6 curiosities about memory (according to science)

Our brain acts in a strange way when it comes to retrieving memories.

We all know what memory is and what it is for, but 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 stored, in order to understand the curiosities of memory.In this article we will briefly explain how this information is stored, in order to understand the curiosities that characterize it and make this function a mystery that has not yet been completely solved.

Curiosities about memory: how does it work?

In order to understand the singularities involved in human memory, it is first necessary to know how it works, or what elements or steps it follows from the moment we perceive something until a memory is formed about it.

Memory is that function of the brain that is responsible for encoding, storing and retrieving all the information acquired in the past. Depending on how distant the past is, memory is divided into short-term and long-term memory.

This memory is possible thanks to the synaptic links that exist between neurons, which are repeatedly connected 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 that there are different steps involved in the creation of memories, it will be easier to understand what curiosities are involved in our memory.. Since these can occur both when encoding external information, as in the moments when our brain stores it or when we try to retrieve or evoke a memory.

6 curious facts about memory

Due to the complexity of the systems involved in 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 occurred in real life.. False memories consist of the retrieval in memory of an event or situation that never really existed.

If we go back to the steps that memory follows to create a memory, the first step is to perceive and encode external information. When these external stimuli are too many or too intense our brain can suffer an overload, and the association processes are altered creating false memories.

The same 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 relating the experience blindly believes that it happened that way.

2. The Mandela effect

Closely linked to the previous point is this curiosity of memory known as the Mandela Effect. In the case of the Mandela Effect, these false memories we were talking about earlier 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, a great stir was caused in a large part of the population. The reason was that these people were certain that Nelson Mandela had died in prison, and even claimed to have witnessed the moment when his death was announced on television, as well as his burial. However, Mandela died 23 years later, 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 happened as such or that does not coincide with what reality dictates.

3. Cryptomnesia

The phenomenon of cryptomnesia is that by which the person recovers a memory recall but nevertheless does not experience it as a memory, but as an original idea or experience.

In this case the person thinks he/she has had an idea for the first time, the result of his/her creativity and imagination, but is not aware that it is actually a memory hidden in the memory that he/she may have thought of before or that he/she has seen or read somewhere else.

4. Hypermnesia

The capacity for hypermnesia, or hyperthymesia, is the ability to recall or retrieve from memory a far greater number of memories than most people can access.

People with hypermnesia have a great speed in encoding, storing and retrieving what surrounds them; therefore they are able to remember and recall what is in their memory.They are able to remember any situation or experience with an astonishing amount of detail and information.

However, it is necessary to point out that this hypermnesia or capacity to store a great amount of information is restricted to the autobiographical memory. That is to say, to the memory that stores all the aspects or situations that we experience throughout our life.

5. The brain only stores what is important and the mind creates the details.

A study carried out at Harvard University, by professor and psychologist Daniel L. Schacterrevealed that each and every time our brain retrieves a memory, it is modified.

This means that our brain only keeps the important information or with emotional content but the rest of the details of what we have experienced are not stored, being added and invented later by our mind.

The objective of this phenomenon is to avoid overloading the memory with unnecessary details in order to store as much relevant information as possible.

6. Memories depend on context and emotions

Learning and storing memories depends to a large extent on how and where, just as they depend on how we feel.

This means that depending on the place where we are, it will be much easier to retrieve from memory memories of situations experienced in that same place.

With emotions it works in the same way, depending on our mood our memory will tend to retrieve memories in which we experienced those emotions.. That is to say, when we are happy or joyful it is easier for us to remember situations in which we were happy or joyful.