OUR MEMORY SYSTEM

HUMAN MEMORY

• Memory is a biological library that we use at every  moment in our life. It is difficult to imagine what life would be like without memory. The meaning of thousands of every day perceptions, the bases for the decisions we make, and the roots of our habits and skills are to be found in our past experiences, which are brought in to the present by memory.
• When something gets stored in the memory, it is not recorded in all its finest detail, but rather filed away under a few keywords. When we need to recall something from memory, we extract some of these keywords, and fill inthe rest by guesswork.

                   Remembering is therefore never exact.

• Some memories seem so fresh and vivid when we recall them that we may have the impression of reliving the event exactly as it happened, but this is an illusion caused by the power of our imaginative reconstruction.
• Memory exists not only in humans and animals but also in some physical objects and machines. Computers , for example, contain devices for storing data for later use. 

                As machines have no imaginary power and emotions, so they remember exactly what we input.

HIPPOCAMPUS -- OUR MEMORY ORGAN

• Doctors found that removal of or damage to the hippocampus made it impossible for patients to learn anything new, and at the same time erased memories of events within the past three years.
• Hippocampus is not the only organ so controlling our ability to store inputs but very important part involved is the thalamus, a structure deep within the brain that receives sensory input from other portions of the nervous system and then transmits this information to the cerebral hemispheres and other parts of the brain.  

TYPES OF MEMORY

There are two kinds of memory :-

1. Short-term
2. Long time

Short term memory :- Short term memory holds only 5 to 7 items at a time and lasts for 60 seconds or so. Actually short-term memory can be classified into transient and slightly longer-lasting types. Transient memory is lost within seconds to minutes. where as other lasts longer from minutes to a few hours.
Long term memory :- Long term memory is the back bone of our memory system and it can be hold for whole life......

EMOTIONS
Emotions play an important part in memory. Emotions help to etch events more deeply in our memories. Any event that produces a strong emotion in us, whether negative or positive, is recalled more easily and more accurately than an emotionally neutral event.

MOOD
The ease and accuracy of recall are also influenced by the mood we are in when remembering something. It is proved that when we are in a happy mood, we tend to recall pleasant events more easily and more accurately than unpleasant ones.