MEMORIES

Several months later, I met my sister. Although we do not share the same blood with me, we do share everything. Our families are joined together by the love and respect that we express with each other. Today, I went to meet all of the family members of my sister. As a child I composed a lot of memories with her and the best among all of my memories do come from the childhood. Suddenly I had a question moving in circles in my brain; why are the most precious and affecting memories from our childhood?

Although I had a question, I was not sure that the context was right or not. In my perspective, Childhood memories are unaffected by any of the real world dilemmas. Childhood is a phase of human being when the brain still is on the development phase. In this phase, children do not know about the social conditions or any sort of real world things. There is no level of pressure in their brain and part of their brain stores the series of events that are superior in nature from a very small age. And moreover, very small amount of memory is saved from the childhood which makes the remaining memory very precious.

Alternatively, I did not have the right question to expect the right answer. But another question came by, where do the memorable memories come from then and why are the bad memories the most lasting?

Memorable, non-memorable memories are stored not only in one part of the brain but are spread throughout the cortex and Brain, specially the long term memories. The things we do frequently are stored in the brain for the long term and the rare things are short term memories. Moreover, these memories are copied and duplicated if one memory trace is wiped out, the memory can be retrieved.

However, the bad incidents, emotional situations are the ones that tend to last for a longer period of time. Imagine what you remember, the dog biting or some chapters of book that you read at lower secondary level.

This thing of remembering bad memories is linked with the phenomenon of learning from mistakes. Just like an antibacterial cell is saved after common cold or chickenpox, the brain tends to save these sorts of memories to help defend these kinds of situations. The thing in ease that we are evolutionary prepared to remember these kinds of incidents so that we can avoid incidents in the future.

To further identify the reasons of these things, Scientists from New York University and Japan’s RIKEN’s Brain science institute pulled off a collaborated research. Namely, the neuroscientists discovered that an increase of connection strength between in the neurons of amygdala- the part of the brain involved in the formation of emotional memories-is the main driving factor. It’s not alone as the other brain components need to participate in new emotionally salient experiences.

When a dog bites you, it is enough to pull of the stimuli to take action, but when the impulses are connected and fire the electrical impulse at the same, the strength of the connection increases and this helps to lay the formation of the memorable memory.