Why do we forget, What is memory, How we memorize, How to improve memory, What is Electroconvulsive Therapy? Why do we forget most of what we learn?
Many of us forget things easily, and some of us memorize things well. What is memorization, and how are the things or events stored in our brains? Can we forget the specific thing in our own choice or not? What will happen if we don't forget all the things? Today we will know.
Where Are The Memories Saved?
Things, memories, or events are not saved in the cabinet, shelved, or safe in our brain like a file. It is a complex way to store things in our brains. Rather, one memory is stored separately in separate brain cells, and these separate brain cells work together. So, memory can be saved or memorized. For example, Remind your favorite dish made by your mother. Your Visual cortex reminds you about the picture of that dish, your Olfactory cortex reminds you of the smell, and the Gustatory cortex reminds you of the taste. It means memory is not a file that is saved in any corner of the brain but distributed in the whole brain.
Memory is not a thing. It is a process. For example, In a football match, when many friends make a wave together, it doesn't mean that one friend is a wave, but every friend is an individual who makes a process. They made a pattern together, what we called "wave." We would name it different from the wave if they made another pattern. Interestingly, individual brain cells make the pattern together, which later becomes a memory, and, amazingly, the same brain cells make a different pattern. It means the same group of cells (neurons) can make many memories, which is why we can memorize thousands, even billions, of things in our small brain.
At the bottom of our brain, there is a special part called the hippocampus. It looks like a hippopotamus. According to the scientist, making a memory is a very important part. In easy words, the hippocampus is the part of the brain where memory pass to the other brain. You can't make a new memory if there is no hippocampus. In 1953, Doctors removed the hippocampus from a patient, which resulted that the patient could not memorize things even though he remembered all the things before the operation. So we got to know that the hippocampus plays an important role in making a memory, but the hippocampus doesn't store memories.
The brain fastly repeats our all-day activities again and again while sleeping the night, and through the repeating pattern, it orders the same brain cells to make the same pattern again and again so that memory becomes strong; consolidation is called consolidation. Maybe this is why sleeping is important for us, and that is why memory becomes so strong that after months or sometimes years, you remember that memory like your favorite film.
Why Do We Forget?
Passive Oblivescence
This memory automatically erases over time, like in your childhood. You forget many things but your parents can tell you what you have done. This happens because you do not record those things repeatedly, or there may be a slow connection between brain cells. Also, possible that you remind that memory by section (fragment).
Targeted Forgetting
The brain does it intentionally because it wants to memorize only important things. For example, You memorized blue pen, white paper, important assignment, mother's medicine, and coriander (which is told to you by your wife) today. The brain will memorize the important things; tomorrow, you may only remember assignments, mother's medicine, and mentha (mint). When you reach home, your wife will tell you; I asked for coriander, not mentha and you think; it doesn't matter because it won't be delicious in any way, whether it involves mentha or coriander. (yeah, a bad joke). So mainly, we separate the important thing from an all-day memory and separate the unimportant things. We forget the unimportant parts, so the brain cells memorize important things only.
Motivated Forgetting
Maybe you all want this kind of forgetting because a person intentionally forgets the things he/she doesn't want to memorize during this type of forgetting. Our body tries to forget the old bad memory so we can take our life ahead. Usually, people want to forget their mistakes or old love, etc. It is tricky because if it goes wrong, it could reverse affect it. For example, you want to forget your ex, and you are trying not to let her come into your mind, and you tell your brain not to think of her or him, but the moment you think of her, suddenly all her old memories are seen in front of your imagination, instead of forgetting. You make that memory more strong. It is not very clear about the process of motivated forgetting by the scientist.
Electroconvulsive Therapy
Electroconvulsive therapy is a mental treatment wherein seizures are electrically actuated in patients to give alleviation from a psychological issue. Because of this, we can try to stop unwanted brain cells from making the same old pattern people forget after this therapy process, but it is not guaranteed that you forget the things you want to forget.
During this process, some parts of our brain try to suppress the part that triggered those memories.
So we forget things by many types of forgetting, which is important. It is also the forgetting which makes us human. Because we can get away from the irrelevant things, unimportant things, the people who cause danger for us, or the situation that hurt us, we can be happy.
Good to think to remind/memorize everything, but in reality, it is not good for us. Imagine you memorize everything, every little thing, then your brain's neural network can be exhausted, or you may hate your life.
We wanted to forget many memories but could not forget them even after thousands of tries the memory saw. Does medical science have an answer to it? The answer is YES.
