Saahith Veeraamaneni Week 15 - Total Recall 4/24
Week 15
Total Recall – 4/24 [12:59 AM]
It’s frankly amazing how your brain tends to be so selective when choosing the memories that are in your long term storage. I think we’ve all been in a situation where you’re trying to sleep and your mind decides to slap you across the face by recounting a particularly embarrassing moment. And when you really need to remember something, like how to spell a word correctly during a timed write, your mind just decides to shut off and let you scramble in the dark.
But trying to keep tabs on your brain doesn’t need to be such a hassle. It can be simplified into four main steps that help map out and contextualize how your brain interprets and stores information:
Reception: Information enters our brain through sensory receptors, our ears and eyes, where it's briefly held for a few seconds. Here, our brain filters and prioritizes the information based on its perceived importance. This stage is the simplest out of the four, because it only involves paying attention to the source material, because only consciously perceived information can move forward in the memory process. If you have problems concentrating either due to stress or dissociation, it helps to chunk information into smaller pieces, either mentally or physically by drawing lines between paragraphs or groups of paragraphs.
Temporary memory: This is an intermediary step. Once deemed important, the brain encodes the information, moving it into either short-term or working memory. Short-term memory retains information for a few seconds, while working memory allows us to hold onto it for about half an hour. One strategy to plant this information into your working memory is through repetition, strengthening neural connections and ensuring that the information can’t be forgotten quickly.
Storage: To transfer information from short-term to long-term memory, an active effort is required. This step involves various memory techniques tailored to individual preferences, such as visualization, repetition, or mnemonic devices. Your teachers often give you helpful mnemonics or little songs to help you remember, and this all follows a general rule: the weirder or more absurd a memory device is, the more catchy or interesting it becomes, and the more catchy it is, the easier it is to remember. So remember, the weirder, the better!
Usage: The final step in the memory process is retrieving stored information when needed. Regularly revisiting and reinforcing stored information enhances our ability to retrieve it accurately, even after extended periods. My tip to you is to keep it consistent, and recall the information you are trying to memorize daily, or hourly if need be.
So, there’s my little guide! If you have any questions, suggestions, or would like to share a tactic you use to memorize information, feel free to comment and share below!
Hey Saahith! This guide was incredibly helpful, especially for the AP's that require intensive memorizing. I loved the format you used of breaking down the four steps in four separate sections as it made it much easier to process and understand what you were saying. I have always found the concept of memories to be intriguing, and the mechanisms which our brain operates on, as I can somehow recount a conversation I had five years ago verbatim, but I cannot recall a formula I learned an hour ago. My personal favorite memory techniques for remembering difficult facts and formulas include physically writing down the material and mnemonic devices. It is really interesting how some mnemonic devices remain ingrained in our brains for years such as SOH-CAH-TOA, while others are completely forgettable. I have also seen the effects of constantly revising studied material, as it profoundly enhances my understanding on the topics.
ReplyDeleteHi Saahith! I really loved how you tied actual neuroscience to memory and explained how the brain actually remembers things. Understanding how the brain works makes it much easier to work to remember things because it allows you to utilize memory capabilities to the fullest, and that’s clearly demonstrated in your blog. I found it interesting that remembering weird and funny things is scientifically proven to be easier to store in long term memory than uninteresting and flat things, and it makes sense that it does. Last year when I had Mr. Baker, he would always explain biology in terms of wacky things like Taco Bell, Star Wars, and a whole bunch of other things. When I would take notes, I would write down his examples after the notes of the actual cellular processes. Reading his examples again actually helped me recall the information better than the notes on the topic I had taken, showing that, as you mentioned in your blog, weird information is significantly easier to remember than flat information. Thanks for your tips, I’ll definitely be trying some for the upcoming AP tests I have!
ReplyDeleteHi Saahith! I found your guide to be formulaic, but very educational and thus, useful. I like how you separated each stage of memory into its own paragraph, talking about each section individually. This made your blog a lot more easy to read and straightforward, perfect for a cretin like me. As AP tests continue to come up, and I, against my better judgement, continue to procrastinate for said AP tests, this guide will certainly come in useful for when I am forced to study an hour before testing begins. I dislike, however, how you mentioned that your brain will sometimes randomly slap you in the face with a embarrassing memory, as my brain was immediately triggered by your aggressive language, and decided to, knowing that it will bring harm to the both of us, slap me in the face with an embarrassing memory. But, considering your extensive knowledge of the mind, demonstrated by your concise, yet effectively communicated description of each step of the memory storage process, you may have done this on purpose! A conspiracy has been uncovered!
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