Development

It is true that the success of the individual in his

every-day business, profession, trade or other

occupation depends very materially upon the

possession of a good memory.

His value in any walk in life depends to a great

extent upon the degree of memory he may have

developed.

• Memory is developed, trained and cultivated by

individual effort naturally.

• Three essentials are ( i ) use, exercise, review

and practice ( ii ) Attention and Interest ( iii )

Intelligent Association.

• Memory can atrophy by disuse and develop by

rational exercise and employment.

• By paying attention, we acquire the impressions

that we file away in our mind’s record-file. The

degree of attention regulates the depth,

clearness and strength of the impression.

• With a good record, we may expect to obtain a

good reproduction of it.

• Every association that we weld to an idea or an

impression, serves as a cross-reference in the

index, whereby, the thing is found by

remembrance when it is needed.

1. Sensory memory: gathered from 5 senses

2. Short-term (working) memory: limited to 5 –

9 separate facts

3. Long-term memory: you can store &

retrieve anything.

• Short term memory: It is information remaining

in consciousness after being perceived. Short-

term memory (STM) refers to memory processes

that retain information only temporarily, until

information is either forgotten or becomes

incorporated into a more stable, potentially

permanent long-term store.

• Long term memory: knowledge of a former state

of mind after it has already once dropped from

consciousness.

• It involves a storage system that is responsible

for retaining small amounts of information over

brief intervals of time.

Without attention and rehearsal,

information is lost rapidly from STM.

Rehearsal facilitates maintenance of

information in STM and transfer of

information from STM to LTM.

Short-term and long-term memory stores

are distinct

In human memory, there are structurally separate

components or stores through which information is

transferred. A subset of the information in the sensory

registers is chosen for later processing via selective

attention and is transferred into a short-term store

(STS) (encoding). The STS is fragile and decays

quickly, so rehearsal is necessary to keep information

within the STS (maintenance) and to transfer it to a

more durable long-term store (LTS).

•Large capacity

•Modality-specific stores

•Very brief duration

•Lost rapidly w/o attention

•Lost without attention and rehearsal

•Rehearsal facilitates transfer to LTM

Working memory is the theoretical

construct that has come to be used in cognitive

psychology to refer to the system or mechanism

underlying the maintenance of task-relevant

information during the performance of a cognitive

task. What is the relationship between working

memory and declarative long-term memory? Is

working memory simply an activated portion of

long-term memory?

1.Attention: A car may drive by, but if you do not notice

it, you cannot remember it.

2. Storage: Think of your brain as a computer. You

have active memory (like RAM: which holds

information) and you have long-term memory (like your

hard drive).

3. Retrieval: Imagine a filing cabinet from which you

can get back information that is stored.

Mnemonic Systems are things that you can

use to improve your memory.

They usually include working with

information to increase:

attention,

meaningfulness,

organization,

association, and visualization.

• Endeavor to link by some thought relation

each new mental acquisition to an old one.

Bind new facts to other facts by relations of

similarity, cause and effect, whole and part,

or by any logical relation, and we shall find

that when an idea occurs to us, a host of

related ideas will flow into the mind.

If you are looking for ways to preserve and even

enhance your grey matter as you age, there are

many things you can do to improve brain health

and thus your memory and mental performance.

• Get motivated

• Reduce interference

• Be selective

• Intend to remember

• Stimulates the senses

• Releases stress

• Improves sleep

• Enhances digestion

• Maintains strength

All of the above positively impact memory.

The Benefits of Exercise:

• Some evidence suggests that exercise is

particularly effective for short-term memory.

• 20-minute daily walks may improve

memory performance.

The Benefits of Exercise: contd.

1. Distribute learning

2. Overlearn

3. Use daylight

4. Got attitude?

5. Combine memory techniques

6. Avoid short-term memory lapse

7. Review

This ability is of the utmost importance to learning

and memory. You can harness the natural power of

neuroplasticity to improve your memory and

increase your cognitive abilities. Research

suggests you may want to incorporate some of the

following strategies as well

Healthy relationships may be the ultimate memory

booster. Researchers found that people with the

most active social lives had the slowest rate of

memory decline. Relationships stimulate our

brains and the best kind of brain exercise may be

interacting with others

Research shows that sleep is necessary for

memory consolidation, with key memory-

enhancing activity occurring during the

deepest stages of sleep.

Laughter is good for you and engages multiple

regions across the whole brain. As psychologist

Daniel Goleman notes in his book Emotional

Intelligence, ―laughter … seems to help people

think more broadly and associate more freely.

Interestingly, these changes also precede

Alzheimer’s disease. Dementia Today also reports

that in Alzheimer’s disease patients, early neuron

loss and changes in synapse function have been

observed in the hippocampus and neo-cortex —

the very brain regions involved in language,

memory, and other higher cognitive functions

BRAIN and MEMORY

the hippocampus and neo-

cortex — are the very brain

regions involved in

language, memory, and

other higher cognitive

functions.

• Storing information properly:

• Without rehearsal or use, information is forgotten

• The brain’s information retrieval system:

association, repetition, rehearsal &

mnemonic devices

We see that the cultivation of the memory is

far more than the cultivation and

development of a single mental faculty—it is

the cultivation and development of our

entire mental being— the development of

our selves.