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| BrendanMcKillip.com brendan mckillip's daily journal |
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daily journal
The Brain and the Nature of Memory I read an article in the Harvard Business Review this morning where noted neuroscientist John J. Medina was interviewed. The preview that drew me into the story touted it as an article on how to unlock ways to think smarter and be more productive. I found little useful information related to that topic. But while I didn�t necessarily find clues to thinking smarter, what I did learn was no less fascinating. Instead, Medina spends most of the time talking about how the brain works and responds to external influences. Medina prefaces nearly all of his answers in the interview with the disclaimer that the scientific community still knows very little about how the brain works. The brain is an almost unfathomably complex organ. However, the knowledge base surrounding the study of the brain is always growing, and there are things we know today that can help shape how we use and treat our brain. Take the impact of stress on the brain as an example. He explains that the human brain was designed to handle stress in short bursts � like the ancestral man faced with the threat of a mountain lion. Either he is going to be devoured or he is going to escape to live another day. Either way the threat spans a short timeframe - mere minutes. These 60-second stress events can happen a number of times in one day and the human brain (and body) is no worse for wear. The problem develops when stress becomes your common companion. As Medina states: Nowadays, our stresses are measured not in moments with mountain lions, but in hours, days, and sometimes months, as we deal with hectic workplaces, screaming toddlers, bad marriages, money problems. Our bodies aren�t built for that. If you have the tiger at your doorstep for years, then all kinds of internal mechanisms break down, from sleep rhythms to specific parts of the immune system.The negative impact of constant stress on the human body seems like common sense, but I�d never seen this warning presented in such a manner. Certainly not in relationship to how stress plays on the brain�s functions. The idea resonated more deeply with me when framed around the different stress events of historical man and modern man. Not only have we created a modern society that is destructive to our planet, but also we�ve shaped an existence that breaks out bodies down. It would seem all around we are asking our world and our bodies to do things nature never intended. But that wasn�t the only interesting point I found in the article. Later Medina talks about the nature of memory and the brain. Brain research is pretty clear on this point. Bona fide recorded memory is a very rare thing on this planet. The reason is that the brain isn�t interested in reality; it�s interested in survival. So it will change the perception of reality to stay in the survival mode. Unfortunately, many people still believe that the brain is a lot like a recording device�that learning something is like pushing the �record� button and remembering is simply pushing �playback.� In the real world of the brain, however, that metaphor is an anachronism. The fact is that the actual moment of learning�the moment of fixing a memory�is so complex that we have little understanding of what happens in our brains in those first fleeting seconds.�The brain isn�t interested in reality.� It�s why two people can witness or experience the same event and when asked to recall and explain what happened they both provide different stories and both believe their own version of events to be true. The brain isn�t necessarily interested in storing the facts of an event; it is concerned with storing the truth of the moment as perceived by the brain. Truth and fact are not always the same. It bothers me how these terms are so often used interchangeably. A fact is undeniable. Trees are plants. This desk is brown. A minute is a unit of time equal to 1/60th of an hour. A truth, however, is an interpretation of fact. It is how our brain stores and recalls the facts that it absorbs. Medina notes a person�s emotional or physical state plays heavy into how a memory is stored, and that the best way to accurately and completely retrieve that memory is to recreate the environment of the original memory-creating event. For example, not only will being sad influence how your brain stores the memory of your reality at that moment; but by recreating a similar sad feeling later you present the best case scenario for full recall of that memory - flawed or biased as it may be. That�s not only fascinating biology, but it is interesting philosophy as well. If you assume that the brain is incapable of honest factual memory storage and that the �reality� retained in the brain is a distortion/interpretation of events filtered through the physical/emotional/temporal external influences on the brain, then it is amazing that people are able to connect and communicate at all. Humans are already hampered by the limitations of language in the transference of ideas from one to another, but if you add in the individual�s unique memory experience it raises the barriers to communication. If we assume that an individual�s understanding of their world � their version of �reality� � is based on the total collective of stored experiences and events in their brain and that those stored experiences and events are not undeniable experiences and events but have been tampered and adjusted by the individual�s physical/emotional state before being committed to memory, then there can not be a true transference of ideas between individuals because each will be approaching the other from within their own reality. Where is the common ground? There can be no real shared experiences. How can an individual know that those around him comprehend his ideas in the same way he comprehends them? That they are experiencing the same things he is experiencing? I could ramble on and on, but I won't. I know men far smarter than I have contemplated these questions and attempted to answer them in much more compelling ways that I have stumbled through here. Hell, I�m pretty sure I have some of their books in my basement right now from back in my college days. Regardless, it sure is fun to consider these questions � and it is something I haven�t done in a long, long time. I�m glad I stumbled upon this article. Labels: General, philosophy posted by Brendan | 10:16 PM | permanent link |
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