Process of memory

Process of memory

Introduction

Memory is the information that is stored in the brain after having an experience of some event. Memory is an important aspect of human's life. It is involved in perception, thinking, learning, etc. Normally, it is seen that there are stages of information processing through which the process of storage of memory takes place. The sensation that a person receives after perceiving something turns into sensory memory, which is the first stage of storage of information. The information that is currently processing in a human's mind has a limited capacity, which is known as short-term memory. Then, the information is moved to the brain where it is kept for longer time and can be access at a later stage in life. It is known as long-term memory and has unlimited capacity. The two most important categories of memory are short-term memory and long-term memory (Jonides & Nee, 2006). The memory gets weaken or may result in memory loss with the increasing age or it may occur due to several medical reasons. The brain damaging or the loss of the memory can affect on the cognitive impairment such as a person may not be able to touch, smell, taste, and see. In long term memory loss, a piece of information can be deleted from the brain and a person may not be able to retrieve the information.

Discussion

Process of memory and factors that enhance information flow in each step of the process

There are three categories of memory which depend on the time of memory lasts in the brain; sensory, short-term, and long-term memory. The information that is received by lasts in the sensory memory just for few milliseconds. For instance, a student is listening to a lecture, the information enters ion the sensory memory of a students and lives there for few milliseconds. If a student does not pay attention, the information no longer remains in the memory and the students forgets the information. However, if a student pays attention, the information is transferred to the short-term, memory. When the information lasts in memory for few minutes, such memory is known as short-term memory. The transfer of information from sensory memory to short-term memory takes place through attention. There is a working memory in the short-term memory process which is an active system and the information is stored as well as processed. At the time of transferring, if a student does not pay attention on the information, it will not be encoded and will be forgotten (Zhang, 2004). Conversely, if a student pays attention on the information by rehearsing the information that is by taking notes, so, for storage in the long-term memory, the information will be encoded. The information in the long-term memory lasts for hours or for the lifetime. The information that is encoded and stored in the long-term memory lasts in the memory on permanent basis (Baddeley, 2002). However, the recalling of the information depends on the way, it was ...