Secret Life Of Memories (eBook)

Chapter 1:
Where Do Memories Live?

What Are Memories?

I thought I had a good idea of what memories are. I mean, it’s just a memory, and I have them all the time. Every second of the day, we rely on our old memories to make new memories and move us through our day. Every time we move a muscle and every thought we think creates a new memory. In our day, I make hundreds of thousands of memories. Some are pretty profound, but most are meaningless. However, how do we know which muscle movement or thought is profound or meaningless the instant we make it? Every memory is stored.

I was surprised by all of the different ideas and theories in the scientific community about memories. It is kind of crazy in the scientific world right now around memories; it’s a hot topic. The following are two definitions of memories. All the definitions I found were similar to these. As you may have heard, The Devil is in the details. So, don’t be fooled by the simplicity of the statements.

• “Memory is our ability to encode, store, retain, and subsequently recall information and past experiences in the human brain. It can be thought of in general terms as the use of past experience to affect or influence current behavior.

  Memory is the sum total of what we remember, and gives us the capability to learn and adapt from previous experiences as well as to build relationships. It is the ability to remember past experiences, and the power or process of recalling to mind previously learned facts, experiences, impressions, skills, and habits. It is the store of things learned and retained from our activity or experience, as evidenced by modification of structure or behavior, or by recall and recognition.”

  http://www.human-memory.net/intro_what.html

• “Memory is the faculty of the mind by which information is encoded, stored, and retrieved.”

  Memory: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory)

These are two straightforward definitions of what memories appear to be, and they come in line with our usual understanding of what memories are, do they not? However, one keyword is mentioned in both definitions, and then it is dropped out of the details. That word is mind. There appears to be an understanding that the mind is involved somehow with memories, but we are not sure how or what that involvement is. So it is left out of all the theories I reviewed. Mind appears to be not only in the brain, nor does it seem to operate entirely outside it. We are left to ponder what the mind might be.

[Mind is like water to a fish. Water is such an integral part of a fish’s life that it can’t imagine being without it, nor can it imagine being within it. Such is a fish’s life. I think that they thought the mind is such an integral part of the process of memories that it slipped their minds to define the mind and how it relates to memories.]

There are many scientific theories around understanding memories and finding the physical storage location for memories in the brain. However, there is not much about what memories are or where to find them when we look closely. If we were to ask to see a memory, science would show us a neuron activity pattern that lights up in the brain when we think about a specific memory. We’d be told that this is the neuron pathway the memory uses when it is active, and when we are thinking about a particular memory, there it is. They would point out that the more we think of that memory, the stronger and more connected the neural pathways become to facilitate the speed and ease at which the memory flows down the path and throughout the brain. It seems pretty obvious that if we use a path enough times, the trail gets deeper and easier to use.

If we were to ask again with some insistence, “But where is the memory?”

They would again point at the neuron patterns of the pathways in the brain and say, “It is right there in the brain. Don’t you see the pathways light up when you think that certain memory?”

I would say politely, “Yes, I see the pathways light up. But where is the memory? Where is it stored when I’m not thinking about it, and it’s not lighting up the pathways?” We can see the effects in the brain, neurons lighting up. But where is the cause of the effect, the memory? How did it get in the brain and on that particular path?

[Now, if you are hunting tigers and you hear a noise behind you and the bushes shake, how do you know if it’s a tiger or not?]

Here is the point. The most current and popular theory of where memories are stored is this: Memories are stored across different, interconnected brain regions throughout the brain. (https://qbi.uq.edu.au/brain-basics/memory/where-are-memories-stored). They are broken down and spread throughout the brain. The memory’s modalities and subprocesses of sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste are broken up and moved or migrate to that part of the brain responsible for that type of information. This is called Memory Consolidation. In this theory, the different modalities and the associated parts of the memory are consolidated throughout the brain. In this concept, the visual data migrates to the brain’s visual cortex, sound information migrates to that part of the brain that handles sound, and so on. Each of the other modalities and subprocesses of the memory is thus accounted for. In this theory, the memory is not stored as a holistic, complete memory but in fragmented parts and pieces throughout the brain.

Since the complete memory is a holistic information packet [my interpretation] and is then separated, all of those fragmented pieces must get back together somehow so the whole memory can flow down the neural pathways and light up the brain in specific patterns. How the pieces get put back into a complete memory that can flow down the neural pathways, creating a hologram in the head, is not well defined.

Holonomic brain theory, also known as The Holographic Brain, is a branch of neuroscience investigating the idea that human consciousness is formed by quantum effects in or between brain cells. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holonomic_brain_theory)

This is not clearly understood or described in any of the theories reviewed. In one theory was the statement, “Recall [of a memory] is a very impressive but slightly mysterious process.” (https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/sep/16/what-happens-in-your-brain-when-you-make-a-memory). This would seem to be true. Something seems to be missing in the recall process as it stands. That something is how the broken-up memories consolidate back into holistically whole memories.

One answer proposed for this concern is that a record is kept of where each part and piece of the memories are stored. The recording method is usually called a Memory Trace. It is A Pattern Completion or a map to the different, scattered parts of the memory. It is believed to be maintained in the part of the brain called the Hippocampus. The memory trace or map has a record of where the pieces of the memories are. When triggered, it signals all the pieces to reassemble into a complete memory. But again, it is somewhat uncertain, in the theories I reviewed, as to how this might happen.

I want to introduce the following term early, as we set the stage for finding those elusive wild memories. It is Active-Mind. When thinking active-mind, think of the mind, brain, and central nervous system. These three elements appear to operate together. There will be more about the active-mind later.

The mind utilizes a process called gating to separate relevant from irrelevant information. Gating is a filtering process. While it is an essential function, and we know we accomplish it, how it is done is also quite mysterious.

“It is critical to our everyday life that our brain processes the most important information out of everything presented to us,” said senior author Xiao-Jing Wang, global professor of neural science at NYU and NYU Shanghai, in a press release. “Within an extremely complicated neural circuit in the brain, there must be a gating mechanism to route relevant information to the right place at the right time.” (https://www.medicaldaily.com/new-theory-regarding-how-our-brains-differentiate-between-relevant-irrelevant-398468)

In the scientific community, this function of selecting and interpreting input data appears to be part of the brain’s limbic system. However, the process of gating relevant from irrelevant information is unclear. We are aware we do that function. We are just not sure how exactly we do it. Since what we know, including our past experiences, is used in gating and what we know is that memories are in the subconscious, I give that job of filtering for relevance to the subconscious mind.

Dr. Xiao-Jing Wang is right “there must be a gating mechanism.” It may emerge from a more in-depth investigation. It is clear that this is a function that we do. We just don’t know how we do it.

City Streets

The neural pathways in the brain are like the streets of a city. They move a lot of traffic and information. We can relate memories to information packets or cars. The streets are there, the neural pathways are there, to do their job of moving information twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The streets are used by all manner of traffic, from emergency vehicles to kids on bicycles.