What is Memory? Our memory serves as a personal library for us to remember everything we learn experience and encounter in our lives. While doing research for this paper I came across allot of information about memory that I never knew before. In Elizabeth Loftus's Book Memory, surprising new insights into how we remember and why we forget. She talks about how memory works. So I decided to do this paper on how memory works and what some of the negative points about memory are.
Memory is broken up into two parts. You have your short term memory and then you have your Long term memory. Short term memory takes care of all the things we only need to remember for a short time. Short term memory usually only last for a few seconds to a minute. Directions when we are lost or a telephone number we only need to remember till we make the phone call are all examples of short term memory. Long term memory consists of things we need to remember for much longer. Long term memories can last from a few days to a whole lifetime. The names of our loved ones, memories of our lives or things we learned throughout our life that have registered in us are all part of Long term memory. .
Information stored in Long term memory can be hard to remember in an instant. "We need short term memory to provide the gateway through which information may pass into long term memory. We are also capable of rehearsing what we need to remember in short term memory and eventually it gets stored in our long term memory. .
So how exactly would our lives be if we did not have any memory? Life could be extremely carefree. You would have no sorrows and worries, no problems would ever be remembered. It could also be a big hassle because we would not be able to do the tasks put in front of us on a daily basis. We would have to learn everything over and over again. Learning how to make a cup of coffee over and over again everyday would be just plain nerve wrecking.