How many times has it happened to you that you parked your car and forgot where you had parked it and you walked around in the parking lot. And no matter how much you try, you don't even remember where your car was parked.
And it could also be that you are in a hurry and you have to write someone's mobile number but if you do not have a phone, then you try to remember it, and immediately you forget that number within 5 seconds.
Whatever be the case, the memory of us is a very important part of our intelligence.
There are many of us who forget every little thing very easily and some people who remember even small things of others very easily.
What is the process to remember?
How do events store in our brain?
Can we forget something at our own will?
And what if we could not forget anything?
First of all, no events or memory in our mind is saved in files or drawers, rather it is saved in a very complex way and saved in different places in different brain cells. And these different cells work together to save that memory or to remember it later.
For example, If you remember your mother's handmade food, then your Visual Cortex reminds you of the picture of the food. Your Olfactory Cortex reminds you of the smell of that food. And Gustatory Cortex reminds you of the taste of that food.
Memory saved in different places
This is to say that no memory is a file that is saved in any corner of the brain, rather it is distributed throughout the brain.
And this memory is not a thing, rather it is a process. For example, in a football match, when a lot of fans make a wave together, it does not mean that one or two of them are waves, rather every person is individual and all together have completed this process. Together they made a pattern that we named it wave. And if all these people create another pattern, then we will give it another name.
Similarly, individual brain cells make a lot of patterns which later become a memory. The amazing thing is that the same type of cells can make patterns in many ways. This means that the brain cells of the same group can make many types of memory. And that's why we remember millions of things in a small brain.
There is a wonderful part in the middle of our mind that looks like this.
Hippocampus
The part that looks like a seahorse is very special, because according to the scientist, this part, which is called the hippocampus, plays a very important role in making our memories.
You think like that, the hippocampus is the part through which the memory passes through the rest of the brain. You cannot create a new memory if the hippocampus is not there.
This happened in 1953, It was necessary for a patient named Henry Molaison to have his hippocampus removed. And when it was removed, the man did not remember anything after that, while he remembered everything before the operation. After this person's operation we came to know that the hippocampus plays a very important role in creating memory, while it does not store memory.
When we sleep, our whole day activity brain repeats fast while sleeping at night. And in this repeated process, it orders the same brain cells to make the same patterns again and again, so that the particular memory becomes strong, its process called Consolidation.
That's why sleep is so important for us, so that may our memory be strong and this memory, years later, suddenly reminds us of like a film because of one small thing.
Later we will discuss more about our mind and memory in sleeping condition.
Has that ever happened to you that you are sitting in a meeting and a small talk by someone reminds you of your university, college, school and crush as if it were yesterday. We remember many things like this but we forget a lot also. We forget many things ourselves and our brain deliberately forgets some things.
Why does this happen?
Actually we forget any memory in three ways:
Passive Oblivescence
That is, with time, this memory starts disappearing, as you don't remember many things done in childhood but your parents tell you what you did in your childhood. This is because you do not recall that memory again and again or brain cells slow down with time. It may also be that the memory you remember is in pieces and not completely memorized.
Targeted Forgetting
This is the second type of forgetting, and the brain does this on its own.
But why this?
Because of that, the brain wants to remember only the important things and not the useless things.
For example, Today you remembered a blue pen, white paper, important assignment of the boss, bought vegetables for your wife and mother's medicine then the brain will remember the important things, and tomorrow, maybe you just remember the assignment of the boss, mother's medicine, and the wife's vegetables.
So mainly we separate the important memory of the whole day and separate the useless memory. We forget important things so that we remember other important things, And this process does our brain itself.
Motivated Forgetting
This is to forget that maybe everyone of you wants this. During this process, a person deliberately forgets, so that they do not remember the things they do not want to remember. In this, the person wants to take his life forward and try to forget the past life. Usually people want to forget their mistakes or forget their love and more.
This is a very tricky thing, because if this is not done properly, then it also has the opposite effect.
For example, if you want to forget your ex and you are trying not to bring him/her into the mind, but what happens is that in order to understand yourself, tell your brain, don't think about that girl/boy. But when you think about that girl/boy at that moment, those old memories start coming in front of you immediately. And instead of forgetting him/her, you strengthen that memory.
Actually the Motivated Forgetting formula is not completely clear to scientists.
So we forget in many ways, it is the forgetting that makes us human.
So the time in which we get harmed or the people who harm us or our sad time, our mind wants to forget so that we can be happy.
It sounds good to remember everything but maybe it is not good for us.
Imagine that even if you remember every little thing, then your neuro system will become so exhausted that you will start hating your life.
Despite our knowing so much, there are a lot of memories that we want to forget but we cannot forget. Even after our millions of efforts, that memory remains very clear in front of us.
So does medical science have any answer?
The answer is yes!
Electroconvulsive Therapy
This is a process in which the brain is given a special type of electrical shock with very precision, in which we help to prevent the unwanted brain cells from forming the same pattern.
So people get this therapy and forget the memory, but sometimes the memory you want to forget does not go through your brain.
Electroconvulsive Therapy
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