farmer that found a treasure an alligator attacked him, so he killed it by a fork. Whereas in Test C1, she tried to combining the words in common groups to remember it. As a conclusion, the more meaningful the word is; the deeper the level of processing it is, and the easier to recall

How does memory work? Is it possible to improve your memory? In order to answer these questions, one must look at the different types of memory and how memory is stored in a person's brain.Memory is the mental process of retaining and recalling information or experiences. (1) It is the process of taking events, or facts and storing them in the brain for later use. There are three types of memory: sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory.

After a new memory is learnt, it enters the process of encoding during which the memory is labile and capable of disruption until it becomes stabilised over a period of time (Nader & Einarsson, 2010; Nader et al, 2000). This process is called consolidation and originally consisted of the theory that once stabilised in the brain, it remains fixed (Suzuki et al, 2004). This theory has been rebutted by the acceptance of reconsolidation, a theory that imposes the ideology that when memories are retrieved, through similar experiences (Lee, 2009), they become labile until,

This Civil War battle was fought at the same historical town Grandma took me to visit that time”. Elaboration is a similar associative process, not linking a piece of information with some personal memory, but instead linking it with examples in one’s personal life that one has seen before (this form of elaboration can be linked also with the description of the “availability heuristic”). For example, in utilizing elaboration, one may read about postpartum depression in a textbook and immediately think “I remember when my Sister first had her baby and she was very moody and even became suicidal after a couple of months” and one has instantly, concretely encoded the concept of postpartum depression with a “poster child” so to speak—their own sister. This also can be linked to the Visual Imagery encoding because the “picture” of one’s “Sister” can instantly pop up in one’s mind in the future anytime one hears about Postpartum depression—instant encoded

Memory is defined as "the persistence of learning over time through the storage and retrieval of information." Our memory can be compared to a computer's information processing system. To remember an event we need to get information into our brain which is encoding, store the information and then be able to retrieve it. The three-stage processing model of Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin suggests that we record information that we want to remember first as a fleeting sensory memory and then it is processed into a short term memory bin where we encode it ( pay attention to encode important or novel stimuli) for long-term memory and later retrieval. The premise for the three step process is that we are unable to focus on too much