Whether it's material for a quiz, test, a grocery list or your friends birthday, your brain is constantly working to memorize things- short term or long term. The question is however, how does memorization work? Well theres many facets in the element of memorization, and that's what we'll be going over in this blog post. Welcome to the brain.
In essence, the more educated you are about how the memorization portions of you brain work, the easier it will be to get understanding on how to improve it.
Your memories start from the day you came out of the womb, (that may be pretty far back!). However all jokes aside, anything from the scent of your mothers perfume to the odor of dirty gym socks, you have the capability to remember it. The small things and the big things play a large role in who you are today and how you see the world today, and is a memory in its entirety.
So how does all of this work? Well, your brain cells work together in one massive network to process the retrieved information. When one cell sends impulses and signals to another, the connection between them continues to increase.
Step one is encoding. Your memory only works if you do, and better said a memory is only made if you are paying attention. Following that step, you have perception. Your memory is perceived from the senses and the hippocampus receives the info and works with the frontal cortex to decide if the information is even worth remembering ( your junk filter, in essence). That filtered memory is then saved into your sensory memory. Up next, storage. The memory that was filtered earlier is now stored in either long term or short memory. You can then just repeat things. The more you practice something the easier it is to remember.
Now the fun part. After the whole process, you can now recall the information. Although it's usually unconsciously and it is dependent on how effectively it was remembered. On the negative end of the spectrum, is forgetting. Often times there are cases of retrieval failure that can be caused by distractions and overall failure to retain the information.
All in all, the brain is an amazing machine and God's handiwork astonishes me time after time.
stay blessed,
rebecca.
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