My “thesis” at Santa Cruz was an experiment on two unfortunate cats trying to demonstrate that a memory is easier to recall when under the influence of a drug that was “on board” when the memory was acquired. This had relevance to students who learned while drinking coffee……or beer. Despite sacrificing two innocent cats, I proved nothing…..but a strong interest in memory acquisition remains as an interest of mine.
The input for the following thoughts covers a lot of ground: Lectures, personal observations, cryptic comments made by old partners, a book by Watson (of Watson and Crick) regarding the nature of consciousness, and Orlando, by Virginia Wolf.
The character Orlando, who lives for hundreds of years, has a different impression of an old recollection, and muses, “Ah, I am now middle aged.” This implied to me that with age, memories “feel” different and certainly are subject to different interpretation. That hit home when I was writing responses to biographical questions posed by Amber and Darby. My memories from childhood were often pleasantly flavored and those from middle age, a little fuzzy and prone to embellishment as if I needed to fill in the gaps. Reading the introduction to City of Thieves, the author, when asking his grandfather about experiences in World War II, expresses frustration regarding the gaps in the recorded narrative. His grandfather responds, “You are the journalist, you fill in the gaps…..” I take this as a metaphor for how our memories actually work.
Ken McFadden, MD, in frustration, once despaired at how many women that he saw in his Emergency Room were lacking a “bullshit receptor.” By this, he meant that women having been beaten or abused by their lovers often told a story of multiple failed relationships all following this same pattern. “It is as if they don’t remember what happened with the last guy, and what this guy said to get her to stay with him did not sound fishy.” Hence, “Bullshit receptor.” For me, this is not simply about memory but involves much more that is complicated about us humans. After a horrible delivery, why would a woman consider a second child? It is not that she forgot what the experience was like……so it’s complicated, memory.
And then there is Lindsay Graham who supports an abusive man who has beaten him politically over and over—all the time, every time— it is amazing how many times—and everyone agrees, he is always beaten down…and yet endorses, with fervor that very same man.
Memory is more than a video tape to be rewound in our heads. Dr. Crick points out something all medical students (and optometrists) learn: there is a part of the retina that does not absorb light or process light signals to give us vision: the optic nerve, which sits almost dead center in the middle of our visual field ie the “movie screen view” we perceive with sight. An experiment we did to demonstrate this is to focus your gaze on a wall in the distance, and wiggle a pencil with a pencil eraser towards the center of your view without focussing on it specifically, just the wall. When it crosses the optic nerve, it disappears from view. The implications of this are multiple and amazing—without your conscious participation or awareness, the brain automatically fills in that little circle to match the picture of what you are looking at. It fills in the blank to make your vision seamless and complete. It is fabricating part of the image.
If your brain can do that with a “computer process” like gathering light and (throwing it up on a screen) conjuring up an image in your mind without you being aware that it is doing that, imagine what this means about memory or consciousness itself. Your brain adjusts memory to, “make the most sense” as it perceives it at a subconscious level—not how it actually happened, but what makes the most sense. The Bullshit receptor idea suddenly comes back full circle,. What you actually perceive and remember in a moment can change over time. If it is a pattern, you may well have a problem remembering abuse as it occurred and this quickly blends with personality, motivation, pleasure and pain affecting behavior and memory,—or the memory of January 6 when it was unexpected and years later when your perspective on its importance has changed—- and Oh my.
Each person has a unique set of memory skills—some inherent and some acquired. Despite an advanced degree and genuine enjoyment in the social interactions during the medical exam, as I contemplated retirement, I had a “blurb” that I shared with my patients when seeing therm for the last time: “Sometime in the next few years, I am going to run into you somewhere in Olympia. When I do, I will recognized your face and greet you. I will remember the highlights of your medical history not to mention, what your butt looks like. But I will forget your name. Please, when we see each other, remind me of your name so I can re-remember it, and introduce you to whomever I am with.” It turned out, this proactive advice and self-awareness has proven valid.
Are there different kinds of memory or periods when the memory is more reliably accurate?There is short-term memory—actively recalling what was just said or what was just witnessed. This kind of memory can become long term memory unless a specific part of the brain is damaged. Alzheimer’s disease is characterized in part by people who can’t remember recent things, but have a good recollection of their big brother being mean to them or their first sexual experience. Such people don’t in the end stage recognize their children as they are now but might recognize them from a photo from long ago. Emotional content often helps fasten a memory to the long term file. When responding to questions from my children about my life, I have noted that memories from pre adulthood remain pretty vivid and well recalled, with details (some of which may well be made up—see above) and those from my middle aged working life are more “sketchy” and not especially well-remembered. Quick: who was the CEO of Group Health in 1999?
Amber developed a technique for memorization I never used: when learning the quadratic equation or the countries of Africa, she developed a song with all the material and years later could recite the information, using the melody/ song as a tool for the memory (Pop goes the Weasle). A brilliant student friend at Santa Cruz marveled how I struggled with math and physics problems and yet could recite minutes of Frank Zappa lyrics—if only I had had Amber’s technique then….Another technique: when trying to memorize series of numbers, a simple trick is to not remember single digits but translate them into longer numbers (6-5-7-3-2-9 can be remembered and retained better as 657 and 329).
The Memory Palace; a famous Renaissance Portuguese clergyman in China was entertained by Chinese nobles at dinner and he asked about their written language. They were paternalistic and suggested it was beyond him. He asked to be instructed and at the table, each noble wrote a character and told him what it meant. He as able to reproduce after one clockwise round all the words associated with the symbols and reproduced the work again going counter clockwise on the second demonstration. European inferiority was suddenly questioned. His model for doing this comes from antiquity (pre-literate societies) and uses a visual model for each thing to be remembered in a “palace” or dwelling well known to the one memorizing. One assigns each word or image to a well known feature of the house and by walking through the house, mentally, can bring back the memory.
This takes practice……..
Consider instant memory, a memory you don’t have to think about. Example, what is 3 x 3? What is the capital of your state? Unless you are in elementary school today you likely know instantly what the answers are automatically. Another kind of memory is responding to the question, “what did you have for breakfast today? Or What did you do last Saturday?” There is a process as you “remind” the video tape and think through the memory. And then there is the horrible question, “Do you remember what we did last year on our anniversary?”
Photographic memory: I have known people who can read a passage and retain all the details within it in one reading. I do not have that ability and yet, if I read something familiar and of interest, I can remember details because of the context they fall within ie previous memories or known facts that render them more interesting or part of a larger, “picture.” When I was in college, I took copious notes. When I was on Semester at Sea in my 40’s I attended college classes and took exams without ever taking notes and would have had a great GPA if I had taken the courses for credit.
And there is muscle memory. I thought this was a figure of speech, but, anyone who has watched me play tennis or basketball over the years knows that I have terrible muscle memory. A 50% free-throw percentage with lots of practice after a week or two falls back to baseline: 30%. It is still a wonder to me considering friends and acquaintances for whom this is not true.
My favorite—and this takes us back to the brain’s silent adjustment with a hole in our vision: Fashbulb memory: “What were you doing when JFK was assassinated or when the jets hit the WTC?” That last event occurred when a psychiatrist, who had a number of students in a college level course had them write in detail, within days of 9/11, what they did that day. He kept their recollections and each year would ask them to repeat ie put their memory to paper. After a number of years, he pointed out discrepancies and dramatic changes in the recalled memories. The subjects of this study would argue forcefully that the original notes (thought to be likely the most accurate, given the timing) were just plain wrong. They would bet a lot of money on their most recent memory recollection being the most accurate. That makes the hippie meme from the 60’s (What is reality, man?) A little more relevant.
This subject remains of interest as I enter a time of life where memory is suddenly front and center. This is a preoccupation of many given the presidential election. Again, memory as reliably demonstrated against a clear standard is one thing. Interpreting events and recounting the significance of such memories yet another. And to paraphrase Kelly Anne Conway, there are, “alternative memories.” For all of us, the farther we are from specific events and the more we consider a specific interpretation of that memory, the more we are likely to bet the farm that that interpretation is what happened, exactly, with confidence.
Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it…….
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