Complexity Of Brain: Short Term Memory

Our brains are very complex, so complex that we do not fully understand how our brains work. One of the things we are still trying to understand is memory. Memory might be one of the most important functions of our brain because without it we would not be able to learn anything new or retain any information. We obtain memories in different ways, our ability to memorize certain things slowly declines, we sometimes only remember fragments of events in our lives, and we do things from memory without even thinking about it.

Many outside factors can affect our memory. For example, we might have a great time one night but only remember things that made us laugh or things that brought us stress. Sometimes we even remember things that we may not have experienced at all. When testing learning on two different types of monkeys they realized that “three capuchin monkeys were better at abstract-concept learning while three other rhesus monkeys were better at list-memory learning” (Journal of Experimental Psychology). With positive reinforcement, the monkeys were able to improve on their memory training, but this shows that different animals learn in different ways.

Something that I never really understood about memory was how our ability to obtain memories slowly decreased with age. There was a study done by the Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology to test the memory decline associated with age. “The main objective of this study was to explore whether the protective role (passive vs. active) associated with these resources varies according to the characteristics of the memory task. Young and older adults’ memory performance was assessed using a cued-recall and a recognition task. Control and representation were measured, using the Excluded Letter Fluency Test and the Mill Hill vocabulary test, respectively.” The results of this study were rather surprising, showing that certain methods could actually improve memory with age. As people get older their memory will decline if they do not exercise their brain. The human brain craves stimulation and this does not change with age, people could argue that the older you get the more stimulation you need in your life because you will not be able to be as active the older you get. It would be in people's best interests to read more as they got older and find hobbies that keep your brain stimulated instead of sitting on a couch watching television.

We also have a very long way to go until we fully understand the human brain. Scientists still do not understand how the network of neurons can signal each other electrically which is a lot of the brain's functionality. There is a myth that we only use ten percent of our brain and if we were able to use 100 percent every sense and brain function would be heightened. Unfortunately, this is not true, we do use all of our brains because every part of our brain has a different function that is normally being used constantly whether it is voluntary or involuntary. “Ultimately, it's not that we use 10 percent of our brains, merely that we only understand about 10 percent of how it functions” (Boyd).

An interesting form of memory is often referred to as muscle memory. Muscle memory is something that you have learned numerous times due to repetition.” For most of these actions, we have had repeated practice over our lifetime, meaning that these actions can be performed faster, more smoothly and more accurately”(Oxford University). Muscle memory can be very simple or very complex. Typing on a keyboard is considered muscle memory and it is useful to many people around the world because they have memorized where certain keys are making them more productive. There is an article published by the US American Psychological Association that analyzes the relationship between skill learning and repetition priming (muscle memory). “Note that our hypothetical task is intended merely to illustrate the nature of the skill learning and repetition priming phenomena under consideration, the nature of relationships between them, and the structure of the kinds of paradigms used in many studies. Our hypothetical results are not intended as precise predictions of what might actually obtain if this impossibility-judgment experiment were conducted.” The study was concluded by saying that muscle memory could be considered a part of procedural memory which is in charge of the body's motor skills. Their findings are very logical and are very easy to agree with. Motor skills are essential in muscle memory and with enough repetition, you could be able to do certain tasks without even thinking about them.

Memory is a very complicated topic to talk about and it has many different avenues to go down when it comes to research. Memory also plays an important role in our lives because without memory we would not have much of a personality and we would not be able to learn from our mistakes. Memory can be very tricky but it is essential in the growth of an animal and the future of a species.