For many people, middle-aged and older people, we are concerned about memory problems as a symptom of cerebral pathology. But desire to have a good memory almost assails us since we use awareness of its importance as a tool in everyday work, regardless of its importance as a vital mechanism. Joshua Foer in his article "Memory, why we remember why we forget", published in National Geographic Spain , writes that "our culture we are constantly flooded with new information but very little of which we grasp and cataloged in a way that we can return later, but do not remember everything. "
Would you like to remember everything?
The importance we place on report raises questions such as, "We would like to remember everything? Is it necessary to oblivion? In the same vein, Foer raises other questions like, " " we have lost many valuable ideas and have left many important connections to establish because of being unable to register, retain, store or remember? What would have all this knowledge? Would we be more persuasive in our arguments? Would we have more confidence in ourselves? Would we be smarter "
From that article we have extracted some excerpts and proper that we consider of interest to you, and you can extend either version digital paper or publication in question.
Foer writes, "as far as experience is the sum of our memories, and wisdom the sum of experience, a better memory would not only know more about the world, but also about ourselves."
The dream of perfect memory, of which there are outstanding examples in the world today, has been with us since long time ago. A good memory is considered, since ancient times, one of the greatest virtues, it represented "the internalization of a universe of external knowledge."
However, Foer explains that "in the last millennium many of us have experienced a profound change. We have gradually replaced our internal memory for what psychologists call the external memory: a vast superstructure of technological aids, we have invented to avoid having to store all the information in our brains. We have gone to remember everything you remember very little. We record our experiences few photographs, diaries not to forget our commitments, books and the Internet to store our collective knowledge and notes to your reminders. "
Foer wonders whether all these tools to aid memory, all that we have developed mnemonics "has implications for us" themselves and for society? Have we changed a great deal? Have we missed something? ", To which we should add, did you lose? Could it be to grow and succeed necessarily mean forget and leave things behind?
The article's author moves the reader the feeling you have someone who has an exceptional memory and an extreme case of obsession with the past. This person states that it is difficult to accept the changes, and after a change becomes equal to nothing because you can not capture everything, but remember it all would not be exasperating, not end up being a burden?
"The whole purpose of the nervous system from sensory organs that collect information to the massive cluster of neurons that plays her, is to develop a sense of what's happening in the present and what is about to happen in the future, so we can react in the best possible way "Foer said about the fundamental purpose of the report, adding that" our brain is essentially a machine to predict, and to work need to bring order to the chaos of possible memories. Most things that happen in our brain does not need to be remembered beyond the time needed to think about them. "
forget Is that bad or is necessary to oblivion?
Foer describes as the psychologist Daniel Schacter has developed a taxonomy of forgetting to catalog what he calls the 'seven deadly sins "of memory.
The distraction sin would be, for example, when someone forgets wallet with the money straight from the bank in a taxi. The persistence sin committed by those who have not been able to forget a traumatic event that haunts him. Is the actor who forgets the script for the premiere of the work is an example of the sin of blocking .
Schafer says that while we curse these failures of memory, these oversights have their benefits. "There are good evolutionary reasons for that memory fails us as he does, if all we see, smell, hear or think will be filed in the enormous database that is our long-term memory, would ultimately irrelevant information collapse ".
Thus, it is possible that the ability to forget, not remember, is the essence of what makes us human. "To think is to forget," wrote Jorge Luis Borges, the great Argentine writer.
Specifically in relation to Alzheimer's disease, Foer writes that "aging is also forget." About 24 million people worldwide suffer, and even more those who suffer mild cognitive impairment or lesser degrees of memory loss. " We know that as we age memory may be affected, but without necessarily being associated with a disease.
Foer might speculate that the short or medium term, reach developed medications that prevent or reverse memory loss and, ultimately, not only end up being used by people with neurodegenerative diseases, but by people who need a better memory performance in their daily activities.
Given these expectations, Foer raises disturbing ethical questions, "do we like to live in a society where people have a lot of memory better? What does "better memory? Did it mean to remember things exactly as they happened, without the revisions and exaggerations that our mind creates naturally? Or have a memory that forgets the traumatic events? Or do you just remember what we remember? "
Perhaps the answers to these questions are so subjective and individual, that does not come to agree on this but, at least, as if we should do is that we should prevent deterioration of memory we have, in the end "we all have memory for something", as stated Foer.
Sources http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/11/memory/brain-interactive . "Memory, why we remember why we forget" (Foer, Joshua; National Geographic Spain, English Edition October 2008 (Vol. 23-4), pp. 4 -23.)
