When it comes to retaining memories, your brain is practically a bottomless storehouse. So why do you sometimes forget things, like what you had for lunch yesterday, or where you placed your keys or homework assignment? This is because your brain was created with two types of memory – short-term memory and long-term memory – and each one is stored in a different place!
For example, if someone gives you a seven-digit telephone number to remember, you store that information in your short-term memory. Most people would forget that kind of thing less than a minute later. Short-term memory is limited in terms of how much information it could store and for how long.
Long-term memory, though, stores information that you remember for a year, ten years, or a lifetime – things like your first day at school, or a special birthday celebration. However, if you practice often enough to remember something that’s in your short-term memory, it could turn into long-term-memory information. That’s why most people remember their nine-digit Social Security number by heart; they’ve written it down or practiced remembering it often enough.
Transferring Memories from Short-Term to Long-Term
The region of the brain that is associated primarily with memory is the hippocampus. The hippocampus is essential for taking information from short-term memory and placing it into long-term memory. Below is a brief summary of how this occurs
1. Short-term memory is located in the front portion of the cerebral cortex of the brain. Information usually remains in this area for only twenty to thirty seconds, if not repeated and rehearsed.
2. If the brain decides to remember something, the information passes from the front portion of the cerebral cortex to the hippocampus, which is located deep inside the brain.
3. From the hippocampus, the memory’s nerve patterns travel to different areas throughout the brain, where they become cemented as long-term memory.
The Gift of Selective Memory
Why do we need memory? Well, without memory, we could not survive. We would not know how to walk or talk or read, or remember where we live. We could not perform any function, for we would not know what we were doing a second before.
But the ability to forget is just as important as the ability to remember! Think about it. Have you ever made a fool of yourself, or been hurt, or upset? Have you ever been insulted, or lost a loved one? Imagine if you would never forget the initial embarrassment, pain, or loss. How would you go on with life? The misery would be there before you, forever.
For this reason, Hashem gives us a gift: far-from-perfect memories. This ensures that the awful things that sometimes happen to us gradually fade, on some level, from our mind.
Brain Power
Exercise stimulates chemical changes in the brain that enhance learning, thinking, and memory skills.