THE MIND
Brain vs. Mind
Perception
Emotion
Learning
Memory
Consciousness
Language
Problem-Solving
Mind vs. Soul
YOUR MIND
OUR MINDS
Site Notes
Bibliography
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Memory
Memory is in the ordered structure of the mind itself, as well as the patterns of stimulation of these structures at any moment. There are many, many types of memory. Each mental process may be said to have its own memory systems (examples: visual memory, muscle memory, linguistic memory, etc.).
Memories may also be classified by their duration:
- "Immediate memories" are the information a process—such as vision—may keep momentarily to compare with similar information taken in just before or after it, to detect change.
- "Short short-term memories" are the information a process stores about its recent actions, such as remembering who the pronoun "he" refers to in a sentence, or remembering what you´ve already packed when packing a suitcase.
- "Long short-term memories" refer to the summarized records of higher-order mental processes performed recently, anywhere from a few minutes to a few days.
- "Long-term memories" refer to what we "really know," or what stays with us over a long-period of time. They are not entirely stable however, and even these memories —which may be personal, or may refer to the properties of things and their interactions in a general sense—are processed and condensed regularly. Most of our memories of childhood are more like "memories of memories".
- Knowledge-lines: whenever different mental agents (or recognizers) are stimulated together, they can form "k-lines," which are strengthened by repeated simultaneous stimulation. General k-lines may account for the types of memories that store the "feeling" of a place, time, or event. These are just k-lines connecting the different recognizers that were stimulated together in those circumstances.
- Arrangements: K-lines which are repeatedly stimulated are "purified" by this stimulation, so that things which are related to each other logically and not just circumstantially are linked together. These lines are not just lists, they are fluid hierarchies. One item can have a place in multiple hierarchies.
- Scripts: Scripts are arrangements which list behaviors instead of things. Most of what we learn we most eventually put into scripts.
Recognition occurs when enough agents connected by k-lines are stimulated to stimulate the others. (Or sometimes only if the "first" agents in a chain are stimulated).
Making Memories
What we give our attention to are things which seem new, interesting, potentially dangerous, or pleasurable, or helpful to a task we plan to do. The things which most draw our attention are also the things we tend to remember. Different systems of "executive" neurons monitor processes and provide concise summaries of our states of mind so that memories can be made. These make thinking more efficient but could lead to "false" feelings, as in the diagram.
Sleep is even more important for the mind than for the body, because the processing of a day´s information (getting rid of less important information and transferring important information into long-term memories) takes place in the sleeping state, a process we are sometimes aware of as dreaming. Of course, thinking about something or repeating it reinforce memories and help them to stay, as does associating "dull" information with "interesting" information, as defined above.
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