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The Biology of Memory
Repetitive, rote learning processes engage the hippocampus which makes a series of connections so that the memory can be recalled later. The key to remembering a specific memory is to start at the beginning of the entire memory sequence.85 It is this sequencing structure that allows us to remember, for example, the whole song if someone sings the first few lines. The important aspect is that memories are sequences, and once initiated, the entire memory usually flows intuitively without the need for conscious thinking processes. The more sensory data we can use in forming the memory, the more ‘keys’ the hippocampus appears to have at its disposal to locate, extract, recall or apply that memory. memory.
We remember a song with words much better than a sentence of words without music. The melody of the song contains a reasonably predictable pattern associated with a sequence of words that individually contains no pattern. As music has an underlying conceptual pattern, this assists us in recalling the accompanying words.
Temporary and short-term episodic memories are thought to be created within the nuclei of complex networks of neurons via a process known as epigenetics. Long-term memories may well be stored using memristive86 memory systems that make use of biological, ‘holographic’ (3D)87 storage systems. This way of storing memories would account for the fact that it is possible to remove half the brain (a hemispherectomy),88 without any loss of short-term (episodic) or long- term (semantic) memories. A hemispherectomy is performed when the brain has seizures that cannot be corrected in any other way. How this works from a biological perspective is challenging, to say the very least but this model is currently our best framework that accounts for us being able to have half our brain removed and not lose any short term, or long term memories.
Resource 21: The Interoperability of our Memory Systems
85 Levine, A. (2008). Unmasking the Memory Gene. Scientific American. Retrieved from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=unmasking-memory-genes
86 Sung Hyun, J., Chang, T., Ebong, I., Bhadviya, B., Maxumber, P. & Lu, W. (2010). Nanoscale Memristor Device as Synapse in Neuromorphic Systems. Nano Letters. Retrieved from http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nl904092h
87 Streetwisdom, B. (2011, July 3). Brain Plasticity-the story of Jody Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaDlLD97CLM