Memory is such a natural part of our everyday lives that we don't realize how big of a role it plays in how we function every day. Our brains change with experience. The brain cells respond, and record the environment around us and stores the information for later use. This is considered our memory. As our brain is developing, our memories get stronger. I'm sure everyone has wondered why they can't remember their childhood up to a certain age and what it was like being a baby. This is childhood amnesia, everyone experiences this because our brains aren't fully developed yet. For most people, it is impossible to remember anything younger then the age of 5. John Forbes shared his story in this documentary on how his premature birth as effected his memory. He is forced to write things down and stick to the same routines every day because his memory was never able to fully develop. Our memories are not only used to remember the past, but we also use it to help imagine our future. When we are asked to imagine what we would like to be doing next Christmas, we use our past memories to help imagine a new one. This is called mental time traveling and by age 9 this ability should be developed in our brains. We are able to take what we learned two days ago, link it to a memory from a week ago then think of how we can use it in the future. By the age 25 our memories have reached their full power, we can remember over 200 pieces of information per second while still controlling our bodies. At its healthiest our brains are smarter than any super computer. .
Memory is the faculty by which the mind stores and remembers information. In class we discussed many different types of memory and amnesia that were also explained in this documentary. The first one discussed was retrograde amnesia. Retrograde amnesia is the loss of past events we have experienced. The documentary discussed a story of John Forbes, he was born premature and suffers from retrograde amnesia.
