Facts About the Human Brain and Memory

By: Eric Hartwell

Have you ever thought about the nature of memory? Considered how it functions? How it can be used in day to day life?

In fact, the vast majority of us take memory for granted. We scarcely realize that memory is involved in nearly every single task we perform each day in the world. Whether we are working, studying, solving a problem, or simply talking, we are making use of the human memory. The way memory works is related to such parts of the brain as the frontal lobe, the temporal lobe, the cortex, and the hippocampus.

These disparate parts of the brain work together, thereby allowing us to formulate and store information in the form of memories. The memories connect us to the external world – the data stored might be about a specific environment, a person, or an object. So how does memory work?

While it has been known for some time that the part of the brain known as the hippocampus plays some role in memory, what it actually does has been unclear. Recent experiments have established that the hippocampus is not a storage space for old memories. What it seems to do is help us remember things that we have had encounters with in more recent times, such as landmarks that help us orientate ourselves in our surroundings.

Recently, an older man who had developed amnesia after damaging his brain was the subject of an investigation in to the nature of the hippocampus. As one hypothesis states that the hippocampus stores information about places and how to get around them, the older gentleman was asked to recall streets from his childhood hometown. The researchers compared his results with those of four other older people who had also lived in that town several decades in the past.

While the gentleman was able to recall prominent landmarks and streets in his childhood hometown just as well as the other subjects in the experiment, he was unable to recall details of the town he had been living in since he developed amnesia.

Thus, it seems that the hippocampus plays a role in the creation of memories, yet it does not help us in retrieving old ones. The idea that the hippocampus stores “maps” in the brain seems to be doubtful, as the gentleman was not able to recall details of the streets of his current neighborhood – just his old home town. The hippocampus, then, is helpful in the creation of an individual’s general multi-purpose memories.

Another recent experiment has established that the hippocampus can be also utilized to recall knowledge that has recently been acquired. In one experiment, mice were put in to a cage either five days of twenty five days after they had been taught which part of the maze contained food. When the mice’s brain activity was studied, the scientists found more activity in the hippocampus of the five day mice than the twenty day mice. But in other parts of the brain, activity was much higher in the latter group.

So the hippocampus is involved in retrieving recent memories, as well as making them. What it does not do, however, is store memories over a long period of time.

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