Our memory helps make us who we are. From fondly recollecting childhood events to remembering where we left our keys, memory plays a vital role in every aspect of our lives. It provides us with a sense of self and makes up our continual experience of life. It's easy to think of memory as a mental filing cabinet, which stores away pieces of information until we need them.
In reality, it is a remarkably complex process that involves numerous parts of the brain. Memories can be vivid and long-lasting, but they are also susceptible to inaccuracies and forgetting. Scientists have found that forgetting is normal, and actually vital to how the brain works. Here is a look at the strange facts about how people forget things.
1.
Brain injuries
may cause forgetting- It is possible to lose memories
before they even have a chance to become stored due to injuries in the brain's
structures that are specifically involved in handling memory formation,
maintenance, and recall. Damage to these areas can result in curious forms of
amnesia. In one of the most-studied cases of such amnesia, Patient
H.M. lost the ability to form any
new memories after a part of his brain, the hippocampus, was removed during a
surgery to treat his epilepsy. Another famous case records the story of Patient
E.P., who had a similar fate after he had inflammation of the brain caused by a
virus.
2.
Brains may be
programmed to forget infancy-
Our earliest childhood
memories fade, and there's likely a
reason for that. Most often, people don't recall any memories from their
earliest years of life usually before age 3 or 4. This is called infantile
amnesia.
Scientists previously thought that
early memories were there, but children just didn't have the language skills to
verbalize them. However, recent research shows that children do make memories
during their early years, but then forget through deliberate mechanisms. One
possible explanation for this is that the developing brain, while growing
exponentially and generating cells, wipes out stored memories.
3.
How doorways
destroy memory-In one common but mysterious short-term memory failure,
people find themselves in a room, without remembering why they ended up there.
Researchers say, in these circumstances, the doorway may be to blame. The very act of walking through a
doorway may hint to the brain that a new scene has started and it should store
prior memories away, thereby causing strange memory lapses.
Entering or exiting through a doorway serves as an 'event
boundary' in the mind, which separates episodes of activity and files them
away. Recalling the decision or activity that was made in a different room is
difficult because it has been compartmentalized. Mental event-boundaries are
useful because they help us organize our mental
timelines and remember not just where,
but when a particular event happened.
4.
Memories can
live on even if we can't access them-Could forgotten songs continue to live on
inside our heads without us knowing? In a 2013 report of a strange
case in the journal Frontiers in
Neurology, researchers described a woman who had musical hallucinations of song
that she didn't recognize, but others did. "To our knowledge, this is the
first report of musical hallucinations of non-recognizable songs that were
recognized by others in the patient's environment," the researchers wrote.
The scientists said the woman had likely known the song at
some point, but forgot it. The case raises the question of what happens to
forgotten memories, they said, and suggests that memories can be stored in some
form in the brain that renders them accessible, and yet unrecognizable. It is
possible that the woman had fragmented preservation of musical memories, with
key portions of those memories lost. As a result, she couldn't recognize those
memories, the researchers said.
5.
Mind-erasing
activities-Although rare, certain activities can result in a temporary
memory loss and brain fog, called transient global amnesia. Sex has been
reported to cause this memory problem, with patients forgetting the past day or
so, and having difficulty forming new memories. People with transient global
amnesia suffer no serious side effects, and the memory problems usually
disappear in a few hours. But it's not clear how this happens, and brain scans
of patients who have had this type of amnesia show no signs of damage to the brain
or signs of stroke.
“The
funniest memory that I can recall about my school days has to be one incident
that involved unfinished homework for numerous days. I didn't do any of my
homework for days and days at a stretch, and kept stalling my teacher that I
was extremely unwell and was under heavy medication.”
(Karan Patel)[i]
[i] Sources used:
·
“10 Interesting Human Memory Facts You Should Know” By Kendra
Cherry
· “Why You Forget: 5 Strange
Facts about Memory” By Bahar Gholipour
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