Latest / Stuff You Should Know / A Podcast to Remember (How Memory Works)

Transcript

A Podcast to Remember (How Memory Works) · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
0:03
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
0:08
Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
0:16
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, Davis, Charles W Chuck Bryant.
0:21
Speaker 1: I remembered your name, and this is stuff you should know. Lizzy,
0:25
Speaker 1: had you cracked up there? If that makes it into
0:27
Speaker 1: the gut, it's not going to because that was pre
0:30
Speaker 1: hay and welcome to the podcast. Everything before that I
0:32
Speaker 1: always gets cut out. You know that. I don't think
0:34
Speaker 1: a little giggle beforehand might be in. We would be
0:36
Speaker 1: fired if we didn't cut out everything that came before that, right, maybe, Chuck,
0:43
Speaker 1: you ever heard of a guy named Nicolas Carr? Yeah? Sure,
0:47
Speaker 1: I know you. Have you ever heard of a little
0:49
Speaker 1: rag called The Atlantic? Yes? I have. Back in two
0:53
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, those two things collided, Nicholas Carr in
0:56
Speaker 1: the Atlantic and he had a very great UM headlined
1:01
Speaker 1: article called his Google making Us Stupid and Nicholas Carr.
1:05
Speaker 1: He went on to write a book. He followed that
1:07
Speaker 1: normal process where like you're writing the book and you're like,
1:10
Speaker 1: I need some extra cash, so I'll excerpt this or
1:13
Speaker 1: rewrite you know, like fifteen pages of it, celts to
1:16
Speaker 1: the Atlantic or whatever. We need to get in that gig. Well,
1:20
Speaker 1: we have to write a book or be writing a book.
1:22
Speaker 1: I write a book. We should do that. But it
1:24
Speaker 1: was I can't remember what the book was was called.
1:27
Speaker 1: But the article actually made a bigger splash than the book.
1:29
Speaker 1: Din But basically he was saying, like, we are re
1:34
Speaker 1: configuring the way we learn through our interactions with the internet. Um, Like,
1:40
Speaker 1: there's constantly things trying to get our attention on a
1:43
Speaker 1: web page. You know, it's not like a book with
1:45
Speaker 1: with without pictures or um, you know, flashing lights, that
1:49
Speaker 1: kind of thing. We we read horizontally he put it,
1:53
Speaker 1: rather than vertically, meaning you know, we just kind of
1:55
Speaker 1: skimmed the surface of a bunch of different stuff rather
1:57
Speaker 1: than really deeply get into one thing. Action which helps
2:01
Speaker 1: flex the imagination. Um is pretty much non existent on
2:05
Speaker 1: the web unless you're like into live journal, you know,
2:08
Speaker 1: Harry Potter erotica. Right. So, but at the basis of
2:12
Speaker 1: his argument is Google making a stupid was the idea
2:16
Speaker 1: that it's actually reforming the way we form memories that
2:20
Speaker 1: Google he chose Google, You know, just to get a headline,
2:24
Speaker 1: as the editor did. But um, the the idea that
2:28
Speaker 1: the internet, the way we read, is re changing or
2:31
Speaker 1: changing the way that we absorb information and therefore form memory.
2:36
Speaker 1: It says a lot that he was asking if it's
2:38
Speaker 1: making as stupid because we here in the West equate
2:43
Speaker 1: memory a good memory, too, intelligence, too smart. Um, I
2:49
Speaker 1: guess what I'm trying to drive at, very clumsily, is
2:53
Speaker 1: how does memory work? I thought that was a great
2:56
Speaker 1: set up, And who knows what the heck we're gonna
2:59
Speaker 1: look like in a hundred years as a species, how
3:01
Speaker 1: our brains are gonna be firing, and what the effect
3:04
Speaker 1: it's gonna have on us. We're gonna have mighty humps. Yeah,
3:07
Speaker 1: well that's the thing. I mean, you can you can
3:08
Speaker 1: debate all all day long. Is it stupid? Or are
3:10
Speaker 1: we just in the middle of evolution? Probably in the
3:13
Speaker 1: middle of an evolution. I don't think we're gonna end
3:15
Speaker 1: up like a in idiocricy. You although never possibility, you
3:21
Speaker 1: never know. I watched Idiocracy, so that might mean I'm
3:24
Speaker 1: on that road myself. It's a great movie. Did you
3:27
Speaker 1: like it? I did. I thought it was what it was,
3:30
Speaker 1: But like the one joke premise of most most times
3:33
Speaker 1: when a movie has the one joke premise, that kind
3:35
Speaker 1: of gets old for me. What one joke? Sort of
3:39
Speaker 1: the one joke everybody's stupid? Yeah, it worth than all right?
3:43
Speaker 1: Moving on, memories, Josh, are what makes us who we
3:48
Speaker 1: are if we you know, I imagine if someone has
3:51
Speaker 1: complete amnesia, they usually don't have a sense of self. Well, yeah,
3:57
Speaker 1: you know, it depends if you remember h M. Henry Mullison. No.
4:02
Speaker 1: So he was the patient that proved there's this big
4:05
Speaker 1: debate over when we think of memory, whether there's like
4:08
Speaker 1: one part of the brain that's responsible for memory or
4:11
Speaker 1: whether it's a bunch of different parts of the brain.
4:13
Speaker 1: And he proved that the multiple memory systems works because
4:17
Speaker 1: they used to think like, oh, you just got a
4:18
Speaker 1: big old filing cabinet and your brain just sticks it
4:21
Speaker 1: in whatever filet belongs in and then you go and
4:23
Speaker 1: pull it out when you need it exactly. And that's
4:25
Speaker 1: very it's very sesame street way of putting it. It is, um,
4:29
Speaker 1: But you know, they were working with what they had
4:31
Speaker 1: to work with at the time, and they were wrong.
4:33
Speaker 1: But Hm, like age twenty three, this guy UM who
4:37
Speaker 1: became known as HM. Patient HM had temporal labectomy to
4:43
Speaker 1: cure his epilepsy. Oh, that guy also removed his hippocampus
4:48
Speaker 1: so he could tell you, you you know, where he went
4:50
Speaker 1: to high school, who his oldest friend was, that kind
4:53
Speaker 1: of thing. But he couldn't tell you what he had
4:54
Speaker 1: for lunch that day because he lost the ability to
4:57
Speaker 1: form new memories. So the fact that he could maintain
4:59
Speaker 1: old memories but couldn't form new memories proved that there's
5:02
Speaker 1: multiple systems involved for different types of memory, like Memento. Right,
5:08
Speaker 1: great movie that he would have proven it to a
5:11
Speaker 1: memento did not have Ellen page. No it didn't, So
5:14
Speaker 1: it's on your list of acceptable films. She would have
5:21
Speaker 1: written in by now Um or not. She may just
5:26
Speaker 1: be like, I hate those guys so much. Maybe so
5:29
Speaker 1: uh so, let's let's talk a bit about memory, josh Um.
5:33
Speaker 1: Let's say we were talking about breakfast this morning. If
5:35
Speaker 1: you remember what you had for breakfast, you might think
5:38
Speaker 1: that that is a very simple thing that happened, when
5:40
Speaker 1: in fact, it is very complex reconstruction from different parts
5:45
Speaker 1: of your brain putting together. Maybe the smell of your eggs,
5:51
Speaker 1: of your eggs bacon is octuating you didn't need that
5:54
Speaker 1: slab of ham. What it looked like, maybe, what it
5:57
Speaker 1: felt like, um in your mouth, how it tasted. So
6:00
Speaker 1: you're recalling all these different parts, but not complex thing,
6:04
Speaker 1: not and even just that. I mean, there's so much
6:06
Speaker 1: more to it, the the tablecloth, whether you were angry
6:11
Speaker 1: at the weather guy, to remember even what eggs are. Yeah,
6:16
Speaker 1: you know these memories that go way back, but we
6:18
Speaker 1: we conceive of it as this one little snapshot of
6:21
Speaker 1: a memory called what what you had for breakfast? Right? Um?
6:25
Speaker 1: But all of those different things put together are called
6:28
Speaker 1: neural projections, right chuck, Okay, so go ahead. Well the
6:33
Speaker 1: other instance too, that they always mentioned is riding. You
6:35
Speaker 1: never forget how to ride a bike, and it seems
6:37
Speaker 1: like a very easy thing, but there are so many
6:39
Speaker 1: things going on when you ride a bike. How you
6:42
Speaker 1: get on the bike, how you mount the bike, where
6:45
Speaker 1: your feet go, how you move it forward? Where should
6:48
Speaker 1: I put my hands? Um? What about this car barreling down?
6:52
Speaker 1: I should probably not ride in the center of the
6:54
Speaker 1: road going the wrong way. So it's just like hundreds
6:58
Speaker 1: of memories. I can't put a number on it, you
6:59
Speaker 1: know how many there are? Well, the reason why it's
7:02
Speaker 1: so difficult is because it's this is all a seamless process,
7:04
Speaker 1: right exactly. It ding a bike as if it's one
7:08
Speaker 1: single file that you pull out of your cabinet called
7:11
Speaker 1: ride a bike. Yeah. And at times it's so it's
7:14
Speaker 1: so second nature, it's so natural to us that we
7:17
Speaker 1: kind of detach ourselves from it and call it things
7:20
Speaker 1: like muscle memory. So just things muscle memory. Your muscles
7:23
Speaker 1: are there, they don't have a capacity for member remembering
7:27
Speaker 1: anything well, and we don't even know how we recall still,
7:29
Speaker 1: even though we have a better handle on storage of
7:32
Speaker 1: memory and now, and we should we should disclaim this
7:35
Speaker 1: episode by saying that there is a lot of there's
7:38
Speaker 1: a This is the rough sketch of what we know
7:42
Speaker 1: right now about how we form and retrieve memory, which
7:45
Speaker 1: is more than we've ever known. Yeah, and I think
7:48
Speaker 1: we're hot on the trail. It's really starting to come
7:50
Speaker 1: together and make sense. So should we start with encoding, Yeah,
7:54
Speaker 1: which is basically your senses. It's rooted in your senses.
7:58
Speaker 1: Encoding is the first step to create a memory. It
8:01
Speaker 1: begins with perception. And when we talk about perception, we're
8:03
Speaker 1: talking about your sensory perception, um, right, which like, right
8:07
Speaker 1: now you appear to me as you know, a little
8:09
Speaker 1: scruffy looking good. You've got your braves cap on, almost
8:14
Speaker 1: smile right the the ikea lights gleaming off of your eye,
8:18
Speaker 1: about eyeballs a little bit. All of this is visual information, right,
8:22
Speaker 1: But in my brain it's nothing more than electrical impulses
8:26
Speaker 1: traveling through the optic nerve to my hippocampus. Right right.
8:29
Speaker 1: You might smell me, um, you might. You know. The
8:32
Speaker 1: example they use in the article is the first girlfriend.
8:34
Speaker 1: But that's right on the money, man. I mean, I
8:37
Speaker 1: still remember all that stuff. But when you when you
8:40
Speaker 1: see that first girl that you fall in love with,
8:42
Speaker 1: you know what she looked like, what she smelled like,
8:44
Speaker 1: the first time she shook your hand. I hate to
8:47
Speaker 1: say this, but it's the exact same thing as breakfast
8:49
Speaker 1: this morning or riding the bike. Well true in a way,
8:53
Speaker 1: but there's also a point made later on that we'll
8:55
Speaker 1: talk about that things that are more important to you
8:57
Speaker 1: are more likely to be rooted in your long term memory.
8:59
Speaker 1: So oh yeah, yeah, okay, breakfast is pretty important to me, right? True?
9:07
Speaker 1: Is that that is that that's something been your long
9:09
Speaker 1: term memory though I remember every breakfast I've ever eaten. Okay,
9:14
Speaker 1: it's because you've only had breakfast four times. Uh So
9:18
Speaker 1: where are we within the hippocampus, Well, yeah, we're with encoding.
9:21
Speaker 1: So basically what just happened is the light bouncing off
9:24
Speaker 1: of you that gives you shape, and all that is
9:26
Speaker 1: coming into my eyes and be in transforming into electrical information.
9:29
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter what it is. Like, that's the language
9:32
Speaker 1: of the brain, right, translates information and stores it in
9:37
Speaker 1: the hippocampus initially. Right, that's like the big processing, sorting,
9:41
Speaker 1: routing hub. Yeah. So your hippocampus is like this, uh,
9:45
Speaker 1: this region of the brain shaped like a sea horse,
9:48
Speaker 1: which hence the name um that basically says, okay, so
9:54
Speaker 1: I don't get that part hippocampus. It's not shaped like
9:56
Speaker 1: a hippopotamus, shape like a sea horse. And why Plus
10:00
Speaker 1: the name hippocampus means seahorse. I did not realize that, man,
10:05
Speaker 1: I hope it does. That's how I've always taken it.
10:07
Speaker 1: So let's call it the seahorse a campus. But basically,
10:11
Speaker 1: what the hippocampus does is it takes in all this information,
10:14
Speaker 1: including stuff that I have no idea I'm taking in
10:17
Speaker 1: at the moment um and says this is important, this
10:20
Speaker 1: is an important you can leave this out. Let's send
10:23
Speaker 1: this over here, let's send this over there. Let's create
10:25
Speaker 1: this neural projection by by combining this, this, and this,
10:29
Speaker 1: and it's like basically, the the the man behind the curtain.
10:33
Speaker 1: The hippocampus is the sent center of forming new memories,
10:38
Speaker 1: and along with the frontal cortex, they work in hand
10:40
Speaker 1: in hand at this Yeah, okay, and it's a really
10:42
Speaker 1: efficient way to deal with your surroundings, Chuck, because consider this.
10:46
Speaker 1: Let's say you or I, um, well, let's say we're
10:49
Speaker 1: doing it together. We're coming out of the woods into
10:51
Speaker 1: a meadow and it is um a primal area, and
10:55
Speaker 1: we're scared of bears, so we're scanning the meadow for bears.
10:59
Speaker 1: Right we don't see any bears, but there's birds, there's flowers,
11:02
Speaker 1: there's butterflies, and we're kind of taking in all of
11:05
Speaker 1: these things, but we're not really taking it in because
11:08
Speaker 1: none of them are the bear, which is what we're
11:10
Speaker 1: tasked with finding. Right then, So the the hippocampus isn't
11:15
Speaker 1: in forming any memories of the butterfly or the daisies
11:19
Speaker 1: or whatever. Maybe we would know, oh, well, there's a
11:21
Speaker 1: splash of white against the green, so there are flowers there.
11:24
Speaker 1: If we were asked later on what kind of flowers
11:26
Speaker 1: were in that meadow, we couldn't say. So it's just
11:28
Speaker 1: filtering that what we would consider unnecessary information out exactly. Okay, Um,
11:34
Speaker 1: it travels while we said this perception and encoding is
11:37
Speaker 1: where it starts. But then you have to it has
11:40
Speaker 1: to go somewhere from there, and this is where the
11:43
Speaker 1: chemistry of the brain comes in, which is endlessly fascinating
11:46
Speaker 1: to me. Yes, Josh, we have nerve cells, neurons and
11:50
Speaker 1: these uh, these connect with other cells, not a point
11:53
Speaker 1: called the synapse, right well, which is actually that's funny
11:56
Speaker 1: that the author of this article put it like that
11:58
Speaker 1: because it's actually not a point. It's a gap. You
12:02
Speaker 1: think that all these things connect, but there is a gap,
12:05
Speaker 1: and the leap to the other side. The leap of
12:08
Speaker 1: the gap is uh performed via neurotransmitters that right, and
12:14
Speaker 1: then latched onto by a dentrite. The little feathery things
12:17
Speaker 1: on the cells collect. Yeah, they accept the transmission. Come
12:21
Speaker 1: on in transmission. Welcome to my cell. So Chuck I'm
12:25
Speaker 1: going to give a couple of stature quick. Okay, there's
12:27
Speaker 1: possibly as many as a hundred billion neurons in your brain.
12:32
Speaker 1: It's a lot um. Each of them have many tens
12:38
Speaker 1: of thousands, are many, many thousands of connections up to
12:42
Speaker 1: UM which are synapsis, yes, which are which leads to
12:46
Speaker 1: as many as a quadrillion synapses in the human brain.
12:49
Speaker 1: And they can connect. Is it an infinite amount of
12:52
Speaker 1: times if need be? What do you mean is there
12:56
Speaker 1: any limit to the amount of neural connections these cells
12:58
Speaker 1: can make? Well, I think ten thousand is the high
13:01
Speaker 1: end that I've heard, But I love that you had
13:04
Speaker 1: an answer for that. UM. And they're constantly going to
13:10
Speaker 1: and forming new connections. I think it's something like thirty
13:12
Speaker 1: to sixty times the second. Near neurons are firing all
13:16
Speaker 1: over your head and they're not sentence down. They're always changing,
13:20
Speaker 1: always forming new connections. The more that you do something,
13:24
Speaker 1: the stronger the connection is going to be. We might
13:27
Speaker 1: know that in the real world as practice or repetition, right,
13:32
Speaker 1: but the another word for it is plasticity, where the
13:36
Speaker 1: brain you're the organizational structure of your brain actually changes
13:40
Speaker 1: shape it as as you're saying, like, through practicing something
13:45
Speaker 1: like the repeated firing of a neural connection, right, which
13:49
Speaker 1: is just an electrical impulse that triggers the release of
13:52
Speaker 1: neurotransmitters that crosses synapse are accepted in the den drite right,
13:56
Speaker 1: and the neurotransmitters are the message carried like a certain
13:59
Speaker 1: type of neurotransmit or like dopamine says hey, everything's just
14:03
Speaker 1: ire right um, And this information has just passed along
14:07
Speaker 1: from one neur onto another if the the impulse is
14:10
Speaker 1: strong enough. Right. But then when you do it again
14:12
Speaker 1: and again and again, more channels that allow the neurotransmitters
14:17
Speaker 1: to to be released from one and accepted by another
14:21
Speaker 1: are dug which means that this thing fires more efficiently
14:25
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden after firing them. By practicing
14:28
Speaker 1: your violin this one piece of music slowly over and
14:31
Speaker 1: over again, you get faster and faster and faster at
14:33
Speaker 1: it until you can play it perfectly. That's exactly what's
14:37
Speaker 1: going on your your neural connection is is that top performance,
14:42
Speaker 1: peak performance practice makes perfect How to play uh the
14:45
Speaker 1: intro to Stairway to Heaven. When I first got my
14:47
Speaker 1: guitar and I played it over and over and over
14:50
Speaker 1: and over until I learned it. Give me a guitar. Today,
14:54
Speaker 1: I can monkey through about a third of it very
14:58
Speaker 1: clumsily because I forget or I can't write in cursive anymore.
15:03
Speaker 1: I can't either. I mean, I'd really have to concentrate.
15:06
Speaker 1: And they're definitely letters that I would forget how to write.
15:09
Speaker 1: That was a jarring realization for me, that, like, how
15:13
Speaker 1: do you make the cue? And whatever happened to that Z?
15:16
Speaker 1: That weird Z like it's all gone and even like
15:20
Speaker 1: the S and the R and all that like normal stuff,
15:22
Speaker 1: it's just gone. Yeah, you don't want to see my
15:25
Speaker 1: cursive writing. So what what you're talking about is a
15:28
Speaker 1: while you can refine the organization of your brain to
15:33
Speaker 1: peak performance, your neural connections also have a kind of
15:37
Speaker 1: use it or lose it aspect to them as well.
15:40
Speaker 1: Remember that study with the kittens. No, this the really
15:45
Speaker 1: sad study. I think it's funny that you're asking me
15:47
Speaker 1: how much I remember and I keep saying no. Um.
15:51
Speaker 1: There was this study that um that involved kittens having
15:55
Speaker 1: one eye so and shut from birth, and they would
16:00
Speaker 1: they were allowed to frolic and play and do whatever,
16:02
Speaker 1: but they just had one eye so and shut UM.
16:04
Speaker 1: And then after I think like eight or ten or
16:07
Speaker 1: twelve weeks, the eye was um released opened up again,
16:13
Speaker 1: and the kittens were blind for life. And I guess
16:17
Speaker 1: they killed the kittens and looked at what was going
16:19
Speaker 1: on in the brain and they found that that they say,
16:21
Speaker 1: the left eye had been so and shut during the
16:24
Speaker 1: stage of development. UM. The neural connections had all traveled
16:28
Speaker 1: to the right eye, which was seeing, and the ones
16:31
Speaker 1: that had been there on the left eye that formed
16:33
Speaker 1: the optic were withered and dead. You know what they
16:36
Speaker 1: called that experiment, They called the saddest experiment in the
16:39
Speaker 1: history of the world. It's pretty bad. It's a pretty
16:42
Speaker 1: bad experiment, but it basically goes to show you that
16:45
Speaker 1: not only will neural connections wither and die if they're
16:48
Speaker 1: not used, they'll also migrate to places where they can
16:51
Speaker 1: be used. There's kind of like a survival of the fittest,
16:54
Speaker 1: like um jungle grab for firing, because the more fired
17:00
Speaker 1: a neural connection is, the more important it is, the
17:03
Speaker 1: stronger it's going to be right, right and f I
17:07
Speaker 1: I Giraffe neurons can grow up to three ft in length. Really,
17:11
Speaker 1: are they all in the neck. Isn't that cool? That
17:15
Speaker 1: is pretty cool. Uh. So we were talking about encoding, Um,
17:18
Speaker 1: you have to really be paying attention to properly encode,
17:21
Speaker 1: and we also talked about filtering things out. What they
17:23
Speaker 1: don't know again, is this maybe the first time we've
17:27
Speaker 1: said it, is are we screening this stimuli out during
17:32
Speaker 1: the first initial sensory stage or are we literally processing
17:35
Speaker 1: it and saying no, we don't need this, get rid
17:38
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah, it would make sense to me that
17:40
Speaker 1: it comes afterward, but they don't know. Yeah, it makes
17:43
Speaker 1: sense to me too, Like the hippocampus is like, that's
17:45
Speaker 1: not a bear, so forget it. Yeah, forget that. So
17:49
Speaker 1: are we at short term and long term? Josh? Yeah,
17:53
Speaker 1: you have to store all memories, even if it's just
17:55
Speaker 1: for a blip, you're going to be storing it, or
17:57
Speaker 1: it's not a memory, even the shortest of short term
17:59
Speaker 1: memories as a memory. And there are three ways they
18:02
Speaker 1: believe that we store these memories. We've already talked about
18:05
Speaker 1: the sensory stage. Then you have the short term if
18:08
Speaker 1: it's deemed important enough to remember at least for a
18:11
Speaker 1: little while, and then eventually long term. Yeah, if it's
18:15
Speaker 1: really important to you, which there's different ways to look
18:18
Speaker 1: at long term memory. The way that I found is
18:22
Speaker 1: that long term memory is this dormant neural projection, all
18:26
Speaker 1: the all the different neural connections that make up that
18:31
Speaker 1: rich memory you know from long ago. Um that it's there,
18:36
Speaker 1: like it can be activated again. It's long term memories,
18:38
Speaker 1: short term memories when it's active, and then working memory,
18:42
Speaker 1: which isn't in this article. Working memory is like bringing
18:45
Speaker 1: something to mind and then the action of consciously keeping
18:49
Speaker 1: it in mind, like repeating a phone number over and
18:52
Speaker 1: over again that you knew before, but you're having to
18:55
Speaker 1: to remind yourself you're keeping it in your working memory. Well,
18:58
Speaker 1: it's funny you mentioned phone number because short term memory
19:01
Speaker 1: is really limited. UM. I love the status. It says
19:04
Speaker 1: that short term memory can hold about seven items for
19:07
Speaker 1: no more than twenty or thirty seconds at a time.
19:09
Speaker 1: So that's why when you see something like a phone number,
19:12
Speaker 1: you shouldn't be able to remember that. So what you
19:15
Speaker 1: do is you break it down, or it's already broken
19:18
Speaker 1: down usually for you UH into three sets of three
19:22
Speaker 1: or two sets of three and one set of four.
19:24
Speaker 1: I would be missing a digit. And that's how you
19:27
Speaker 1: remember things and then saying it over and over. And
19:29
Speaker 1: there's all sorts of exercises you can do to remember things,
19:32
Speaker 1: like when you meet somebody. That's where I'm bad. You know.
19:37
Speaker 1: You know how I am with remembering names. I can
19:39
Speaker 1: never remember names. But you're also very friendly. You can
19:41
Speaker 1: be like, hey, I I recognize your face. What's your name? Well, yeah,
19:45
Speaker 1: and I might remember. You could say you met this
19:48
Speaker 1: girl Francis at this thing that we did, and I'd
19:51
Speaker 1: say who. I'd say, oh, that the lady who wore
19:54
Speaker 1: the overalls in the flip flops. Like I'll remember things
19:58
Speaker 1: like that forever. Names forget about it. That's why you
20:03
Speaker 1: have all the names of everyone you've ever met written
20:06
Speaker 1: down on your hand. That's why I have no friends.
20:09
Speaker 1: But long term memory can store everything forever if you
20:13
Speaker 1: wanted to. Yeah, that seems like a ge whiz we
20:17
Speaker 1: don't really know exactly what's going on kind of statement,
20:20
Speaker 1: you know, I totally agree. When I read that, I
20:22
Speaker 1: was like, really, yeah, I don't know about that one,
20:27
Speaker 1: but it is I would agree that it's um at
20:31
Speaker 1: least as much as we need or another way to
20:34
Speaker 1: look at it is, what if we are all operating
20:37
Speaker 1: pretty much a capacity. How much more incredibly intelligent would
20:41
Speaker 1: we be if we had even like more memory storage.
20:46
Speaker 1: But like we mentioned earlier, things that are important to you,
20:48
Speaker 1: you're more likely to remember. Um. And then when you're
20:52
Speaker 1: encoding how you're perceiving things. That's why I probably when
20:55
Speaker 1: I meet someone, I look at their shoes and they're
21:00
Speaker 1: wearing I guess, and and and I'm distracted. I'm not
21:03
Speaker 1: thinking of the fact that they said their name when
21:05
Speaker 1: they shook my hand. Well, you just hit two big points.
21:07
Speaker 1: One that's something that is meaningful to you. You're going
21:11
Speaker 1: to remember more. That's because emotion is usually attached the emotion.
21:16
Speaker 1: The seat of emotion is the amygdala, and it is
21:19
Speaker 1: directly connected to the hippocampus. It's got like a direct
21:22
Speaker 1: line to the hippocampus, like up coming through I'm first
21:25
Speaker 1: right the saddle on the sea horse, if you will, Yes,
21:28
Speaker 1: and that's great. Um, the uh, that's really good, and
21:33
Speaker 1: the there's a I guess. The one of the big
21:36
Speaker 1: theories behind what emotions are, why we have them, is
21:39
Speaker 1: they're basically like learning guides. They're teaching guides Like you
21:42
Speaker 1: feel fear, um, you're going to remember that you feel
21:46
Speaker 1: fear when you see a bear, and you're going to
21:48
Speaker 1: stay away from bears. Um Or joy makes us all
21:52
Speaker 1: you know, what makes us feel familiar with other people groups,
21:58
Speaker 1: which is which is right away from it keeps bears away.
22:02
Speaker 1: You know, eight people could beat up a bear rather
22:04
Speaker 1: than just one. So we have emotions, and we learned
22:08
Speaker 1: from our emotions, which is why we managed to remember
22:11
Speaker 1: things so much more clearly when there's an emotion attached.
22:14
Speaker 1: And if you examine most of your memories, there's probably
22:18
Speaker 1: going to be some sort of emotional memory. I guess
22:22
Speaker 1: beneath the surface there. Like have you ever watched the
22:25
Speaker 1: movie and you know, it's really dramatic and intense and
22:30
Speaker 1: that scene ends and you kind of come out of
22:33
Speaker 1: it like you were just totally sucked in, and you
22:35
Speaker 1: kind of come out of it because the next scene
22:37
Speaker 1: started and it's it's you know, the build up hasn't
22:40
Speaker 1: happened yet for that scene, but you realize you have
22:42
Speaker 1: this kind of um remnant, uneasy feeling that you have
22:46
Speaker 1: no idea what it belongs to any longer. And then
22:49
Speaker 1: you realize, wait a minute, I was just identifying with
22:52
Speaker 1: the movie, So I that's I think that's kind of
22:56
Speaker 1: the the same kind of underlying emotional memory that can
23:01
Speaker 1: be attached to anything, and that makes it more poignant
23:04
Speaker 1: and more likely to be remembered. Yeah, exactly, and that
23:07
Speaker 1: and and that may be more important to one person
23:09
Speaker 1: than another. So it's typical to say I have a
23:12
Speaker 1: good memory or a bad memory. And what's probably more
23:15
Speaker 1: likely is that you might be really good at remembering
23:18
Speaker 1: some things but not others, you know what I'm saying.
23:22
Speaker 1: And if you're having trouble remembering something, it's not like
23:25
Speaker 1: your entire memory system is is not working. It's probably
23:28
Speaker 1: like one part. Because I think there's three stages to
23:31
Speaker 1: actually keeping a memory around, and it just means one
23:35
Speaker 1: of those is not working quite well. Uh, why don't
23:38
Speaker 1: you tell me? Okay, Well, basically that you can say
23:42
Speaker 1: that when well, let's take an example of eyeglasses. Um,
23:46
Speaker 1: would you neither one of us were right, But let's
23:49
Speaker 1: say we did, and we're going to bed. Right, You're
23:52
Speaker 1: going to bed in a separate from me, okay, And um,
23:57
Speaker 1: you're you take your glasses off and you you toss them,
24:00
Speaker 1: you know, off to on the nightstand and go to sleep. Right,
24:04
Speaker 1: if you looked at your eyeglasses where you set them,
24:08
Speaker 1: you were, you would be perceiving their placement encoding, right,
24:12
Speaker 1: which is going to make it likelier for that memory
24:15
Speaker 1: to be retained. And then when you wake up, since
24:18
Speaker 1: the memory is retained, you'll be able to retrieve it.
24:22
Speaker 1: So those are the three steps. It's awareness, retention, and
24:25
Speaker 1: then retrieval, and any of those three is where the
24:28
Speaker 1: breakdown can occur. Yeah, and I've heard you know, there's
24:30
Speaker 1: all sorts of tips, like if you say out loud
24:33
Speaker 1: as you're as you're doing it, I'm putting my eyeglasses
24:36
Speaker 1: on the nightstand, that might help you. You might seem
24:39
Speaker 1: a little weird, but that will help you remember it.
24:42
Speaker 1: So Chuck, what about aging, Like there's this underlying fear
24:47
Speaker 1: among everybody that as we get older, our memories are
24:50
Speaker 1: going to go. And that's that's true in a lot
24:53
Speaker 1: of cases, but it's not necessarily you know, it's often
24:57
Speaker 1: associated with Alzheimer's or dementia or something that's not necessarily
25:00
Speaker 1: the underlying mechanism. It's not the mechanism, but it does happen. Um,
25:05
Speaker 1: there is a breakdown that starts with the onset of
25:07
Speaker 1: sexual maturity. Oddly, it's linked to that then you start
25:11
Speaker 1: forgetting things. Um and it uh, I think it gets
25:16
Speaker 1: worse and worse until we reach our fifties. It's like
25:19
Speaker 1: twenties to fifties is when you're you really have some
25:23
Speaker 1: trouble initially, right, But the brain isn't changing it it's
25:27
Speaker 1: structure or anything. It's the connections that start to fail.
25:30
Speaker 1: Is that right? That's what I understand. Although they did
25:33
Speaker 1: say the brain in the in hippocampus shrink in your seventies.
25:38
Speaker 1: It depends, yes, I think. Um. What they're finding though,
25:41
Speaker 1: is that a lot of it has to do with
25:42
Speaker 1: the lack of stimulation. Well that's huge. Yeah. Um. They
25:46
Speaker 1: found that rats that are raised with lots of toys
25:49
Speaker 1: or they are given lots of toys and stimulating environment
25:52
Speaker 1: later on in life have literally fatter, healthier cells, brain cells,
25:58
Speaker 1: neurons um then their counterparts, and the same as in
26:01
Speaker 1: humans as well. At the very least, we know that
26:04
Speaker 1: our neurons shrink as we get older, like you said.
26:07
Speaker 1: But they found they found that stimulating environments, like you know,
26:12
Speaker 1: if you're in a nursing home and and there's a
26:14
Speaker 1: lot going on, rather than just like go sit in
26:16
Speaker 1: your room, right, the people at the lots going on
26:19
Speaker 1: nursing home are going to be a lot more um
26:22
Speaker 1: I guess intelligent later in life, or at the very
26:25
Speaker 1: least they're going to have better memories, is another way
26:27
Speaker 1: to put it. Yeah. Well, Emily's grandmother, as you know,
26:29
Speaker 1: is ninety and she is uh has a very robust
26:36
Speaker 1: personality and memory and she is I think it's all
26:40
Speaker 1: due to the fact that she exercises that muscle quite
26:44
Speaker 1: a bit. She does word puzzles every day, she's she's
26:47
Speaker 1: on the internet more than I am. She's on all
26:50
Speaker 1: of our Facebook page and she just you know, that's
26:52
Speaker 1: how you stay vital. If you don't Facebook, I'd be
26:57
Speaker 1: a heck of a endorsement. Facebook let you live forever.
27:02
Speaker 1: But it's true though, I mean, anyway you want to
27:03
Speaker 1: go about it, if you're exercising that noodle, it's gonna
27:07
Speaker 1: stay strong and and you can regenerate and stay vital
27:10
Speaker 1: and not not slip darkly into the night. And also
27:14
Speaker 1: they're they're pretty sure that a reduction in production of
27:19
Speaker 1: acetal colin, which is a neurotransmitter that's strongly associated with
27:23
Speaker 1: um memory formation. Yeah, they kind of pinpointed that. Yeah,
27:27
Speaker 1: they're not exactly sure how that works, but they know
27:30
Speaker 1: that like if you the more a setal colin you have,
27:33
Speaker 1: the better memory you have and vice versa. But they
27:36
Speaker 1: can you can actually reverse that, right what through the
27:39
Speaker 1: mental exercises? Yeah, yeah, I think you can boost production
27:43
Speaker 1: like that, and I'm sure pretty soon they'll have a
27:45
Speaker 1: setal coline shots where you can just shoot right into
27:47
Speaker 1: our brains like memory junkies. If you're a smoker or
27:53
Speaker 1: a drinker or generally unhealthy, it's gonna you know, impact
27:58
Speaker 1: your memory too. And then last, sadly, this is the
28:02
Speaker 1: this is the one that um I find the most
28:05
Speaker 1: fascinating about memory. There's something called sleep dependent memory consolidation.
28:12
Speaker 1: And basically what happens, remember when we were talking about sleepwalking,
28:16
Speaker 1: Your brain goes through your your you go through two phases,
28:19
Speaker 1: one where your body is active but your brain is out,
28:22
Speaker 1: and then the R E M sleep, the deepest sleep,
28:24
Speaker 1: which where your body can't move but your brain's going.
28:27
Speaker 1: It's basically taking advantage of your you napping so that
28:31
Speaker 1: it can do some paperwork or whatever, and it goes
28:34
Speaker 1: through and fires all the neural connections that were used
28:37
Speaker 1: that day. Maybe some are kind of fading a little
28:40
Speaker 1: bit here there, fires those and um, while you're sleeping,
28:45
Speaker 1: your brain is basically creating perception again, right, got by
28:52
Speaker 1: firing your your neural projections, which I think is probably
28:56
Speaker 1: the best explanation for dreams I've ever heard. Yeah, that's it. Uh. Well,
29:03
Speaker 1: I will just close by saying if I have ever
29:05
Speaker 1: met you and I don't remember your name, please don't
29:08
Speaker 1: be offended, because I guarantee you I recognize your face.
29:11
Speaker 1: Who was it, Tammy with the overalls and the flip flops.
29:15
Speaker 1: I'll remember all that stuff. I remember. I feel like
29:17
Speaker 1: last time I was, last time I was in New York,
29:20
Speaker 1: Emily marveled at I saw I think two different people
29:24
Speaker 1: that I said, Hey, that person was at our our
29:27
Speaker 1: trivia night, you know, a year and a half ago
29:29
Speaker 1: or two years ago or whatever. She said? You remember that?
29:31
Speaker 1: I want? Yeah, so I remember all those faces. That's
29:34
Speaker 1: very good, just not the names. And if you think
29:36
Speaker 1: your memory is going try paying more attention. Distraction is
29:41
Speaker 1: one of the greatest threats to memory formation. And if
29:45
Speaker 1: you don't form a memory properly, you're not gonna remember it.
29:48
Speaker 1: I mean it sounds that sounds so basic, but yeah,
29:52
Speaker 1: proper encoding requires concentration, and really, you know, look at
29:56
Speaker 1: the glasses as you set them next to the alarm
29:58
Speaker 1: clock and think I just put the there. Yeah, so
30:01
Speaker 1: obey humans boom. If you want to learn more about
30:05
Speaker 1: memory type memory, you should probably type human memory because
30:09
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure if you just type memory, a lot
30:11
Speaker 1: of computer stuff is gonna come up in the handy
30:15
Speaker 1: search bar how stuff works dot com And you don't
30:17
Speaker 1: want to read any of that. It's uh well, I'm yeah,
30:21
Speaker 1: uh now it's time for a listener made Josh. I'm
30:27
Speaker 1: gonna call this uh maggot mania. Yeah, that really got
30:33
Speaker 1: to people. I always find it like, um I opening
30:37
Speaker 1: when I just tell a story from my life and
30:39
Speaker 1: everybody's like, oh my god, I couldn't eat. Yeah I'm
30:43
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh sorry, all right. This is from cath
30:47
Speaker 1: in Australia. Oh hello, guys. I have done the exact
30:52
Speaker 1: same thing as you, Josh. I put some meat in
30:54
Speaker 1: a plastic bag in the kitchen garbage bin, which also
30:57
Speaker 1: had a lid, and woke up to a moving floor.
31:00
Speaker 1: Or only I was was not wearing my glasses so
31:04
Speaker 1: she might forget where she laid them. Um I was
31:07
Speaker 1: doing a little cleaning, and it's slowly dawned at me
31:09
Speaker 1: what had happened. I had begun my morning by sweeping.
31:13
Speaker 1: I had made cookies a night prior and was noticing
31:15
Speaker 1: all these little balls of dough on the floor. They
31:18
Speaker 1: were very hard to sweep up. I became more and
31:20
Speaker 1: more confused at the huge amount of tiny balls of
31:23
Speaker 1: dough until I had bent down and had a closer look.
31:26
Speaker 1: It was like a horror movie. My blood went cold,
31:29
Speaker 1: and I crouched an utter panic. I then looked across
31:32
Speaker 1: the floor and these little dough balls had made their
31:34
Speaker 1: way across the entire apartment, and they made it to
31:37
Speaker 1: the bedroom carpet. I was totally disgusted and horrified. I
31:41
Speaker 1: think I was even doing that half panic cry, swearing
31:45
Speaker 1: quietly to myself thing I'm not aware of that. I
31:51
Speaker 1: got rid of them by patiently sweeping them up. I
31:53
Speaker 1: couldn't bear to squish them and have to clean up
31:56
Speaker 1: that mess, and I put them into a plastic bag
31:59
Speaker 1: that I left sitting outside. I sprayed the bag with
32:01
Speaker 1: disinfectant and bug spray after every dump of maggots, but
32:05
Speaker 1: there were still they were still squirming. I will never
32:08
Speaker 1: ever ever leave meat unattended Again, I live in Australia,
32:12
Speaker 1: where I should have been aware of this. I thought
32:14
Speaker 1: she mc cookies, she need meat cookies. Was that just unrelated?
32:19
Speaker 1: I think it was unrelated and that maybe explained that
32:21
Speaker 1: why she thought there was dough on the floor. Now
32:24
Speaker 1: she's said a meat cookies night before. This is Australia.
32:26
Speaker 1: Maybe have meat cookies down and there. I want some
32:29
Speaker 1: meat cookie. That's it. That's from cat. Wow. That was
32:34
Speaker 1: a weird exposition there, Chuck, that was cat. Yeah from Australia.
32:40
Speaker 1: Well thanks Cat the maggot hata h you're just Cat
32:44
Speaker 1: k A t h cant short for Katherine or Cat. Well,
32:47
Speaker 1: thanks a lot. We appreciate it. Um, I imagine you've
32:50
Speaker 1: moved by now and and um, very sensible of you. Yes,
32:54
Speaker 1: if you've ever made meat cookies or anything that sounds
32:57
Speaker 1: equally awesome, we want to hear it. And if you've
33:00
Speaker 1: got a recipe, cool, and if you're willing to send
33:04
Speaker 1: us some of these things even better, right right so
33:07
Speaker 1: you can get our mailing address by sending us an
33:10
Speaker 1: email right right at Stuff podcast at how stuff works
33:19
Speaker 1: dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
33:26
Speaker 1: Is it how stuff works dot com. To learn more
33:28
Speaker 1: about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the
33:31
Speaker 1: upper right corner of our homepage. The How Stuff Works
33:34
Speaker 1: iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes, brought
33:40
Speaker 1: to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready,
33:44
Speaker 1: are you