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How Does the Human Brain Remember Things

Veethi Telang
Isn't it interesting to learn about the functioning of the human brain, and the way it remembers things? Let's go through the following write-up, and unlock the mystery behind this complex machine called the brain.
Why don't the memories fade away? Why do you still remember the color of your grandmother's eyes even when you haven't seen her in years? The truth is crystal clear.
What was once just a figure of speech, is now taken literally. The human brain - it's no less than a computer. It's like, we have our thoughts and memories electrically wired, and whenever we see something we've seen before, there's a sparking!
So, today, when you're in a bid to find out the mechanism behind the human brain being able to remember things, it's great, because the more you learn about the working process of your memory, the easier it is for you to understand how to increase brain power. With that quoted, the following explains the working of human brain, and how memories last.

The Science Behind Human Memory

Neurologists believe that our memory is located in multiple places in the brain, which tends to form a complex web, where threads symbolize the many constituents of our memory, thus, conjoining the nodes to create an all-inclusive memory of an event or a person.
When a person aims to remember something, he first perceives the same through auditory, sensory, or visual mediums.
This perception breaks through in different parts of the cortex, thus, storing the memory there. For instance, the simple process of baking a cake is actively traced by many areas of the brain. While the simple act of preparing the base comes from one area of the brain, the smell, feel, and of course, the sight of the baked cake comes from another.
Moreover, the feelings inside one's heart while the cake is baked come from yet another segment of the brain, all, collaboratively, forming a whole rounded memory, more like encoding the same in the human brain.
Hence, when again, a person thinks about baking a cake, the recall of the memory reactivates all the neural patterns in the brain that were generated previously, when the original code was encoded.

Long-Term Memory

Long-term memory lets a person remember things over a long period of time, and even when the everyday impressions of forgetfulness attempt to shaken the strong hold of brain's ability to remember things.
Neurologists believe that it's extremely impossible for long-term memory to decay over time, and that it can store unlimited amount of information that could last indefinitely.
Faces, smells, touch, etc., are some memories that could last forever in the brain, for the reason that, whenever something is learned or acquired, the neural networks that comprise countless neurons communicating with one another in the brain strengthen, thus, creating new proteins that reinforce the neural circuits.
During the course of time, when the brain learns about something repeatedly, the efficiency of these networks enhances, and with the visual, auditory, and sensory cortex involved, the brain recalls the particular memory whenever need calls the memory forth.
All in all, it can be said that, if your brain thinks that particular information is worth remembering, the neural processing activates, and thus, the connections get stronger, while the information associates itself with the emotions involved.

Short-Term Memory

While long-term memory involves a number of complex processes, short-term memory is relatively easy to understand, since it lasts for up to a few minutes. However, once it reaches the area of the brain where it is processed into more complex information, it can either be forgotten forever, or be stored long term.
The two types of short-term memory; regular short-term and working short-term, process the information in two ways. If the information is not important, the memory stays in the brain for a short amount of time, and does not enter the complex processing phase of the brain.
However, working short-term memory is the one that stays for a long time in the brain by repetition. If one listens to a song just once, there is no chance they will learn the lyrics in a single go. However, if listened to a number of times, the song lyrics enter the frontal cortex, where the information is in process to transform into long-term memory.
While long-term memories are maintained by stable and permanent transformation in neural networks that are spread throughout the brain, short-term memory is supported by the short-lived patterns of neuronal communication in frontal, prefrontal, and parietal regions of the brain.
It's no less than a cobweb that the human brain operates by means of. The many segments in the brain help you remember facts, events, skills, tasks, concepts, and experiences with the help of their own working processes, and the way the neural networks are formed.
Collaboratively, they perform the function of memorization, and form a memory that either may last forever, or not even for a jiffy.