Long-term memory

Hi everybody, the Complex PTSD Guy here.

I'm going to talk about some things related to long-term memory and getting things into our long-term memory in a more efficient way or even just at all, right? So when your hippocampus part of your brain is impaired, you know, it's great if you can not necessarily undo that, but if you can build techniques to improve or make life easier for yourself and remembering things, getting things into your long-term memory.

So I'll start out with some basics.

I always talk about exercise and walking.

What were the key points? Why was this written? What is the point of what we're reading for this class? What is the point of this book? You know, why is this book important historically or whatever? You know, blah, blah, blah.

But I learned so much and I remembered like almost everything that teacher ever taught.

Because he taught you how to get it into your long-term memory better.

Which is very valuable.

The multi-store model.

Atkinson and Shiffrin propose that memory is made up of three separate stores: the sensory register; short-term memory, which we call STM; and long-term memory, which we call LTM.

Information flows through these stores in a specific sequence, and each store has its own distinct characteristics in terms of encoding, capacity, and duration.

Let's start with the sensory register.

Third, duration.

STM lasts approximately eighteen to thirty seconds without rehearsal.

After that, information is either transferred to LTM or it's lost.

It decays or is displaced by new information.

And so the first tip is that when you're dealing with something, oftentimes you'll feel like, okay, I'm going to read the book first and then I'll go back through it and I'll like, you know, start learning things and But it's really actually dealing with the subject and applying oftentimes, sometimes type of complexity to it.

So if you say you're learning, you know, short-term memory, long-term memory, well, just having, okay, I'm just going to have initials, STR, LTR, or LTM, and then just writing those things down.

Those are not necessarily making it complex, but trying to connect it to other things and bringing in relationships and increasing the complexity.

Oftentimes I'll meet somebody and we meet sometimes, especially at temples, you just meet too many people.

So if you weren't repeating Leonidas, you probably have forgotten it already.

Because your mind, amazing as it is, can really only hold between four and seven distinct bits of information at a time, at which point the memory either decays or it gets transferred into long-term memory.

Long-term memory is your brain's, like, durable and ridiculously spacious storage unit, holding all of your knowledge, skills, and experiences.

Now, since the days of Atkinson and Schifrin, psychologists have recognized that the classical definition of short-term memory didn't really capture all of the processes involved in the transfer of information to your long-term memory.

I mean, it's more than being able to just remember some Greek guy's name, so later generations of psychologists revisited the whole idea of short-term memory and updated it to the more comprehensive concept of working memory.

Working memory involves all the ways that we take short-term information and stash it in our long-term storage.

Unless you've got something unusual going on in your brain, you might not have much choice but to learn this way, like how you learned how to not put your hand into a fire.

That learning would have happened pretty much automatically as soon as you first yanked your hand away from an open flame.