The brain is the organ responsible for two fundamental skills: thinking and acting, for this to happen it is necessary to have the ability to learn (store) and remember (recover) the acquired information. The breakthrough in neuroscience in recent years has allowed us to know some of the mechanisms that work when these skills are put into practice, paying special attention to the areas that work to generate new memories.
Science fiction, on the one hand, and media pressure, on the other hand, have caused certain errors, myths or inaccuracies to persist in our collective nervous system: accepting that the brain is like a computer thinking it is a plastic structure with unlimited at the moment, we know that this is not entirely true, because we know a little more about the behavior of neurons , these little magic cells.
- Emotions are closely related to memory.
- Several surveys indicate that facts with emotional content.
- Positive or negative.
- Are memorized more easily and clearly than those that are not coded with any emotion; in this sense.
- Emotional memory is the result of the generation of memories accompanied by triggering factors.
- Through which it has been more easily solved.
Different psychological and neurobiological processes are needed to generate new memories, that is, the process is the result of storing information with alarms or alert factors through which our memories are fixed.
“Naturally, we remember what we’re interested in and why we’re interested. “John Dewey?
Short- and long-term memories are generated simultaneously and stored, respectively, in the hippocampus and in the prefrontal cortex. The area of the brain where short-term memories are stored has already been identified, but we didn’t have much information about it. However, a study by researchers from the Picower Institute for Learning and Memorization at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, USA, has been a researcher at the Picower Institute of Learning and Memorization in Cambridge, USA. The U. S. , first described where and how long-term memories are created.
According to Mark Morrissey, co-author of the research, memories form in parallel and follow different paths: those who go to the prefrontal cortex are strengthened and those who go to the hippocampus weaken (unless there is reinforcement).
The novelty of this study is that it has shown that the communication between the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus is very important, if you alter the circuit that connects these two regions of the brain, the gears of the cortex do not mature properly, that is, they will not store long-term memories.
Memories are fundamental to our development and survival, they protect us, especially in the case of negative memories that, in the form of alarm, warn us of the risk that we can take, by repeating a behavior that has made us suffer in the past. So, to keep us alive and make sense of suffering, the brain needs to store long-term memories.
“Nothing sets a memory as strongly as the desire to forget it. “Michel de Montaigne?
The results of Mark Morrissey’s study showed that memory neurons are located in three areas of the brain: the hippocampus, the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala, the latter involved in memories associated with emotions, which certainly undermines many previous theories about the consolidation of memories. They claimed that short- and long-term memories do not form simultaneously in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, but are generated in the hippocampus and then transferred to the cerebral cortex.
In practice, neurons work on the basis of communication, because the brain uses few brain cells to remember something it has already seen, which contradicts what we used to think: the brain uses a huge network of neurons to store memories. act as thinking cells, able to specialize in certain memories previously selected by the brain.
Could this discovery be used to come back? Artificially?memory for people who have suffered brain damage or are affected by diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease. At the same time, the results suggest the existence of a brain code that plays an important role in the knowledge of visual perception and brain procedures for developing abstract memory.
Outside the field of neurology, this discovery will undoubtedly contribute to the development of artificial intelligence and neural networks, improving the architecture of many everyday technological devices that we use to store and process information.
“Our memories are the only paradise from which we can never be expelled. “Jean Paul Richter?
In the 1950s, the case of patient Henry Molaison, who suffered damage to the hippocampus after surgery to control his epilepsy episodes, was investigated, so Molaison was unable to create new memories after surgery, but retained earlier memories, revealing the importance of the hippocampus in forming new long-term memories.
This case showed that long-term episodic memories of specific events were stored somewhere outside the hippocampus, and scientists consider this place to be the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for cognitive functions, such as the ability to plan or be careful. This suggests that traditional theories about memory consolidation may not be accurate, although more studies are needed to determine whether memories are completely erased from hippocampus cells or the fact that we don’t remember something is simply a recovery problem.
In turn, the amygdala also plays an important role in determining the structure with which we store new memories, the association of new memories with emotional states allows a greater connection and fixation of situations to be remembered, that is, it is the amygdala responsible for giving More or less a mark?(surveillance) to a memory based on the associated emotions. It also influences the determination of the details of a memory that will be deeper or not in that brand.
Even when the hippocampus fails and does not store certain memories, this subcortical region helps maintain some emotional memory of this situation.
The amygdala has a protective function and explains why some people may be very afraid of dogs (emotional memory), but do not remember the situation in which that fear occurred (narrative memory), probably due to the stress they experienced. in a situation with these animals or if this situation has been repeated several times, emotional memory is the one that allows us to remember what signs of the environment are associated with a dangerous or beneficial fact.
The activation of the amygdala in the face of stimuli that frighten us increases the mark of memory, makes it deeper. That is, we remember more clearly everything that happens to us when intense emotions appear simultaneously. Therefore, emotional activation facilitates the consolidation of memories.
Here we have seen some of the most recent and relevant discoveries about memory and the process of generating new memories, however, the answers advocated by researchers are not definitive: many studies are still ongoing. it has not yet used them in the best possible way to improve the lives of people with memory problems.
The difference between fakes and real memories is the same one that exists between jewelry and imitations: those that seem more real, brighter, are usually false.