The Brain, Mind, And Memories
Much like modeling a piece of clay, the brain changes and the resultant behaviors are altered, but the previous ones experienced may be returned to, although not in exactly the same manner. This ongoing and continual reconfiguring of the brain and mind results in what will be our memories.
“The brain continually refines its processing capacities to meet the challenges with which it is presented,” write Schwartz and Begley. “This increases the communicative power of neurons and circuits that respond to oft-received inputs or that are trapped for habitual outputs. It is the brain’s astonishing power to adapt and change, to carry with it the inscriptions of our experiences, that allows us to throw off the shackles of biological materialism, for it is the life we lead that creates the brain we have, and all of this involves the brain’s and mind’s memory of experiences.”
All memory involves cognition — the ability of the brain to processes, store, retrieve, and retain information. For example: You receive an invitation to a party — you process the contents of the invitation with its given date, time and directions, as well as a list of those who have been invited, and you store this information until the date for responding is at hand. At that time you retrieve the invitation’s content information, you make a decision as to whether to attend or not, resulting from what you’ve retained about this upcoming get-together — you retained, processed, stored, and retrieved information until it could be put into practice.
Memory
“The most fundamental things scientists have learned about memory is that we do not store memories whole and therefore do not retrieve them that way either. When we remember something we actually reconstruct it by combining elements of the original experience,” writes Ron Brandt in “Educators Need to Know About the Human Brain,” an article published in Phi Delta Kappan.
Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio explains in “Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain” that a memory “is recalled in the form of images at many brain sites rather than at a single site.” And Michael Gazzaniga writes in “The Mind’s Past”: “Evolutionary theory has generated the notion that we are a collection of adaptations — brain devices that allow us to do specific things … Many systems throughout the brain contribute to a single cognitive function.”
The act of remembering occurs in three ways:
- Attention: The ability to focus on a specific stimulus without being distracted
- Orientation: The ability to be aware of self and certain realities and facts, and manipulate information. These are commensurate with the ability of a person to respond to stimuli and interface with everyday life experiences
- Decision-making and problem-solving: the ability to understand a problem, generate solutions and
Each of these, one through three, relies on the brain and the mind working in conjunction with each other. This is accomplished though their separate functions, and with thoughts and feelings imposed by our conscious will.
Living With Memories
Because aging people have so many memories, we find ourselves living with them. Any new situation most likely will bring a recalling or reflection on something from the past. Some of these memories are treasured and some give us pain, while others are neither positive nor negative.
Nonetheless, we build new meanings with these memories. Aging is not a deterioration of the brain and mind but rather a period of tremendous potential for mind and brain to develop by recognizing different and enthralling situations we can utilize for further growth.
“The tragedy of life is in what dies inside a man while he lives,” wrote essayist Norman Cousins. Our lives are what we choose to make them. There is the thought to embrace what we now know: The brain and mind welcome aging. They do the same job as in earlier years, and this process takes a lifetime to complete.
My mind tell me that the physical signs of aging are simply symbols, reminders or indicators of memories that caused me to be who I am now. “Yes, my dear grandson, I am still growing,” I say. “And, what a joy it is, as I use my conscious will in deciding to have it be that.”
Rev. Dr. Marjorie Schiering is a professor at Molloy College in Rockville Centre, New York, and has been an educator for 45 years. She’s also an ordained interfaith minister who volunteers as a chaplain at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, New York.
This article is updated from its initial publication in Brain World Magazine’s Fall 2010 issue.
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