Crystalline Memories

I was talking to a friend about memories. I find it interesting to think about how memory works, because it varies so much from person to person, and from memory to memory within one person.

I find that I access memory different that most people. Sometimes, when my brother asks me if I remember something, he describes it a certain way and it makes no sense to me. I find that he was focused on some aspect of what we were doing, and I was focused on something else. Often, if I can get a handle on how I would have looked at it, maybe where we were, when it was, or what happened before or after it, I can get a handle on the memory and draw it out.

Often, at that point, it still does not match my brother's memories, but I find that to be a separate issue. I believe that people often alter their memories, either from repeated retelling and embellishing, or from wishful thinking. We're all guilty of it.

I find that memories behave a little like an imperfection in a crystal. If you've ever held a natural crystal up to the light, you've noticed the internal fractures and imperfections in the crystal that are invisible from some directions and very clear from others. I think memories are like that, sometimes. They become clear if you approach them from one direction only, just like seeing those imperfections in a crystal.

I heard when I was little that all of your memories of everything you've ever done were still in your head. This begged the question of why you can't remember anything from the first 3 to 4 years of your life. Recently, I've heard that new memories overwrite the older memories, but I wonder if this is completely true. The science report I heard that said this also said that the brain is making new neurons throughout your life, which is something else that they did not used to believe, up until recently. I've also heard theories that memories are stored in a distributed fashion in the brain, like a holograph, which is an interesting notion. This means that individual neurons could be responsible for helping to build the image of many memories - a redundancy. It also means that a portion of the brain could be injured, but not knock out whole chunks of the memory, but just weaken the memories.

Regardless of how it physically works, I believe that sometimes capturing memories can only be done from a specific direction. I used to dabble in self-hypnosis when I was younger. I remember reading that you could use hypnosis to retrieve memories and to do age regression. Besides that, the books said that hypnosis could relax you and relieve stress. I think maybe there is a connection here. If you think of the memory as being most visible from one direction, the hypnosis acts as a way of shaking up your viewpoint. If you are not rigidly fixed in your viewpoint, if you relax and float around, you can let the memory matrix rotate until it lines up and lets you in. I think of it as freeing you up to see in all directions.

Another think I find to be interesting is the scope of memories. Sometimes we remember what we were doing or where we were over a long period of time. Then you get to zoom in to a particular event within that context, then looking closer, you may remember a particular instance. This is a nesting of memories. You have big groups of memories that are each loaded with many little memories. Going back to the crystal analogy, are you looking for a tiny fleck embedded in the crystal or a fracture that spans the entire crystal. Does it help to frame the memory in the bigger part it is embedded in, then zoom in and focus on a narrower and sharper portion of that megaevent?

I think this is a useful construct in thinking about how your memories are stored in order to help you recall things. I remember when I realized that memory could be as good or as bad as you wanted it to be. You can attempt to remember something and if it doesn't come immediately, you can say "I can't remember". This is a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you say you can't remember, you stop looking and it's true - you can't remember. If you say instead, "I can't think of it right now, wait a minute, it will come to me," that often works. I find that the memory is often there, I can feel its presence. Sometimes, it's a little like taming a skittish animal, when you relax or back away, it comes out and comes to you.