Memory management

What is memory?

Memory is a process, not ‘a thing’, not ‘a physical organ’, not ‘just a store’ to place and retrieve information. Memory is not ‘a static entity like the hard disk of a computer’, thankfully.

Memory as a process implies that memory is not an organ in our brain and represents a series of activities of definite task. The ‘activities’ which are typically associated with memory are forming, organising, storing and retrieving information and the dual activities of forming and organising together create what is often called the process of ‘encoding’.

Encoding is a particularly interesting and important process to understand, it holds the keys to change the information to ‘be stored’ to a ‘storage ready’ format as well as to inverse the efficiency of recall. The information and experiences we live in are not stored in our brain ‘as it is or as they occur’ but deconstructed (and/or reconstructed) in a different form that is eventually stored.

For example, the previous two paragraphs you just read will not be stored in your brain as ‘one chunk’ of two paragraphs of texts and they will be broken down into ‘several connected pieces’ of information and stored at ‘different spaces in the brain’ e.g. the hard-disk bit of the text may be stored in a place in the brain where there is more on computers while the ‘activities’ part of the text may be stored where there is more on the activities of other processes too. Typically, a text will get split in several pieces and stored at multiple inter-linked places in the brain.

If the information in the two paragraphs creates visual imageries for the reader, then the visuals will also get stored ‘as a part of the texts’ somewhere where similar imageries are stored; for example, if the reading of the two paragraphs creates an imagery of a telephone exchange then the imagery along with the title ‘memory as a process’ may also get stored in the part the brain that handles images.

Similarly, if the two paragraphs struck an emotional cord with you, a part of the text will get stored at an entirely different place with similar emotional information. For example, if the content of the two paragraphs drove you to feel a ‘Eureka moment’ then a link to the two paragraphs will also be stored in the part of the memory where there are other ‘Eureka moments’ of yours. And when you experience your next ‘Eureka moment’ you will also automatically recollect these two paragraphs.

In a similar fashion, the retrieval of the two paragraphs would also be in a ‘non-chunk’ mode, i.e. the information in the two paragraphs will be collected from different parts of the memory and then collated into something like the two text paragraphs, the image of the telephone exchange and the nice ‘Eureka’ feel.

Interestingly, the more the ‘deconstruction’ of the two paragraphs into smaller units while storing, the better the retrieval because there would be as many different threads to be pulled to recall the two paragraphs.

Thus, memory is an extremely active and complex process of information management in which a ‘chunk of information’ is cut, stored, joined, and retrieved. In this process, several other ‘unwritten’ attributes (such as images, emotional connect) are also assigned to the information being managed.

To get a better understanding of the process of recall, this question should be read in conjugation with the last question in this section.

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