Neurons are cool

Our minds are amazing, funny things. Last night, Luke and I went to a School of Life (www.theschooloflife.com) talk about memory and it was so surprisingly thought provoking. Man, I love being an adult. I totally embrace this stage in my evolution whereby comfortable shoes rule, on the odd occasion can say ‘shit’ in front of my mother (only occasionally as it still feels naughty), wear stockings with open toe shoes (not sure about this one but Vic has welcomed it into her life quite happily) and finally, go to something kind of nerdy and not be ridiculed about it.

So, for the first time in ages, I actually listened with the intent of retaining information. I even did it for a whole 90 mins, give or take a few mind wanders. It’s crazy how we remember things, or as we learnt, how we don’t. Our memory isn’t for what we may think. In fact, we can only hold up to five pieces of information at a time. It’s not built for long term retention. Thank god, because I was beginning to think there was something wrong with me. Interestingly, our memories are often shaped and re shaped each time we revisit them thanks to many things, including the change of environment. Even our mood, smells, even sounds can alter what and how we remember. So basically, every time we think back to a memory, we’re actually going back to the last time we thought of it, rather than the original event. How we work is seriously fascinating. Even how we experience déjà vu is intriguing. Our neurons shoot through the middle of our brain and along the way, pick up other contributing neurons to form a particular memory. In the case of déjà vu, the wrong neuron (the familiarity one) is picked up, making us think we’ve seen or done something before. As you can see, I could go on about this for at least another five paragraphs, but I won’t.

Yay learning!