The processes of memory

by S.N. Arseculeratne

This essay was prompted by my recollection of the name of a person whom I met 60 years ago. I had no cause to recall his name since we met; it was an unusual name Claude LeGris. But today it suddenly surfaced, without any linkages or levers for recall.

I am not a psychologist but a microbiologist. But as I point out later, there are concepts in this subject which relate to this topic, and which led me to my readings in the literature. My readings and research in this subject have given me insights into what memory is. Memory is the store of names and events that we have encountered, and is the main-spring of all our subsequent thoughts and actions. French philosopher Rene Descartes’ famous comment “Cogito, ergo sum”, (I think, therefore I am)…“. Thinking is the basis of our lives. It is the hub of this essay. My dependence on memory in my professional work and in my daily life have compelled me to consider the subject of ‘Memory”.

Memory for me, has always been an intriguing subject which was at the centre of my academic activities including lectures to my students and writings. One of my books has the title “I think, therefore I am – Rene Descartes.”; and I continue to think about this problem. It has been estimated that the capacity of the human mind is 200,000 facts. but how that was ascertained I do not know.

As a microbiologist and immunologist, I am aware that the word “memory” is important as in immunological memory in dealing with immunization and protection against microbial agents and medical people use various strategies with protective vaccines. Immunization of a kid allows this person to recall the relevant or related bug years later when these bug comes into the body and this is the basis of immunization to prevent microbial diseases. Linkages to events or names or persons are critical in the processes of memory. An aid to recall is a link between the item to be remembered and something else associated with it, a sort of lever. If I feel that an important fact might be forgotten, I attach a link to it as much as an immunologist who deals uses adjuvants that are combined with the antigen for enhancement of the response to them.

When a forgotten item comes back into mind, how do we how that it is the correct item? We have a ‘sensor’ in the mind that tells us that it is what we wanted to remember. Before the forgotten item resurfaces, one has a vague feeling of what the forgotten item is before it comes back into live memory but the ‘sensor’ confirms its validity.

Memories lie buried in our memories for a long time. It is astounding that some people are known to remember even their past lives, which the US Professor Ian Stevenson has written about. My attempts to recall memories sometimes fail, but suddenly, in my experience about half an hour later when attempts have ceased, they suddenly surface. Forgetting of names, rather than events, in my experience is predominant, probably because a name is a single item whereas an event runs into several words.

Aids to recall are firstly the letters of the alphabet and then the vowels, as a trigger to the memory. The letter is first repeated in your mind and when you come upon the correct name, you identify it, saying “Ha, I got it.”

The subject of Mnemonics, concerns devices or learning techniques that aid retention or retrieval of human memory. The Web defines it as ” A tool that helps to remember certain facts or large amounts of information”.

As I said above, I owe my ideas documented here to my training in immunology. The insights that immunology gave me as a microbiologist include the idea of immunological tolerance (the resistance to the development of an immune response), inhibition of immune responses, or promotion of immune responses with adjuvants or aids to the establishment of immunity. These immunological features have parallels in the processes of memory, notably selective loss of memory akin to failure of the immune response due to the individuals’ biology or defects in the immunizing agent.

In the process of my remembering or forgetting, the word itself but not its meaning came readily back to my mind. Another trick in recovering memories is to go down the alphabet and then the list of vowels following a noun. Retrieval of memory for lost items is helped with levers or links which connect the item to be remembered while the sensor mechanism confirms it validity. A notable fact is the presence of a ‘sensor’ in the mind that determines whether the remembered item is valid or not.

Loss of memory might be caused or aggravated by other psychological deficits, eg. Deafness. Two people were conversing and one said, “can you repeat what you said? I couldn’t hear you. The first chap said, “Sorry, I have forgotten what I said”. Sometimes my mind behaves like a sieve with extra holes in it.

For me the most amazing fact about my memory is that at my advanced age of ninety one, I sometimes find it difficult to recall an event or a name. However, after several minutes, the forgotten item flashes back into my memory, intact. I had no recourse to a link to the forgotten item. I did not even have to resort to my favourite device of going down the alphabet or list of vowels, which occasionally works.

Sigmund Freud the great psychologist- (1856-1939) was an Austrian, the founder of the science of psychoanalysis; he gave us an important fact. We sometimes forget not because of a failing mind or diseased brain but because we want to forget selectively. We have facts in our subconscious mind which we want to forget for being troublesome or embarrassing. It might be a miscreant who has defaulted on us or a particular event that is haunting. This means a ‘selective loss of memory’. Freud emphasized this fact.

Loss of memory (amnesia) paradoxically occurs to me even with recent events or names while distant ones are more easily remembered. This may be a matter of aging to ninety, with loss of memory as a physiological deficit due to the aging process. But Freud gave us a clue to the processes of memory and recall of facts; this is the occurrence of reasons for our forgetting of distasteful facts, events or persons; we need to forget them. A further discovery of psychologists is the ability to transfer memories from one person’s mind to another mind by the process of telepathy without the conventional means of documentation.

Dr. Siri Galhenage a psychiatrist sent me his responses to my essay. On Freud’s views, “… painful events from the past, he postulated, may be stored in one’s personal unconscious through the mechanism of repression – a special feature of his theory of psychoanalysis. Such suppressed memories, he believed, may present themselves as ‘neuroses’ such as hysteria. Psychoanalysis involves the release of such neuroses through ‘free association’ and helping the patient gain insight. The same was done by others through hypnosis or abreaction.

From a neurological point of view, the current thinking differentiates memory loss due to normal aging (Nominal Aphasia), forgetting of names being part of it, and due to a disease process such as Alzheimer’s Dementia. The latter is a more global process with the deterioration of personality functioning with loss of short term memory being a central feature.

My final word on this intriguing subject of memory is that the most painful disease I have had is not proctalgia (pain in the backside), nor myalgia (pain in the muscles) but nostalgia, the pain from painful memories or the loss of memories.

I conclusion and in support of what I have written was said by a Zen Buddhist parable, , “The mind is the fore-runner of all things”.