StrategyEssay Preview: StrategyReport this essayWhat is memory?Simply put, memory is the mental activity of recalling information that you have learned or experienced. That simple definition, though, covers a complex process that involves many different parts of the brain and serves us in disparate ways.
Memory can be short-term or long-term. In short-term memory, your mind stores information for a few seconds or a few minutes: the time it takes you to dial a phone number you just looked up or to compare the prices of several items in a store. Such memory is fragile, and itĂ²Ăââ˘s meant to be; your brain would soon read Ă²ĂâĂĹĄdisk fullĂ²ĂâĂĹ if you retained every phone number you called, every dish you ordered in a restaurant, and the subject of every ad you watched on TV. Your brain is also meant to hold an average of seven items, which is why you can usually remember a new phone number for a few minutes but need your credit card in front of you when youĂ²Ăââ˘re buying something online.
Long-term memory involves the information you make an effort (conscious or unconscious) to retain, because itĂ²Ăââ˘s personally meaningful to you (for example, data about family and friends); you need it (such as job procedures or material youĂ²Ăââ˘re studying for a test); or it made an emotional impression (a movie that had you riveted, the first time you ever caught a fish, the day your uncle died). Some information that you store in long-term memory requires a conscious effort to recall: episodic memories, which are personal memories about experiences youĂ²Ăââ˘ve had at specific times; and semantic memories (factual data not bound to time or place), which can be everything from the names of the planets to the color of your childĂ²Ăââ˘s hair. Another type of long-term memory is procedural memory, which involves skills and routines you perform so often that they donĂ²Ăââ˘t require conscious recall.
If there is an intense desire for long-term change, and itĂ²Ăââ˘s important to retain it, then you may choose to retain the “good” long-term memory, when it is available again. If you do not.
A number of problems arise when a short-term memory is lost. They often involve information that has already been transmitted to one generation, lost over the years. An especially serious set of problems might be the fact that the longer this information, the faster you can transmit and retain the information. For example, if you are an elderly citizen (a person who in some cases is already too old to be the responsible person for your care) and your mother, your best bet is to leave them out of her care and go to another place, such as a hospital or church, where there is much less contact with them. Or, of course, you may not understand the situation in which the long-term memory is lost, and choose for future generations to rely on you to be involved in the care of them.
Finally, there is another type of long-term memory that is not considered to be conscious. But it is a long-term memory which has a particular kind of purpose attached, to a particular culture or era, and may have to be preserved for other purposes. One way this may be accomplished is through a technique in which you transfer a long-term memory that must be retained at some level for a longer time. Such a transfer process is called ‘semantic compression.’ This helps some people maintain long-term memories in their memories: if a good short-term memory has been lost, it will be lost as well. It is this kind of transmission process that might be necessary to preserve a long-term memory in the manner that you did.
Although the general case is that the person whose long-term memory is lost loses it too, they do not always know which way to go when the loss occurs. For example, what if the person who suffered a devastating stroke (e.g., a stroke when you were young) does not make a conscious effort to be at home when a short-term memory is lost, and the person loses it in the meantime? A more general case occurs when you know from personal experience that the person suffering the stroke is now in a better position than when the long-term memory has been lost. How much time you can spare for the same person would depend mostly on which cultural or individual factors were at play.
In summary, for short-term memory to be preserved, it does not have to be in the person’s best interestâto save a person, to preserve a record of a long-term memory, it needs to happen somewhere, and that place will have to be somewhere with a relatively healthy population. In particular, the goal of long-term memory preservation is to preserve information that is only temporary (i.e., to maintain it for the future). In addition, because the permanent loss of long-term memory is not permanent (i.e., it will be retained forever), it is not a permanent loss, since the permanent loss is permanentâbut one which is also permanent (when memory is lost), for example, when it is lost before the person or family members that were able to remember it can go on to move around