Fading Memories, Emerging Understanding
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The document's author, Dr. Sylwester, is a well-known authority on how better understanding of the brain can shed light on education practices that directly impact the classroom.Here is some more information about Sylwester:
- Robert Sylwester is an Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Oregon who focuses on the educational implications of new developments in science and technology. He has written 20 books and curricular programs and 200+ journal articles. His most recent books are The Adolescent Brain: Reaching for Autonomy (2007, Corwin Press) and How to Explain a Brain: An Educator’s Handbook of Brain Terms and Cognitive Processes (2005, Corwin Press). Corwin Press will publish his A Child's Brain: The Need for Nurture in the spring of 2010. The Education Press Association of America has given him two Distinguished Achievement Awards for his syntheses of cognitive science research, published in Educational Leadership. He has made 1600+ conference and inservice presentations on educationally significant developments in brain/stress theory and research. He served as major professor or co-major professor for 66 doctoral studetns in the College of Education, University of Oregon.
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Contents |
FADING MEMORIES, EMERGING UNDERSTANDINGS
Introduction
We live in the present, but we can recall the past and so use the results of prior experience to enhance our future. Memory and prediction are thus central to the maintenance of a current consciously controlled life. Past. Present. Future.
Naïve children depend on the experiential memories and capabilities of their parents and other adults, who have typically amassed a rich store of useful knowledge. We adults tend to worry however, that we might eventually lose ready access to what we know, and thus revert to a childhood level of awareness. It’s disturbing to imagine a late life dependence on our children’s assistance that’s analogous to their childhood dependence on us.
Since we define adult life as autonomous, the potential loss of the memory system and knowledge base that drives autonomy is a serious matter. Children easily activate an innate memory system they don’t understand, and we continue to unconsciously activate it into adult life. We thus fear the loss of something that’s important but ill understood. We’re not alone. Memory researchers similarly have a better understanding of memory as a set of mental systems than of how it functions biologically.
Memory Systems
Much of our cognitive activity focuses on movement – determining, activating, and predicting our own movements; and predicting the movements of objects and others.
Movement results from the expenditure of energy in space over time. Effective movements require efficient memory systems that encompass (1) relevant factual knowledge about our environment and personal experiences, and (2) motor skills that execute complex responsive motor programs. Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases are examples of maladies that result from a deterioration of the cognitive systems that allow us to easily understand and navigate our time/space environment.
Scientists generally divide memory into a short-term limited-capacity element of our attention system called working memory that has no long-term recall, and a more complex long-term memory system. We can thus remember where we put our car keys a few minutes ago, but not every place we’ve ever put them. We do however maintain a long-term factual memory of the recognition and purpose of car keys, and the skill memory of how to use them.
'Memory is processed by a variety of related brain modules – each specialized to process an element of the memory (such as a color, shape, sound, and smell). The various brain modules that constitute a memory are linked, so activating one element of a memory will typically activate others (such as being able to visualize an unseen friend during a phone conversation).
We don’t store an infinite number of complete discrete memories that exist like photographs, but rather we reconstruct a triggered memory from a huge store of highly interconnected reusable elements developed from our life experiences. For example, the part of our visual system that recognizes red will respond to anything red, such as exit signs, stoplights, and catsup.
If seeing a restored automobile activates the memory of the same model we owned years ago, it may also activate memories of experiences we had with the car. We could thus think of memory as something dynamic that emerges when it’s needed to connect current and previous experiences – and memory loss as the inability to connect the present with our past.
Since emotional arousal activates the attentional focus that may lead to learning and memory, we create separate emotional memories that help to spark such activation. Think of factual memory as being more about remembering what happened, and emotional memory as being about remembering how I felt about what happened. Both are important, but our emotional memories are typically the more powerful. For example, our emotional memories of a childhood experience are often stronger than our remembrance of its factual details.
Given the complexity of our memory system, the loss of any of its elements will reduce the effectiveness of the entire system. Most of us thus become concerned when we suffer memory lapses, fearful that they may signal the beginning of the disintegration of the complete system.
What Scientists Know About Memory Loss
Sue Halpern is a respected writer for The New Yorker magazine who became professionally interested in memory when her elderly father developed serious memory problems. The result of her search for what researchers know and don’t know about the decline of memory is Can’t Remember What I Forgot: The Good News From The Front Lines Of Memory Research (2008). Although the subtitle suggests a more positive report than the book actually provides, it’s an informative book – although perhaps not for those who want an immediate explanation or solution to a specific memory-related problem. It’s basically the report of her fascinating investigation into the difficulty of researching and reversing the increased memory loss we tend to experience as we age. Given the gravity of the issue, I appreciated the somewhat informal sprightly tone of her writing.
Halpern takes us on the personal tour of the memory research community that we might all take if we had the time, background, contacts, and determination to discover the current state of knowledge. She participated in many of the research investigations she describes. The book is thus an intriguing combination of anecdotes about the set of important researchers she meets during her quest, and helpful non-technical observations and explanations of the nature and potential of their research. She seasons her discussion of researchers and their discoveries with a dose of skepticism that I felt wasn’t meant to be destructive. Rather, it was more an expression of her realization that researchers must truly believe in and promote what they’re attempting to do, even when the odds are against them – given that they must constantly seek grant support for their research and commit to long frustrating laboratory hours.
Since no current cure exists for the dementias, the research has tended to focus on delaying the onset. Dementia tends to be a malady of aging, and so delaying its onset means that potential patients and their families won’t suffer as long, or that the person might die of something less destructive to personal dignity and family relationships. Still, some researchers are currently focused on potential cures, and the level of understanding of dementia is considerably advanced over that of a few years ago. That the Good News of the book’s subtitle.
Halpern focuses on two research approaches that hope to reduce memory loss. The first seeks to identify a chemical abnormality that a drug could ameliorate. For example, the hippocampus is a structure that plays a central role in memory. It has long been implicated in Alzheimer’s disease, but researcher Scott Small discovered that memory loss associated with normal aging occurs in a hippocampal area called the dentate gyrus, and memory loss associated with Alzheimer’s disease occurs in a hippocampal area called the entorhinal cortex. This discovery allows researchers to focus their search for abnormalities in a specific area.
The second approach focuses on brain plasticity, the ability to improve brain network connections through intensive practice in related activities. For example, right-handed violin players increase left-hand digital competence through violin practice, and chess players increase their knowledge of effective strategies by playing a lot of matches with good players. Since stimulating activities that enhance memory capabilities can actually improve such capabilities, computerized brain training programs are emerging that purport to enhance networks that regulate memory.
Older people who are concerned about cognitive decline are spending an aggregate of many millions of dollars on such brain training programs. One problem with these programs is that most purchasers don’t know how effective they are. Memory enhancing drugs must pass stringent federal research guidelines before they can be sold, but no such oversight exists for brain training computer programs.
One approach to credibility for such programs is through independent studies of their effectiveness. For example, Posit Science’s Brain Fitness Program was investigated by researchers at University of Southern California and the Mayo Clinic, and the positive results were published in a peer-reviewed journal, The Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, (http://www.positscience.com/news/view.php?contentid=601).
It’s a good idea to investigate what kind of independent analysis was made about any such program that interests you, and to avoid any program until it has had such an independent analysis.
References
Halpern, S. (2008) Can’t remember what I forgot: The good news from the front lines of memory research. New York: Harmony Books.
Author
This article was written by Robert Sylwester. It is protected against changes by readers. Comments can be made on the accompanying Discussion page (see menu at top of this page).
