Universidade Gama Filho

WHAT WAS I REALLY TALKING ABOUT? OUR MEMORY OF EVERY DAY, FROM THE OLD DAYS UNTIL NOWADAYS.

Eliana Meireles de Freitas & Adriana Benevides Soares

Universidade Gama Filho – Programa de Pós-Graduação em Psicologia Rua Manuel Vitorino, 533 – 20740-280 Rio de Janeiro – R. J.

How many times that we are in a hurry, we stop in the middle of a sentence to remind ourselves what we were talking about at that right moment? What has happened a day before? No way! We can see, nowadays, a common preoccupation on the memory, or better than this, on its lack. We wish that when people get old they decrease their capacity of saving information, but it seems to be happening earlier and earlier. There were researches on memory with taxi drivers in London, because of the whole information these men need to memorize. These researches could show us curious points. These taxi drivers make a course two years long, where they must repeat the same itinerary and memorize the most possible number of information about it is, evenl the name of the stores of each place, they must know that to inform their passengers. At the end of the course, they have to make a test called THE KNOWLEDGE, to be able or not. When tested, these drivers had an increase of the part of the HYPOCAMPO (brain structure linked to the memory) when compared with other people’s who didn’t make this kind of course. It was also found out that as older he was, bigger was his hippocampus, too. It makes us believe that an adult brain can build his basic shape according to the information it gets. MEMORY: STRUCTURE AND PROCESS Our memory has been known as a phenomenon that occurs in such place of the brain, with a specific center and responsible for such function. But the human memory as it is known, nowadays, according to the capacity of remembering ideas, facts or acquired notions, must be considered in terms of structure and process. The structure refers to the way that the system of the memory is organized, and process is about the activities that occur inside of this memory system. Talking about the structure, there is a fantastic agreement that the memories are saved in specific places of the mind, and to regain these memories, it is necessary to make a search inside of it. This way of explaining the memory structure is called SPACE METAPHOR. But this vision is not accept at all, because it can't explain how this decides so fast what we do not know or when we do not remember such thing. This approach can only accept saved data of a specific way (tridimensional) that could only be regained is this same way as they were saved. An alternative to this only system of keeping data, we think the memory process itself in a parallel and distributed way, it means, data are kept in many distributed units that are linked, but not in just one place. Distinctions are also made among the codification, the keeping information and the regaining of it; where the codification refers to the events that happen during the presentation of the information to be reminded and the codification processes which determines what will be stored inside the memory system. More experiments show that the conditions of the moment of the memory regaining can determinate which datum can be rescued later. Many researchers (Atkins & Shiffrin, 1968; Norman, 1965) tell about it by the number of the storage, I mean, according to them there are three kinds of memory storage: the sensory, which is really what it means and it keeps information for a short period; a storage with a short capacity, which makes memory for such short term; other storage with unlimited capacity, that can keep information for long periods, so that is the long term memory. This approach of the memory study through the multiple storage emphasizes its structure, but not the way it processes itself inside of this structure. We live, nowadays, in a world where everything happens so fast and our senses are reached daily by many stimulus, specially verbal and visual, which are also the most studied senses. But not all the information received are kept, being in our minds for just a bit of time for analysis. Our memory is selective and the data that remain in conscience after being perceived make part of our psychological gift and make a memory of short term. This kind of memory, besides being a limited capacity, suffers interference of the environment, which can bring absent-mindness and make the forgetting easier. The memory capacity of short term has been assessed in two ways: by the measurement of the intermission and by the effect of recent event in the free reminding. In the measurement of the intermission, the memory is measured by the size of the information, because the memory of short term is able to keep information from seven items plus or less two. That is, if it is less two, there will be five items recorded; but if it is plus two, there will be nine items recorded. The effect of recent events tells us that we only keep in the memory what we have seen at last, that is, the seven last items of the information will be recorded easily. That is why telephone numbers have got eight digits, they can be in-group of items, making the memorization easier. Baddeley and Hitch (1974) named the memory of short term, the working memory, pointing the following components: 1) an executive central that would be the most important component of limited capacity and that can command the other two; 2) an articulator circuit, which keep the information that is received in a phonologic way; 3) a plank of rough draft visual-space specific for visual stimulus codification. The last kind of memory which is considered, the memory of long term, has got an unlimited capacity and the studies about it have shown, in a general way, that that people who have a great information at this memory can learn in a more efficient way. The memory of long terms made of repeating of the kept information in the memory of short term, but also by the meaning, the emotional sense kept in the received information. It means that the repeating exercise makes memorization easier, but what comes with the meaning is passed to the memory of long term, unless it is not repeated, as for an example, the reading of a novel, news or a remarkably fact.

REMINDING The way the memory processes itself, Craick and Lockart (1972) found out that the attention and the realizing presented at the moment of the learning is what determinate if the information is going to the memory of long term or not, because as deeper is the level of process and analyses, better and longer will be the dashes of the memory produced. So, besides the importance of the repeating exercise, the meaning of information and the level of the process that the learning needs are determiners to the memorization and later to the regaining of these data. Nowadays, they believe the memory works as a distributed parallel system of processing just like a computer net, where there are processes occurring simultaneously and linked among them, what permits you to set many units in mind which have got data about what you want to regain. This regaining is possible even so a datum has not been stored directly, that is, if it has not been lived by the subject, because the experiences with similar situation and object can be generalized, regained and applied to that situation as " a standard attribution" (McClelland, Rumelhart and Hinton; 1986). The analogy of brain working as a computer is also criticized, because there is still a lot of to be known about the brain connections, which the processing way is not similar to any other current connective proposal.

THE PRIMITIVE BRAIN Before reaching the level of complexity and the size it is today, the human brain has developed from the bottom to the top, until it is one kilogram heavy of neuron-cells, three times bigger than the primitive, but not human primitive (Golleman, 1995). The brain trunk, in its most primitive part is also found in many species, that regulates the basic vital functions just like the breath, the stereotype reactions are necessary to the survival. After this old brain root come superposed layers, building the emotional centers. The thoughtful brain had been developed from the emotional brain what explains a closer relation between thought and feeling. The sense of smell was very necessary to the survival of the primitive days, because through this sense they could identify the enemies' presence, the difference among the food and the person and the sexual partner. It was consisted of two layers, which were developed above the trunk brain: one could analyze the smell and identify them and other could send messages to the nervous system to an answer according to the situation. Around the brain trunk, we have got the limbic system that comes from the Latin word limbus, which means edge and from this was possible to have emotions as they are.

With the evolution of this system, the learning and memory improved themselves. The nose brain was still important to share the smells but now it is also important to recognize them, permitting an improvement on the answers. Above these two brain layers which can plan, understand what senses are and can also coordinate the movements, appeared the neocortex, too much bigger in human being than in other species. It permitted a great evolution at the capacity of survival and transmission of these genes through the heritage as a developed process. Man is the only animal who can think according to his own feelings and the only who has feelings according to his ideas, symbols and images so that he could build a culture and a civilization. Civilization which is more complex each day, which must have a greater capacity that suits to the constant social, cultural and economic changes. Which gave a boost to the globalization of the present-days. But the neocortex and its linking to the limbic system also permitted the feelings graduations; which goes beyond the necessary sexual desire to the species continuing, and it was analyzed by the sense of smell getting, today, to the feelings of a relationship between parents and children, including warnings during this period of time. Although the human brain has, nowadays many layers, which were overputting the primitive brain and permitting us good cognitive elaboration, always with the participation of the memory, in emotional emergence situations it suffers the influence of these brain bases. For its wide range of linking with the thoughtful brain, the emotional center interferes in the thought and in the memory working. It can also act without the neocortex, according to Golleman (1995) making reactions and emotional remembers without the conscience and cognitive participation. These emotional memories are kept in the brain structure that with the hippocampus supplies a memory of the context where learning occurred. The amygdala permits to add an emotional feeling to the fact that will tell us if it is pleasant or not. Soon, these two brain structures work together on the formation of the memory, but each one keeps and preserves its information alone, where the hippocampus retains the information and the amygdala determines its emotional value. But this information is not very precise. The amygdala matures quickly in children's brain, recording information from the childhood interactions, which does not have verbal corresponding, because they happen before the speech facility to describe this experience. When they are lately set, they conceive chaotic behaviors, because they arouse feelings, but not their comprehension. It takes us back to the memory of long term, which itself all life long from what is stored in the memory of short term or memory of work. Researchers show us that the regaining of the information kept in the memory of long term can be done in two ways: in the way of recognizing, where the stimulus is present again, and it can be recognized as familiar or not; or in the way of free reminding, where the subject has to identify the stimulus first and then make a search inside the memory structures to know if it is familiar or not. Each time it is required up against the necessity of constant learning and adaptations to the requirement of the fast life we have got nowadays, the memory gets overloaded conceiving forgetting, where the most of time we ask ourselves: WHAT WAS I REALLY TALKING ABOUT?

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