We all know what memory is and what it is for, however not everyone knows how it works and what its peculiarities are, beyond storing the information that surrounds us.
In this article we will briefly explain how this information is saved in order to understand the curiosities that characterize it and make this function a mystery that has not yet been completely resolved.
In order to understand the singularities that human memory entails, it is first necessary to know how it works, or what elements or steps it follows from the moment we perceive a thing until a memory is formed about it.
Memory is that function of the brain that is responsible for encoding, saving and rescuing all the information acquired in past moments. Depending on how distant the past is, memory is divided into short-term memory or long-term memory.
This memory is possible thanks to the synaptic links that exist between neurons, which connect repetitively to create neural networks. Likewise, the hippocampus is the main brain structure related to memory, so its deterioration or injury will cause numerous problems in it.
However, there are many other systems related to memory and each of them has special functions depending on its characteristics. These systems include certain regions of the temporal cortex, the central area of the right hemisphere, the parieto-temporal cortex, the frontal lobes, and the cerebellum.
Knowing now that there are different steps when it comes to creating memories, it will be easier for us to understand what curiosities our memory entails Since these can occur both when encoding external information, as well as at the moments in which our brain stores it or when we try to recover or evoke a memory.
6 curious facts about memory
Due to the complexity of the systems that involve the creation and retrieval of memories, memory buries numerous curiosities both in relation to its own functioning and in relation to diseases or syndromes, which alter it in many unexpected ways.
1. Our brain creates false memories
Not everything we remember is true or has happened in real life False memories consist of the recovery in memory of an event or situation that never really existed.
If we return to the steps that memory follows to create a memory, the first of all is to perceive and encode external information. When these external stimuli are too many or too intense, our brain can suffer from overload, and association processes are altered, creating false memories.
The same thing happens when we talk about traumatic situations or experiences, the creation of false memories is a defense strategy of our mind to protect us from memories that can affect us in a harmful way.
Therefore, a false memory cannot be considered a lie, since the person who is recounting the experience blindly believes that it happened that way.
2. The Mandela effect
Closely linked to the previous point is this memory curiosity known as the Mandela Effect. In the case of the Mandela Effect, these false memories that we talked about previously are shared by a large part of the population.
The best example to explain it is the one that gives it its name. In 1990, when Nelson Mandela was finally released from prison, it caused a stir among a large part of the population. The reason was that these people were sure that Nelson Mandela had died in prison, they even claimed that they witnessed the moment when his death was announced on television, as well as his burial. However, Mandela died 23 years later from a respiratory infection
Therefore, this effect describes the phenomenon in which a large number of people remember, almost exactly, an event or events that never occurred as such or that does not coincide with what reality dictates.
3. Cryptomnesia
The phenomenon of cryptomnesia is one by which the person recovers a memory from memory but does not experience it as a memory, but as an original idea or experience.
In this case, the person believes they have had an idea for the first time, the result of their creativity and imagination, but they are not aware that in reality it is a memory hidden in their memory that they may have already thought of before or that they have seen or read somewhere. other site.
4. Hypermnesia
The capacity for hypermnesia. or hyperthymesia, is the ability to remember or recover from memory a quantity of memories far greater than those that most people can access.
People with hypermnesia are very fast when it comes to encoding, saving and recovering what surrounds them ; Therefore, they are capable of remembering any situation or experience with an astonishing amount of detail and information.
However, it is necessary to point out that this hypermnesia or ability to store a large amount of information is restricted to autobiographical memory. That is, the memory that stores all the aspects or situations that we experience throughout our lives.
5. The brain only stores what is important and the mind creates the details
A study carried out at Harvard University, led by professor and psychologist Daniel L. Schacter revealed that each and every time our brain retrieves a memory, it is modified.
This means that our brain only stores important information or information with emotional content but the rest of the details of what we experienced are not stored, being added and invented later by our mind.
The objective of this phenomenon is to avoid overloading memory with unnecessary details in order to hold as much relevant information as possible.
6. Memories depend on context and emotions
Learning and storing memories depends largely on how and where, just as they depend on how we feel.
This means that depending on where we are, it will be much easier for us to recover memories of situations experienced in that same place.
With emotions it works in the same way, depending on our mood, memory will tend to rescue memories in which we experienced those emotions That is, when we are happy or happy it is easier for us to remember situations in which we were also happy.
