When you ran your fingers over the key board did you think about where the letters were?,GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY PSY 300 WEEK #3 DQ #1 MORE TO CONSIDER…

GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY PSY 300 WEEK #3 DQ #1 MORE TO CONSIDER…

When you ran your fingers over the key board did you think about where the letters were? How did you know? Is it your memory that helps you or a trained habit? We often think about things only when we have too. Yet, consider the last time you drove to the market. Did you think about how to get there? Have you ever been driving and all of a sudden you are where you are going but you can’t really remember how you got their or the trip involved? Our memory is a very powerful tool that our brain uses to simplify our life. That is why when it does not work we start to wonder “Why?” How come I can’t remember that? Take for example telephone numbers. Some people can remember all sorts of them off the top of their head. While others have to call directory assistance every time. Names can be the same way. Some are easy and others we can’t remember for days. How come? Some researchers think that age affects this pattern. Take a look:“When you’re in your 20s, you begin to lose brain cells a few at a time. Your body also starts to make less of the chemicals your brain cells need to work. The older you are, the more these changes can affect your memory.Aging may affect memory by changing the way the brain stores information and by making it harder to recall stored information.Your short-term and remote memories aren’t usually affected by aging. But your recent memory may be affected. For example, you may forget names of people you’ve met recently. These are normal changes.” http://familydoctor.org/online/famdocen/home/seniors/common-older/124.html

Yet, the real reality is your brain is working hard to make all of this happen. “Information is transferred from short-term memory (also known as working memory) to long-term memory through the hippocampus, so named because its shape resembles the curved tail of a seahorse (hippokampos in Greek). The hippocampus is a very old part of the cortex, evolutionarily, and is located in the inner fold of the temporal lobe.All of the pieces of information decoded in the various sensory areas of the cortex converge in the hippocampus, which then sends them back where they came from. The hippocampus is a bit like a sorting centre where these new sensations are compared with previously recorded ones. The hippocampus also creates associations among an object’s various properties.”http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/d/d_07/d_07_cr/d_07_cr_tra/d_07_cr_tra.html

Consider for a minute the last time you thought about your “BRAIN.” What did you think?