Memory

Essay by Anonymous UserHigh School, 12th grade February 1997

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Memory

Memory is the vital tool in learning and thinking . We all use memory in our everyday lives. Think about the first time you ever tied your shoe laces or rode a bike; those are all forms of memory , long term or short. If you do not remember anything from the past , you would never learn; thus unable to process. Without memory you would simply be exposed to new and unfamiliar things . Life would be absent and bare of the richness of it happy or sorrow. Many scientists are still unsure of all that happens and what and how memory works. They are certain , though , that it is involvement of chemical changes in the brain which changes the physical structure (Loftus p. 392). It has been found after many research , that new memory is stored in a section of the brain called the hippocampus (Loftus p.

392). Memory is acquired by a series of solidifying events , but more research is still needed to discover and fully understand (Loftus p. 392).

Memory is broken down into three systems or categories . These different systems are sensory memory , short-term , and long-term memory. Sensory memory is the shortest and less extensive of the others. It can hold memory for only an instance (Memory p. 32). Suppose you see a tree , the image of the tree is briefly held by the sensory memory and quickly disappears unless you transfer it to your short-term memory (Rhodes p. 130). The next level is called short-term memory. The image or fact can be held as long as the brain is actively thinking about it (Loftus p. 392). For example , if you look up a number in the phone book and...